The blocks I'm using: amzn.to/3ElMU7v A cheaper alternative I haven't tested: amzn.to/3J8MZyW Jenga blocks: amzn.to/3H2NSXW Unbranded jenga blocks: amzn.to/3stLrd4
As you were talking about this, I realized it might be fun, in a dungeon, to lay out blocks ahead of the party as they explore, to reveal the areas ahead of them. You could use the blocks from behind them to build the new area, so you won't run out and it creates kind of a 'fog of war' scenario where you only build the parts of the map immediately around the PCs. You would still need a detailed private map for yourself but it would also mean the players would need to really be keeping their own maps updated and not relying on you to do it.
@@valethemajor I remember but the days have changed and, my group at least, spends so little time in dungeons that they no longer enjoy exploring and mapping them. On the very rare occasion the players end up in one, it's usually handled in a more narrative manner and maps aren't required. I tried running an old school dungeon a few sessions ago and the players weren't into it at all.
@@germakenjuju it's useful for everyone to be on the same page about distances and geometry, esp in a larger or more complex rooms. A 20x20 room with an exit in the middle of the north and south facing walls is easy enough to describe. A massive chamber with 6 doorways, some single, some double door, with a dais in one corner, fallen pillars here and there and an alcove 60 feet to the east on the south facing wall is harder to referee if a conflict breaks out.
thats why I use, a grid and markers, perfect, takes no time and im not limited by the tarrain i have. also everything is perfectly visible for all players, not so 1 player gets stuck behind a house and cant see.
Hi Ben! I'd like to also add that you can find those "off brand" jenga pieces at most dollar stores in the toy section. So its extra affordable. Cheers!
This is actually genius. This is why I love your stuff: it's very clear you actually play the game and have practical knowledge and advice. I love your reviews of books and modules because you always approach it like someone who actually has experience and plays, not just someone theory-crafting in their basement.
I'm considering staining my blocks, damaging them and doing light acrylic washes to bring out the damage. I love the idea of 100% abstract, but I'd also like to see how "Dungeon-y" I can get the blocks to look. Great idea!
Same, but it's because I travel to friend's houses to DM. So I bring some felt to lay down, different colors for different environs. Then I have a bucket of blocks. Then some pawns or minifigs and dice for characters. I don't do the grid, I say you can move as far as the DM's pen. Lol.
Joseph B - I have to schlep all my gear too as I live the furthest from my group. It’s a labor of love though. I have also used 1” square graph paper easel pads with the adhesive on the back too. I prep the rooms or encounter areas then bust it out when the gaming begins.
I really like crafting terrain and painting minis as hobbies unto themselves, but this kind of thing is super nice for when you don't have something specific (yet) to fit a certain encounter, and don't want to proxy something else where it being the "wrong thing" distracts your players.
Ditto and painting and arranging my large Dwarven Forge collection. Theres pretty much nothing I cant build, but the best and most surprising thing was how much the terrain inspired my builds and even other campaign aspects. This is a good idea though.
As hobbies go. This is a genius idea. Thanks for sharing this. I love woodworking and dnd so as this allows for me to maximize my scrap pile and do something cool with the kids afterwards and virtually no mess. Thx! :)
The minecraft approach to terrain. I had the idea, that you could make custom character and monster miniatures out of wood with a modern cnc wood lathe. Would be less detailed that a plastic mini, but with the right design, these could be quite charming. Or you could use chess pieces.
I use everything from Chess pieces, to coins, to plaster soldiers, to Dollar Tree animal figures as minis and they all work rather fantastically! I find that the more abstract the pieces you play the game with, the more the players really get into their own imagination, which is a plus for me!
I've started using wooden blocks when playing Frostgrave with my son. It works better than any other method we've used before. Duplo blocks works fine too, they're bigger than Lego, so you can build the scenery quickly.
To add to this, one can purchase individual plastic chess pawns extremely cheaply. They make for a similarly abstract option, when a marker/model is needed for a character or monster type that one doesn't have on-hand. Pieces that stand slightly more than an inch tall can usually be purchased for less than a dime each, in a variety of colors. Similarly sized wooden pieces are a bit more expensive, but still generally won't run more than $0.50 each.
How about placing magnets inside of the cubes (drill hole + glue + magnet)? That way you can stable-y stack them and you can take them apart when you want to.
I use cheap blocks and such from the dollar store. I painted them dark grey, then with a light grey dry brush, so they look like stone. Very cool. I go to a friend's house to DM, and we do sandbox, so I never know what I'm going to need. So I bring some felt for different ground colors, green, grey, etc...then the blocks. Legofigs for the players, dice for the bad guys. It works, portable.
I find that 1-inch corner molding, sliced into 1- to 4-inch lengths, work really well. It is available in many different shapes. But I'm going to try your 1-inch blocks, because I think they're going to work well with the corner molding as well.
I use something like these and meeples for minis. That green meeple can be an orc, a goblin, a Martian, Gorn, lizard man etc. Much quicker to set up :)
I bought a massive collections of meeples specifically for this purpose. Got to use it on couple of great sessions before the lockdown started, and been sighing wistfully at my box ever since.
