Dungeon Tiles and Dice Boxes

I don’t think I ever explicitly spelled it out, but when I started this blog about getting back into gaming, my intention was to keep things simple and straightforward – using basic tools like gridded mats and printed character images to represent the physical aspects of the game rather than spending a bunch of money buying fancy terrain, minis, etc.

So… about that. Um… er… well… the “simplicity” thing, as it turns out, has gone just slightly out the window. Blame it on YouTube channels like Black Magic Craft, theDMsCraft, and others, but I seem to have developed an addiction.

The greenish slabs are a collection of future dungeon tiles in various sizes, made from cheap XPS foam insulation (a 4′ by 8′ sheet cost me something like $12, I think, from Lowes or Home Despot) in the style described on the Black Magic channel above, but double-sided with a 1″ grid on one side and 1/2″ slats on the other. They need a hardening/protective coating on them (Mod Podge mixed with black paint, as shown on the test pieces on the right), which may have to wait on milder weather because nobody wants the paint smell in the house. After that, they’ll be painted in grays on the 1″ grid side and wood tones along the long slats, and I’ll have a set of configurable, re-usable dungeon-on-one-side, tavern-on-the-other tiles for my gaming table.

Myself, my wife, and my daughter each had different ideas on ways to weather the stone side, so tried an assortment of looks on them to see what we like best. They’ll all be usable even if we end up with a favorite, and it’s easy enough to make more.

In defense of my declared intention not to spend exorbitant dollars on this hobby, the only significant expense so far has been the Proxxon Hot Wire Cutter table (the gadget everything is stacked on). At about $120, it’s not exactly cheap, but it’s already saved a significant amount of time even without considering the material I’d waste from bad cuts if I tried to do all this by hand. Everything else has been $1-ish craft paints from Walmart & local hobby stores and the occasional $11-or-under coating, spray, or wooden tray/box (see below).

The little sticks visible in the felt-lined box in the upper right are stained balsa with 1″-spaced marks along the length to be used for measuring movement on gridless surfaces. I don’t know if we’ll be playing using a gridless surface, but now I’m ready if we do! As to the box they’re sitting in, that brings me to:

I used to scoff at the use of dice trays. Really? Who needs a special padded area to roll their dice on? Nobody. It’s totally unnecessary. Waste of resources. Luxury.

Right up until about your 15th time spent searching for that die that rolled off the table and is possibly under the sofa, in the dog’s bowl, or in the dog.

So I decided to make some dice trays.

My first thought was to use a closable wooden box ($4.99 at Michaels). I tried to work out a way to make a sort of dice storage pouch in the top, but I made a mess of that, so I ended up leaving that out. Instead, I just lined top and bottom with some thin foam and then a layer of felt. I ended up deciding to decorate it by gluing a wood cut-out and a little fake gem thing onto the top.

The other trays (one shown, the other not stained yet) will be just open-topped and foam-and-felt-lined.

Initial dice-roll testing has determined that both designs offer a significant decrease in the likelihood of pets internalizing our d20s.