Sunday, July 3, 2011

More Walls

I've been thinking, lately, about coming up with my own patterns for the walls I've been producing. The WotC patterns are nice, but they're WotC's patterns. I doubt I'll get a chance to sell these tiles, but if I want to distribute them in any way, I figure I should probably use my own designs.

I'm no artist, though, so I figured the best place to start is reality.



I figure I'll put in a little bit of effort to turn them into something less photo-realistic, but that can wait.

Also, a few weeks ago, I was running a D&D Encounters session, and the one building on the map that I put down some wall tiles and a roof for was a hexagon-shaped crypt. I hadn't made any of my own wall tiles at that time, so I used the WotC ones. Six of the 2" wall tiles slotted together well enough at the right angles to make the hexagon, but of course the walls came to rest inside the boundaries of the walls on the map, and I only had a square roof to put on top.

With everything else I was doing, I hadn't gotten back to those issues until now. I've been taking measurements for the walls, since they will be somewhat unconventionally sized, but I did put together the roof.


It took a little extra work to angle each section properly, but I'm liking the outcome.

I have a further idea for this, to possibly make it 3D too. There are three ways I'm thinking for this. The first is just to make 6 separate cardstock-on-chipboard pieces that slot together as seen above, with the center being a peak about a 1/2" to 1" above the edges. The second is to make the six chipboard pieces, but have them joined together by one large piece of cardstock, and they can lay flat in kind of a hexagon-pacman shape. The third is to make the six chipboard pieces, and the cardstock would be a dodecahedron (12-sided shape). The six chipboard pieces would be evenly spaced apart, and the cardstock bits in between would fold inward when you pushed the chipboard pieces together to make the peaked roof. Option 2 would probably be the best, I think, but I'll have to see how things progress.

Also, for an upcoming game, there are stone pillars in one room, and I figured I could make 3D versions of those two. These would be very simple; just two 1-1/4" wide by 2" tall pieces that would slot with each other up the middle, and then sit in the pillar square with the points at the corners of the square. I might make a small square tile for the two to slot into, but I'm not sure that's necessary. The two slotted pieces should be stable enough, I think.