A little over 20 years ago, my cousin mailed me his 1e books, some miniature games, and 2 boxes of differently colored wooden cubes. I just thought them odds and ends… Until now! Time to dig them out!
I've bought a bunch of wooden blocks for my kids at estate, kid consignment, garage, and yard sales. They can add some flare to the standard 1 inch blocks. There are a few other stacking block games too (Blockhead! as an example) that come with odd shapes that are great for weird structures.
I use a combination of DungeonCraft’s UDT and Crooked Staff Terrain’s print and paste terrain for scatter terrain. I’ve printed out 2 of each of CST’s ground grid (dungeon floor, wood floor, grass, cave floor) and glued each one without cutting it into smaller pieces onto cardboard. Then I just throw one or two of those down based on how big the encounter area is. If needed I stack a few to create levels, then cover it with scatter terrain. Very simple but very visually pleasing.
I'm trying this now. I got 2" cubes as well, and am making bridges out of strips of wood glued together like planks are 8"x2". I thinks it's a really versatile setup that gives tons of vertical options.
I like using wooden toy blocks with different shapes and for random encounters and such encourage wargame style terrain placement for players to take turns without knowing where their deployment zones are. This is really great for adding interesting tactical depth and player engagement when there might otherwise only be the referee setting up. Other "children's toys" that are simple shapes work great for this, and a side benefit is that you can move them easily if something is destroyed or deformed, like a broken gate or a crater from a giant throwing a boulder. Great video!
Not only terrain - I used wooden craft blocks for a mass combat and they worked great. I drew little symbols on the sides of the blocks with a sharpie to represent different kinds of units, whether they were damaged, etc.
Found some smaller Jenga blocks, I’m gonna experiment with these and probably start using some of these in my D&D. I’m gonna see what I can come up with before I glue a few of these together.
That would be good for some cheap minis too. Each side could represent something like Casual, Melee Fighting, Ranged Fighting, Defending, Resting, and KO'd
For the 1 time I was able to play physically this year, I used a combo of a whiteboard & small scatter terrain, some hand-crafted. Will probably continue with that, along with maybe the 1-inch cubes idea, & Runehammer ICRPG style index cards. I like making terrain as a hobby onto itself, so will keep using my fancy home-made stuff to give it a reason to exist, but focus on small, highly reusable pieces like dungeon tiles, wall sections, & doors. One idea which struck me is to kind of go 1/2 way with the cube idea... making my own cubes out of foam that I nicely texture to look like stone/rock. It would have all/most of the modularity benefits as the cubes & jenga blocks, but with greater immersion factor, at the cost of time.
That's fantastic! I've been using a vinyl grid mat and washable markers. And my cheap alternative to minis is to use wooden discs. You can get them in 1", 2", 3" etc. I have a whole bunch of the 1" discs and use permanent markers to create player characters (player name on one side, character name on the other works well, color coded to the player or character) and then I also number a dozen from 1 to 12, with Green numbers on one side, Red on the other. So you can use flip them to indicate a condition. I actually made two sets of these in different colors, one has a black background. And finally, I made some with unique symbols... then made one that was a smiley face on one side, a frightened face on the other, made on that's a scary monster face, made some NPC ones including a stick figure that is shrugging on the other side. I keep them in a ziploc bag. To make them more durable I used some matte sealer so that the marker doesn't rub off or the exposed bits don't pick up washable marker from the grid. I also made some Large scale ones and a couple Huge. I've realized I need to make a couple gargantuan ones and maybe a colossal too. Adding a little bucket of wooden blocks would work fantastically.
I really like this idea. Just wanted to add, for those of us that like to make terrain, that you can also use them a jigs for more detailed terrain builds. You could set up what you want it to look like using the blocks, get a feel for how everything is, then build the nicer terrain using that as a template.
I have used jenga blocks for a long time! I have loads glued together. You can glue 3 jenga blocks together and you have a raft/platform/whatever... I found cutting craft foam into roughly one inch stones and sticking those on can help platers who like grids
Yes!!! Wanting to DnD again but very little time, need this as don't have time to paint figures AND do set built scenery. Ordered 50 of Ebay for $17 AUD and found an unbranded set of Jenga in a local shop for $5. So that's the scenery, sorted!
I use cigarrette packs covered in brown paper for walls or floors depending on the terrain style I want to use. Paper.towel rolls.work really well as trees, especially if you draw on them. I use tp rolls for.columns as well Other than that I use various colors of small paper reminder things to add some color the ground of the terrain. Like blue for water, green for grass. That sort of stuff
I remember a decade ago or so when the 2.5d movement hit. It is what you called "semi-3d". We used shorter walls so we could see and get to the miniatures and or other things better. I do agree with you that `blocks or small sticks or some other sort of vague 2.5D wall is the best as it frees the mind to overlay its own imaginative covering. 🙂 Nice video.
Maybe some of them can even have stuff written on it in marker like chair or table for obstacles and then since they're a cube a character can be stable sitting on it if its occupying the same spot.
I used to have a DM back in the 80s who used dominos to mark out our 1e dungeon walls. We were way out in BFE back then and didn't even know that wet erase grid maps existed yet.
