New Diagonal & Round Tiles

We've recently added a slew of new dxContent 3D Dungeon tiles to the store.  And with all the tiles available to date you should be able to approximate most typical and drawn dungeons... Here's one I just linked to off the internet (credit to Tim Hartin / Paratime - creative commons license)...

Some of the larger circle rooms are 5" radius... our largest radius is currently is 4" but you can easily slip in some 1x2s between the four quads and it would be close enough.  And with the new diagonals, we've got those angles taken care of now as well.

Below I've put up a random collection of images showing the new pieces in action.

Where can you get them?
From the dxContent.com store!  You can purchase them in kits:

• There is a diagonal kit - 1 of each size... 2", 3" and 4" edges -  $2.20
• And the quarter round kit - 1 of each size... 2", 3" and 4" radius - $4.35

If you like to mix and match and get your pieces individually... you can order them from the shop.d20pfsrd.com.

Enjoy!

A pair of 3" radius quarter rounds.

A pair of 4" radius quarter rounds.

A pair of 2" radius serves as a bend in a corridor.

An odd shaped room using two 3" radius and one 4" radius quarter round tiles

Now we are getting fancy by adding an alcove to a room and a curved stage/dais.

Another odd shaped round room.

Corner stairs?

A pair of 2" edge diagonals make a hallway.

A pair of 2" diagonals chisel off a room and a pair of 2" radius quarter rounds crate a dais.

I pictured a chasm between to flared hallways....

Just getting creative and demonstrating how you can branch off a diagonal.

The Diagonal Tile kit.

The Quarter Round Tile kit.

Quarter round tiles available!

I've added some new tiles to the 3D Dungeon Tile line 2", 3" and 4" radius quarter round tiles.  You can really add some variety to your dungeons with quarter round tiles.  Check out some of these quick shots of what you can do...

A pair of 3" Quarter rounds

A pair of 4" Quarter rounds

A 2" Quarter Round - great for a bend in a hallway

Spiffy room configuration

Round balcony / alcove and round dais

Another easy to make room shape

Stack 'em for round stairs or a zigurat!

Casting a vision for the future of dxContent 3D Dungeon Tiles

Lets take a nostalgic trip back in time via the way back machine....Back in the late 80's early 90's I had an official "DBA" (Doing Business As...) called FireZone. FireZone made and sold war gaming terrain and structures.  Here are some photos...

All of these items were from my personal collection.  When I moved from Michigan to Georgia, I had to reduce my collection.  I believe this stuff was eventually sold on Ebay - hopefully still being used in the war game community somewhere!  Ironically, the stuff I did keep is better quality but its all packed away - some day I'll have to drag it out for show and tell.

Those days were good times.  A group of us meet regularly and painted minis and built terrain.  We went to conventions and wowed the crowds with our over the top game tables.  We developed our craft and the earnings from FireZone paid for the hobby for at least two of us.

We learned techniques that worked. And we learned some that didn't.  Our biggest challenge back then was mass production.  We had to do a lot of work by hand.  One thing that helped was learning how to make molds cast parts.  My good friend Dave Patterson got me started with Por-a-Kast and single piece latex rubber molds.

Fast forward to today... With the 3D dungeon tiles I'm back in the business of making and selling "stuff for miniatures" with the dxContent 3D dungeon tiles.  And some of the same challenges are there... I spent all of last week hand crafting and painting two huge tiles set orders.  Some where in the middle of the night with my neck and arms sore... I had to ask myself, can I really hand building every order?

The realistic answer is "yes" for small volume, but once it scales... it quickly becomes a "no".  For now I'm staying on top of the orders as volume has been manageable... but as any good endeavor should... you have to look over the horizon to see what is next and how you have to change to adapt to what is coming.   And for dxContent 3D Dungeon Tiles... molds and casting is on the horizon.  This means I have to dust off some old skills and learn some new ones.

So, I found time this past weekend to visit a really cool store called "The Engineer Guy" located on the south side of Atlanta - what a great place and what great staff.  I took in some sample pieces and in about 30 minutes Nelson (I assume) had me loaded up with product and shared with me a wealth of knowledge.  Later that day I had two complete molds (one was a two part mold) and over the next few days I even did some test casts.

At this point it looks like doors are going to be the first mass-produced cast offering - The cast doors are very durable AND have a bit more weight to them then the hand crafted versions - For those reasons I know people are going to love them.

The Demon Gate dxContent 3D Dungeon Tile

I've added a new model to the dxContent 3D Dungeon Tiles collection I like to call the "Demon Gate". 

In the following picture you can see the subtle markings of some long and forgotten evil on the stonework and the corroded metal gate. 

This is actually a five piece set as this shot from my work area shows.