I've briefly used wooden blocks in the past and they do work great. I am a believer that no table will ever be able to accurately, and completely depict what your mind's eye can, so I prefer my structures (as well as PC and encounters) to be as abstract as possible. While I love to paint minis, I don't like using them in my games and would rather use standard game pieces to represent players.
nice idea but...not for me. We tried something like this back in the day using dominos, a small bump and the dungeon experienced a traumatic earth quake
Great idea. For anyone with a few wood working tools (a chop saw or miter saw would work but even a hand saw) you could make hundreds of these super cheap. Just set up a stop block at 1" and chop away (and you could do the 3" ones with a quick adjustment as well).
Yes, they are the best terrain. They make terrain and elevation easy to set up and interesting to navigate. Also, when playing at friends' places who have kids, I don't need to bring any terrain, because they will have wooden blocks there. Several times I've just shown the players the map of a town or dungeon and told them 'You are here! Build it with blocks' and that in and of itself entertains them for a good half hour.
I also got some jungle terraint, a grid, some marker and my players imagination will surly bring forht th heigth of the trees ans they close in around them.
1- machine them/cast them... you can have the same thing but with some details (like cobblestone) also easily can be tinted. 2- add holes to each side and properly set an array of neodimium magnets (taking in count the proper pole orientation, so a cube willl have inverted magnet poles on the sides, just the same way a classic Dice has the numbers on opposed sides making the sum will be the same between sides) You get all the advantages and remove most of the cons, will look better, will stay together easier and will help the inmersion (specially if you make specific texture patterns based on materials, such wood, cobblestone, rock, grainy (this being sand glued on the sides on multiple layers for more amorphous material such peebles or land) ** Note: one thing I would like to test would be create a mini-portable customizable board set... I was thinking that you can get one wooden board, and add squares to it to compose a grid (but each with a sighly border) then add a small system similar to paper springs to make "cubes that can get deployed" (4 plane pieces that gets unfolded to create the walls of a cube from below) so making it on each hole could allow you to have a very slim board that could get deployed to make a modular set of walls depending the scenario... obviously it would be only about the walls, but seems like a reasonable and good enough option for games outside home.) Note 2: the "spring" system could get developed with a bolt, one small spring and a couple nuts... so both nuts keeps the spring compressed and turning one of said nuts (it being hidden behind the board) will release slowly the spring, pushing the 4 walls and deploying the cube/wall section.
I cannot tell you enough how much my own aesthetic preference gears towards abstracts... I want blocks for terrain, totemic figurines, and a humble map grid as the board. I have gotten to the point where I imagine the players around the table planning their adventures or regaling one another about how they played out while sat together at the tavern.
@@Alberaan Symbolic in representative appearance rather than literal approximations... think like a carving of a spirit animal for a druid, a holy figure for a cleric or paladin, or the pawn from a fighter's beloved childhood game.
@@Groovebot3k I see. I'm using something similar: I use tokesn with icons in them representing the different classes. For monsters I use tokens with numbers/colours
I painted a bunch of 1” wooden cubes to look like different kinds of Minecraft blocks for my kids’ Minecraft minifigures. I cut and painted lengths of 1” square rods to be pillars and ridges too. It’s a lot of fun. Wooden terrain is underutilized. The Downtime Dad channel has great ideas for what he calls “timber terrain.”
Heck yeah, this is such a good tip, I'm gonna get me some wood. Helps that I am a carpenter myself, just gonna make me some. Also flat boards for thin walls and stuff
Amazing how cheap toys common decades ago are better than spending $$$$ on model sets (many companies will protest). Paint these and consider using cork and cork board as well. Cork is fragile but the texture mimics stone and other terrain. Rocks, sticks, sand, baking soda (snow), dead rodents, and other simple things you can find for free or for cheap are great too.
This is especially good for OSR games, along with the use of meeples or peg dolls, as characters will die a lot and so you won’t go through minis so much. OSR characters will have to EARN their minis, not have them handed to them on a silver platter. Important NPCs would also have minis, to show what the players could become if they progress far enough. Color-code the meeples per player, as well as NPC meeples.
Kinda nice to look at. Would not use them myself due to if you even slightly hit a block they would move. The whole thing reminded me straight away about Legodnd on reddit.
For me LEGO is worth the money. You get the slight extra amount of immersion that color and form gives you, plus the ability to build with much greater detail. Your terrain is much more stable if you brush against it or bump the table. You can even pick it up and move it if you need to adjust the scene. You can easily pre-build structures and have them behind you ready to go.
We were thinking about producing and selling 1" cubes of epoxy for this exact purpose. Different colors, different heights, etc., for a similar cost. Is this something people would be interested in? We want to maximize creative use, while minimizing cost for the GM.
Is there some that are maybe 1" x 1" x 1/4" for floors to cut down more on storage space? That would be neat. Could even preglue some of those in different configurations for floor plans. I found these but I haven't tried them but they're a lot skinnier than 1/4". Maybe have to glue them to cardboard or something to get them to stay together in pre-built patterns.
So, while many people say that FDM 3D printing is a little excessive for terrain, you're saying I have an ACTUAL USE for all the 1" calibration cubes I print to check filament?
Simple is not bad or worse. Sometimes simple is perfect, and I'd further argue that most of the time simple is perfect approach (and that's coming from a someone who is *really* into 3d terrain systems.)
I saw another video that suggested bringing the size of everything down to half, so that you can have much larger arenas. While I like that idea, it doesn't combine well with this one 'cause 1/2 inch blocks are just too fiddly.
I have $2k of GameTiles and Cavern Tiles by dwarven force, I painted the GameTiles, but bought Cavern pre painted. My DM ran with them for a couple of years and I liked them well enough (can't walk up to a wall, it's like only half inch, but my DM eventually got tired of setting them up and so they stay in storage ... too expensive to sell, too heavy to ship, ah well, mostly play online now anyhow
What if the blocks were made smaller, and you made forms for them with paper and tape... just pouring the little blocks into the walls? Would that be fast and easy enough to preserve the greatest strength of using these blocks (expedience) You could separate floors by larger wider sheets which could be lifted. Save time by using the full 1" blocks and Jengas.
hey Ben, i'd like to make a recommendation for a review. Fantasy Flight Games put back into print the old West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game from 1987 a few years ago. It has some serious OSR vibes even though it doesn't use the traditional d20 system. (it uses a D6 dice pooling system) I think it would be a good read. They come in a two-book pack, one of them being the rulebook, the other being a generalized sourcebook. The thing i like about it is it doesn't use a leveling system. you improve individual skills through practice. I think it's definitely worth a look at, as this was around the same time as AD&D, and was it's own thing.
Id look into hard foam for this instead. easier, lighter, cuttable, shapable, paintable. Foam is really where its at. Id only use wood for extra stability.
My only concern is that for my dungeons I might have a room the shares a wall with another room. How would you recommend simulating that with 3d blocks? My first throught would be to get a 2in square that is maybe 1/8 in tall and has a 1/8 in wall down the middle.
Knock-off (fake) plastic bricks designed to be compatible with Duplo. Duplo "cubes" are 32 *32 *19mm, about 1 1/4 inches on each side. The scale works reasonably, and the interlocking feature is handy. The brand I found have four nubs on top that allow a mini to stand without tipping off. I found ~300 blocks for under $50 US. There are 2 problems - bright, discordant colours and purchasing unlicensed goods: ==> I sanded them briefly and sprayed off-white primer. It is slowly flaking-off but has lasted fairly well. ==> I'm informed that so long as they are not perfect copies and don't carry the brand name, they are legal. IANAL, but Duplo bricks are insanely expensive for what they are, so I'm not fussed. YMMV
The blocks I'm using: amzn.to/3ElMU7v
A cheaper alternative I haven't tested: amzn.to/3J8MZyW
Jenga blocks: amzn.to/3H2NSXW
Unbranded jenga blocks: amzn.to/3stLrd4
As you were talking about this, I realized it might be fun, in a dungeon, to lay out blocks ahead of the party as they explore, to reveal the areas ahead of them. You could use the blocks from behind them to build the new area, so you won't run out and it creates kind of a 'fog of war' scenario where you only build the parts of the map immediately around the PCs. You would still need a detailed private map for yourself but it would also mean the players would need to really be keeping their own maps updated and not relying on you to do it.
That's a fantastic idea and a great way to do fog of war
I’m currently trying that with Pocket Lands geomorph cards for wilderness travel.
that's how it was done in early D&D. Having a mapper was once a duty placed upon one of the players.
@@valethemajor I remember but the days have changed and, my group at least, spends so little time in dungeons that they no longer enjoy exploring and mapping them. On the very rare occasion the players end up in one, it's usually handled in a more narrative manner and maps aren't required.
I tried running an old school dungeon a few sessions ago and the players weren't into it at all.
@@Maehedrose sorry to hear that brother! My group still does dungeon crawls and we have a blast when it isn't bogged down by a slow cautious pace.
I've long felt that the more detailed terrain models get, the less room it leaves for players ti imagine their own interpretations
Yes, but the more you leave things to imagination the more likely people will disagree.
@@germakenjuju it's useful for everyone to be on the same page about distances and geometry, esp in a larger or more complex rooms. A 20x20 room with an exit in the middle of the north and south facing walls is easy enough to describe. A massive chamber with 6 doorways, some single, some double door, with a dais in one corner, fallen pillars here and there and an alcove 60 feet to the east on the south facing wall is harder to referee if a conflict breaks out.
1,000,000% agree. Dwarven forge is very pretty, excellent for dioramas, but it very much locks in the visuals, chops imagination off at the knees
thats why I use, a grid and markers, perfect, takes no time and im not limited by the tarrain i have. also everything is perfectly visible for all players, not so 1 player gets stuck behind a house and cant see.
A point strongly emphasized by Michael Ende in Momo.
Hi Ben! I'd like to also add that you can find those "off brand" jenga pieces at most dollar stores in the toy section. So its extra affordable. Cheers!