So there you go, a must-have model for any classic dungeon set.  You can get it for $9.60 from the dxContent Tile store.

More dungeon tile news

More news relating to dungeon tiles.  Over the new year holiday, I rolled out the dxContent Custom Tile feature - a tool that allows you to get custom shaped tiles for places of major action in your campaign - Boss rooms, places where PCs go regularly, etc.

Today I want to highlight the dxContent store - here is where you can get your "standard" shape dungeon tiles:

• 1"x1" - great for adding little alcoves to rooms
• 1"x2", 1"x3", 1"x4" - perfect for narrow 5 foot scale hallways
• 2"x2", 2"x4", 2"x6", T's, 4-way, corners - classic shapes for standard 10 foot wide hallways
• 4"x4", 4"x6", 6"x6" and 6"x8" - perfect for larger rooms.

All the tiles are available with an assortment of textures which we will be adding to as we go.  Here's a pic of the latest list:

Latest Graphic Options

One of my favorites is "Icy" - makes me want to run a campaign in the frozen reaches of an icy realm with Frost Giants, winter wolves and other unknown frozen horrors!

The stock tiles are offered at low introductory price to help get the product and awareness out there - I'm also giving away a free custom tile with the first 5 orders of stock tiles over $20!  Just enter promo-code "BLOG BONUS" in the special order instructions and I'll hook you up!

Brian
dxContent.com

Custom Dungeon Tile Service

What is a custom dungeon tile service, and why are you going to love it?

If you don't know, "Dungeon Tiles" are handy pre-printed cardboard pieces you can lay down on your game table. They can be mixed and matched to map out the environment for your players, facilitate combat with miniatures and aid "immersion" into the game.

The off-the-shelf tiles are popular tools for quickly mapping out dungeons. They are mass-produced which makes them inexpensive (a good thing) but the trade off is flexibility and customization. Since off-the-shelf dungeon tiles mostly come in standard shapes and sizes it takes extra time to construct odd shaped or special rooms and you may have less than satisfactory results (overlapping tiles, lack of exact diagonal or round sections, etc).

This is where the dxContent custom dungeon tile service comes into play. I'll make your custom / odd shaped special dungeon tile pieces exactly to specifications to supplement your mass-produced collection.

• It's great for "Boss" rooms... now you can lay down your standard mass produced 10' x 40' hallways and easily connect them with your custom Goblin throne room (with 20' wide doorway, earthy rear section, twin flanking alcoves with 10' x 10' slave pen in the middle).
• It's great for those player "hangouts" that characters regularly find themselves in... like the local tavern, the leader's Inn room, or the Baron's library.
• Maybe you make your own tile set graphics (or purchased some) but lack the time or precision tools to turn them into durable tiles - I can do that for you.
• It's also great for the discriminating DM that absolutely MUST have a complete tile set of <insert a rare environment that is too uncommon to mass produce>.

Lets talk about the tiles.

• Your custom tiles are precision cut by a machine to exact dimensions. You can use the quote request visualization tools to rough out the shape, and I'll make the refinements you request. Most mass produced tiles have straight edges, but you can have non-linear to represent cave walls if you like.
• I make the tiles 1/8" thick providing a nice weighty feel (I can make them thinner if you need to match an existing tile set).
• I make custom graphics at 300dpi, and you can choose from the growing library of textures or I'll create them special for your tile set needs. I work as a 3D modler and texture artist for a video game company so I have real world experience creating and generating themed textures.

Well, I hope that helps you see the value in a custom dungeon tile service.

Brian

 

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New Generator Testing Features!

If you develop random generators at dxContent.com, you'll be happy to learn about the latest enhancement to the generator builder tools.

I've added in a "Rolls" field that captures all of the random values generated as a running generator works its way through its scripts, so that a second run can retrace the same logic steps.

FYI - The two functions {Dice~} and {ChooseRandom~} are the two most powerful features that introduce randomness into your generators. 

Once the "Rolls" are captured, you can make use of the new "Use Previous Rolls" check box.  Assuming you've not changed your script, the next run will yield the exact same result as before.  This is handy when you want to force your generator down a certain path for testing or problem solving.

For the power-user, the "Rolls" field is editable.  This gives you even more power to test your generators.  Of course it also gives you the ability to cause the generator to act unpredictably if used incorrectly.  Fore example, whenever you alter a roll by hand, you are potentially altering the path your generator takes though the scripts (or introducing a value that isn't handled).  That new path may need more rolls, fewer rolls or even different ranges of values that what the previous run needed. So whenever you edit its good practice to clear the saved rolls following your edit. Its helpful to know that new random values are generated whenever the previous list of rolls runs out.