This is actually genius. This is why I love your stuff: it's very clear you actually play the game and have practical knowledge and advice. I love your reviews of books and modules because you always approach it like someone who actually has experience and plays, not just someone theory-crafting in their basement.
I'm considering staining my blocks, damaging them and doing light acrylic washes to bring out the damage. I love the idea of 100% abstract, but I'd also like to see how "Dungeon-y" I can get the blocks to look. Great idea!
Ben, I’m a bit of a minimalist and this idea really resonates with me. I use Chessex maps with 1” squares as well. I like the ease of this.
Same, but it's because I travel to friend's houses to DM. So I bring some felt to lay down, different colors for different environs. Then I have a bucket of blocks. Then some pawns or minifigs and dice for characters. I don't do the grid, I say you can move as far as the DM's pen. Lol.
Joseph B - I have to schlep all my gear too as I live the furthest from my group. It’s a labor of love though. I have also used 1” square graph paper easel pads with the adhesive on the back too. I prep the rooms or encounter areas then bust it out when the gaming begins.
I really like crafting terrain and painting minis as hobbies unto themselves, but this kind of thing is super nice for when you don't have something specific (yet) to fit a certain encounter, and don't want to proxy something else where it being the "wrong thing" distracts your players.
Ditto and painting and arranging my large Dwarven Forge collection. Theres pretty much nothing I cant build, but the best and most surprising thing was how much the terrain inspired my builds and even other campaign aspects. This is a good idea though.
As hobbies go. This is a genius idea. Thanks for sharing this. I love woodworking and dnd so as this allows for me to maximize my scrap pile and do something cool with the kids afterwards and virtually no mess. Thx! :)
The minecraft approach to terrain.
I had the idea, that you could make custom character and monster miniatures out of wood with a modern cnc wood lathe. Would be less detailed that a plastic mini, but with the right design, these could be quite charming.
Or you could use chess pieces.
I use everything from Chess pieces, to coins, to plaster soldiers, to Dollar Tree animal figures as minis and they all work rather fantastically!
I find that the more abstract the pieces you play the game with, the more the players really get into their own imagination, which is a plus for me!
I've started using wooden blocks when playing Frostgrave with my son. It works better than any other method we've used before.
Duplo blocks works fine too, they're bigger than Lego, so you can build the scenery quickly.
This is perfect for my gridded whiteboard and paper cutout minis! Will absolutely be using this going forward.
To add to this, one can purchase individual plastic chess pawns extremely cheaply. They make for a similarly abstract option, when a marker/model is needed for a character or monster type that one doesn't have on-hand. Pieces that stand slightly more than an inch tall can usually be purchased for less than a dime each, in a variety of colors. Similarly sized wooden pieces are a bit more expensive, but still generally won't run more than $0.50 each.
Professor Dungeon Master is not amused
How about placing magnets inside of the cubes (drill hole + glue + magnet)? That way you can stable-y stack them and you can take them apart when you want to.
Much better lighting and background in this video, love it
New camera!
I use cheap blocks and such from the dollar store. I painted them dark grey, then with a light grey dry brush, so they look like stone. Very cool. I go to a friend's house to DM, and we do sandbox, so I never know what I'm going to need. So I bring some felt for different ground colors, green, grey, etc...then the blocks. Legofigs for the players, dice for the bad guys. It works, portable.
I find that 1-inch corner molding, sliced into 1- to 4-inch lengths, work really well. It is available in many different shapes. But I'm going to try your 1-inch blocks, because I think they're going to work well with the corner molding as well.
I use something like these and meeples for minis. That green meeple can be an orc, a goblin, a Martian, Gorn, lizard man etc. Much quicker to set up :)
Same here! I use meeples, a set of paper rectangles for the dungeon map and a simple grid for battles
The chessex 27 stax of D6 are my goblin hordes.
I bought a massive collections of meeples specifically for this purpose. Got to use it on couple of great sessions before the lockdown started, and been sighing wistfully at my box ever since.
@@elsesome2707 Game Crafter has a large variety of meeples, in many colors.
Very clever, and I appreciate that you made a brief video to cover the topic.
A little over 20 years ago, my cousin mailed me his 1e books, some miniature games, and 2 boxes of differently colored wooden cubes. I just thought them odds and ends… Until now! Time to dig them out!
that being 1e of what, call of cuthuly, Kult, deadlands, vtm, Mutant, Cyberpunk 2013, traveller, delta green, paranoia?
I've bought a bunch of wooden blocks for my kids at estate, kid consignment, garage, and yard sales. They can add some flare to the standard 1 inch blocks. There are a few other stacking block games too (Blockhead! as an example) that come with odd shapes that are great for weird structures.
Love this idea. Matches the color of biege / off-white maps / grid mats
Great tip. I have been using these and the dollar store mini jenga blocks for a long time.
I painted some Jenga blocks and they worked great for dungeon walls. You can add a little texture with a sponge.
This is genius! A dollar-store knockoff jenga set plus a battlemat is perfect for my style of play, neutral enough to be anything.
I use a combination of DungeonCraft’s UDT and Crooked Staff Terrain’s print and paste terrain for scatter terrain. I’ve printed out 2 of each of CST’s ground grid (dungeon floor, wood floor, grass, cave floor) and glued each one without cutting it into smaller pieces onto cardboard. Then I just throw one or two of those down based on how big the encounter area is. If needed I stack a few to create levels, then cover it with scatter terrain. Very simple but very visually pleasing.
I'm trying this now. I got 2" cubes as well, and am making bridges out of strips of wood glued together like planks are 8"x2". I thinks it's a really versatile setup that gives tons of vertical options.
Now you can play out your Minecraft dream rpg!
This is actually a great idea. Even if used as a basis for crafting other projects
I like using wooden toy blocks with different shapes and for random encounters and such encourage wargame style terrain placement for players to take turns without knowing where their deployment zones are. This is really great for adding interesting tactical depth and player engagement when there might otherwise only be the referee setting up. Other "children's toys" that are simple shapes work great for this, and a side benefit is that you can move them easily if something is destroyed or deformed, like a broken gate or a crater from a giant throwing a boulder. Great video!
Not only terrain - I used wooden craft blocks for a mass combat and they worked great. I drew little symbols on the sides of the blocks with a sharpie to represent different kinds of units, whether they were damaged, etc.
Found some smaller Jenga blocks, I’m gonna experiment with these and probably start using some of these in my D&D. I’m gonna see what I can come up with before I glue a few of these together.
Great idea! I'm going to use these for soloing Rangers of Shadow Deep.
That would be good for some cheap minis too. Each side could represent something like Casual, Melee Fighting, Ranged Fighting, Defending, Resting, and KO'd
Me: *sees my wood scrap bin*
"I could make that"
For the 1 time I was able to play physically this year, I used a combo of a whiteboard & small scatter terrain, some hand-crafted. Will probably continue with that, along with maybe the 1-inch cubes idea, & Runehammer ICRPG style index cards. I like making terrain as a hobby onto itself, so will keep using my fancy home-made stuff to give it a reason to exist, but focus on small, highly reusable pieces like dungeon tiles, wall sections, & doors.
One idea which struck me is to kind of go 1/2 way with the cube idea... making my own cubes out of foam that I nicely texture to look like stone/rock. It would have all/most of the modularity benefits as the cubes & jenga blocks, but with greater immersion factor, at the cost of time.
That's fantastic!
I've been using a vinyl grid mat and washable markers.
And my cheap alternative to minis is to use wooden discs. You can get them in 1", 2", 3" etc. I have a whole bunch of the 1" discs and use permanent markers to create player characters (player name on one side, character name on the other works well, color coded to the player or character) and then I also number a dozen from 1 to 12, with Green numbers on one side, Red on the other. So you can use flip them to indicate a condition. I actually made two sets of these in different colors, one has a black background. And finally, I made some with unique symbols... then made one that was a smiley face on one side, a frightened face on the other, made on that's a scary monster face, made some NPC ones including a stick figure that is shrugging on the other side. I keep them in a ziploc bag. To make them more durable I used some matte sealer so that the marker doesn't rub off or the exposed bits don't pick up washable marker from the grid. I also made some Large scale ones and a couple Huge. I've realized I need to make a couple gargantuan ones and maybe a colossal too.
Adding a little bucket of wooden blocks would work fantastically.
I really like this idea. Just wanted to add, for those of us that like to make terrain, that you can also use them a jigs for more detailed terrain builds. You could set up what you want it to look like using the blocks, get a feel for how everything is, then build the nicer terrain using that as a template.
I will have to keep this in mind in the future if I ever do games at a physical table and wanna actually use minis
I have used jenga blocks for a long time! I have loads glued together. You can glue 3 jenga blocks together and you have a raft/platform/whatever... I found cutting craft foam into roughly one inch stones and sticking those on can help platers who like grids
Also have a look in thrift shops for children's building block sets. You'll get triangle pieces and wooden columns. Also really useful
Brilllant Ben and happy Christmas!
Yessss... I've long enjoyed Jenga blocks for maps, gets people thinking vertically and affecting the environment
Yes!!! Wanting to DnD again but very little time, need this as don't have time to paint figures AND do set built scenery. Ordered 50 of Ebay for $17 AUD and found an unbranded set of Jenga in a local shop for $5. So that's the scenery, sorted!
I use cigarrette packs covered in brown paper for walls or floors depending on the terrain style I want to use. Paper.towel rolls.work really well as trees, especially if you draw on them. I use tp rolls for.columns as well
Other than that I use various colors of small paper reminder things to add some color the ground of the terrain. Like blue for water, green for grass. That sort of stuff
I remember a decade ago or so when the 2.5d movement hit. It is what you called "semi-3d". We used shorter walls so we could see and get to the miniatures and or other things better.
I do agree with you that `blocks or small sticks or some other sort of vague 2.5D wall is the best as it frees the mind to overlay its own imaginative covering. 🙂
Nice video.
Maybe some of them can even have stuff written on it in marker like chair or table for obstacles and then since they're a cube a character can be stable sitting on it if its occupying the same spot.
I used to have a DM back in the 80s who used dominos to mark out our 1e dungeon walls. We were way out in BFE back then and didn't even know that wet erase grid maps existed yet.
Been using wooden blocks and meeples for a few years now. Good stuff.
I respect the creativity and think if you are on a budget its great but I still love my DF.
I've briefly used wooden blocks in the past and they do work great. I am a believer that no table will ever be able to accurately, and completely depict what your mind's eye can, so I prefer my structures (as well as PC and encounters) to be as abstract as possible. While I love to paint minis, I don't like using them in my games and would rather use standard game pieces to represent players.
nice idea but...not for me. We tried something like this back in the day using dominos, a small bump and the dungeon experienced a traumatic earth quake
Great idea. For anyone with a few wood working tools (a chop saw or miter saw would work but even a hand saw) you could make hundreds of these super cheap. Just set up a stop block at 1" and chop away (and you could do the 3" ones with a quick adjustment as well).
I have made 100s of 2 inch tiles for a tile laying gaming I playing with. was
I recently started using hirst arts molds to cast terrain pieces using dental stone. Very cheap beyond the upfront cost of the molds.
Yes, they are the best terrain. They make terrain and elevation easy to set up and interesting to navigate. Also, when playing at friends' places who have kids, I don't need to bring any terrain, because they will have wooden blocks there.
Several times I've just shown the players the map of a town or dungeon and told them 'You are here! Build it with blocks' and that in and of itself entertains them for a good half hour.
I have gotten them and paint each side a different color so it can be grass, dirt, stone, water, brick, or wood.
I have an entire set of jungle terrain waiting for me to use it, but for 15 bucks a set or two of these is pretty damn cool
I also got some jungle terraint, a grid, some marker and my players imagination will surly bring forht th heigth of the trees ans they close in around them.
Excellent! What a great idea
my method is finding some cool battle map online, print it and stick it on foam core with a glued surface.
1- machine them/cast them... you can have the same thing but with some details (like cobblestone) also easily can be tinted.
2- add holes to each side and properly set an array of neodimium magnets (taking in count the proper pole orientation, so a cube willl have inverted magnet poles on the sides, just the same way a classic Dice has the numbers on opposed sides making the sum will be the same between sides)
You get all the advantages and remove most of the cons, will look better, will stay together easier and will help the inmersion (specially if you make specific texture patterns based on materials, such wood, cobblestone, rock, grainy (this being sand glued on the sides on multiple layers for more amorphous material such peebles or land)
** Note: one thing I would like to test would be create a mini-portable customizable board set... I was thinking that you can get one wooden board, and add squares to it to compose a grid (but each with a sighly border) then add a small system similar to paper springs to make "cubes that can get deployed" (4 plane pieces that gets unfolded to create the walls of a cube from below) so making it on each hole could allow you to have a very slim board that could get deployed to make a modular set of walls depending the scenario... obviously it would be only about the walls, but seems like a reasonable and good enough option for games outside home.)
Note 2: the "spring" system could get developed with a bolt, one small spring and a couple nuts... so both nuts keeps the spring compressed and turning one of said nuts (it being hidden behind the board) will release slowly the spring, pushing the 4 walls and deploying the cube/wall section.
I cannot tell you enough how much my own aesthetic preference gears towards abstracts... I want blocks for terrain, totemic figurines, and a humble map grid as the board.
I have gotten to the point where I imagine the players around the table planning their adventures or regaling one another about how they played out while sat together at the tavern.
Totemic figurines?
@@Alberaan Symbolic in representative appearance rather than literal approximations... think like a carving of a spirit animal for a druid, a holy figure for a cleric or paladin, or the pawn from a fighter's beloved childhood game.
@@Groovebot3k I see. I'm using something similar: I use tokesn with icons in them representing the different classes. For monsters I use tokens with numbers/colours
I painted a bunch of 1” wooden cubes to look like different kinds of Minecraft blocks for my kids’ Minecraft minifigures. I cut and painted lengths of 1” square rods to be pillars and ridges too. It’s a lot of fun. Wooden terrain is underutilized. The Downtime Dad channel has great ideas for what he calls “timber terrain.”
Heck yeah, this is such a good tip, I'm gonna get me some wood. Helps that I am a carpenter myself, just gonna make me some. Also flat boards for thin walls and stuff
Holy shit this idea is amazing
I dig it
Amazing how cheap toys common decades ago are better than spending $$$$ on model sets (many companies will protest). Paint these and consider using cork and cork board as well. Cork is fragile but the texture mimics stone and other terrain. Rocks, sticks, sand, baking soda (snow), dead rodents, and other simple things you can find for free or for cheap are great too.
This is especially good for OSR games, along with the use of meeples or peg dolls, as characters will die a lot and so you won’t go through minis so much. OSR characters will have to EARN their minis, not have them handed to them on a silver platter. Important NPCs would also have minis, to show what the players could become if they progress far enough. Color-code the meeples per player, as well as NPC meeples.
Yessss! I use foam toy blocks and paint them with stone-textured paint.
Styrofoam and dominoes work as well. Dominoes are typically 1 by 2 inches.
Kinda nice to look at. Would not use them myself due to if you even slightly hit a block they would move.
The whole thing reminded me straight away about Legodnd on reddit.
For me LEGO is worth the money. You get the slight extra amount of immersion that color and form gives you, plus the ability to build with much greater detail. Your terrain is much more stable if you brush against it or bump the table. You can even pick it up and move it if you need to adjust the scene. You can easily pre-build structures and have them behind you ready to go.
These days, I use a combination of a grid map and dungeon tiles. I got a bunch of DnD tokens from a friend who was moving.
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
out of curiosity think u could use modeling clay to decorate it ? like the non drying clay that would be cool setup
We were thinking about producing and selling 1" cubes of epoxy for this exact purpose. Different colors, different heights, etc., for a similar cost. Is this something people would be interested in? We want to maximize creative use, while minimizing cost for the GM.
i think people will just go to whatever close craftstore there is and buy it chepe there instead...
@@wulmer8257 I think you are right, and epoxy is many times more expensive than wood blocks.
I'm not adverse to idea.. but yeah, until it'd really blow up as a business it'd be a smidge uncheap =)
Great idea!
Sections of one inch dowel would make good tree trunks and pillars.
Is there some that are maybe 1" x 1" x 1/4" for floors to cut down more on storage space? That would be neat. Could even preglue some of those in different configurations for floor plans.
I found these but I haven't tried them but they're a lot skinnier than 1/4". Maybe have to glue them to cardboard or something to get them to stay together in pre-built patterns.
thats actually a great idea
So, while many people say that FDM 3D printing is a little excessive for terrain, you're saying I have an ACTUAL USE for all the 1" calibration cubes I print to check filament?
This would be good for conventions or game play at stores. If you lose some you aren't out much.
I use Jenga blocks, you can find sets for only a buck at Goodwill.
Simple is not bad or worse. Sometimes simple is perfect, and I'd further argue that most of the time simple is perfect approach (and that's coming from a someone who is *really* into 3d terrain systems.)
I saw another video that suggested bringing the size of everything down to half, so that you can have much larger arenas. While I like that idea, it doesn't combine well with this one 'cause 1/2 inch blocks are just too fiddly.
I have $2k of GameTiles and Cavern Tiles by dwarven force, I painted the GameTiles, but bought Cavern pre painted. My DM ran with them for a couple of years and I liked them well enough (can't walk up to a wall, it's like only half inch, but my DM eventually got tired of setting them up and so they stay in storage ... too expensive to sell, too heavy to ship, ah well, mostly play online now anyhow
What if the blocks were made smaller, and you made forms for them with paper and tape... just pouring the little blocks into the walls? Would that be fast and easy enough to preserve the greatest strength of using these blocks (expedience)
You could separate floors by larger wider sheets which could be lifted. Save time by using the full 1" blocks and Jengas.
I’ve been using these for years, actually. 2” blocks are also useful for larger terrain.
hey Ben, i'd like to make a recommendation for a review. Fantasy Flight Games put back into print the old West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game from 1987 a few years ago. It has some serious OSR vibes even though it doesn't use the traditional d20 system. (it uses a D6 dice pooling system) I think it would be a good read. They come in a two-book pack, one of them being the rulebook, the other being a generalized sourcebook. The thing i like about it is it doesn't use a leveling system. you improve individual skills through practice. I think it's definitely worth a look at, as this was around the same time as AD&D, and was it's own thing.
how you think paint would work for them have you tried it
Id look into hard foam for this instead. easier, lighter, cuttable, shapable, paintable. Foam is really where its at. Id only use wood for extra stability.
Nice I like options that don't constrain imagination.
God damn it Ben! Now I bought a bunch of wooden cubes
Crooked Staff Terrain makes printable floor and wall textures, for the lazy DM
Cubes plus foam decor
"you can chuck these things at a wall and they just bounce right off" - so they are also good for measuring player satisfaction with the game?
Building block dungeons and mtg card pucks for creatures/players/items of interest... What would be the cheapest item i could use for a battlegrid?
Gridded wrapping paper, good time to buy now in the US with Christmas having just passed
Also using painted 3/4 inch blocks as terrain for my 28mm wargames
Hmm, I guess you can upgrade them with model paste and paint them like stone.
Ive been using these for years
My only concern is that for my dungeons I might have a room the shares a wall with another room. How would you recommend simulating that with 3d blocks? My first throught would be to get a 2in square that is maybe 1/8 in tall and has a 1/8 in wall down the middle.
Index cards for walls between the blocks.
Knock-off (fake) plastic bricks designed to be compatible with Duplo. Duplo "cubes" are 32 *32 *19mm, about 1 1/4 inches on each side. The scale works reasonably, and the interlocking feature is handy. The brand I found have four nubs on top that allow a mini to stand without tipping off. I found ~300 blocks for under $50 US.
There are 2 problems - bright, discordant colours and purchasing unlicensed goods:
==> I sanded them briefly and sprayed off-white primer. It is slowly flaking-off but has lasted fairly well.
==> I'm informed that so long as they are not perfect copies and don't carry the brand name, they are legal. IANAL, but Duplo bricks are insanely expensive for what they are, so I'm not fussed. YMMV