Dungeon Building Blocks
I have lots and lots of painted resin scenery for dungeons. I was around when it first started being produced and I’ve kind of kept up with it ever since. Consequently I have amassed a sizable collection of the stuff. For a long while I was happy to lay out my rooms with the second generation Games Workshop floorplans and plonk my scenery items on top. This is a fast and convenient way to show the players where they are and I prefer it to drawing on a playing mat.
It wasn’t long though before I started designing settings that weren’t as two dimensional as my playing area. I started putting ledges and platforms into my rooms to make them more challenging and interesting. I wanted to start using the third dimension more but it was fairly difficult to represent it during play. Characters on ledges would end up standing on upturned cups, stacks of dice or similar. I never liked this, what’s the point of having painted miniatures and scenery if the effect is ruined by makeshift items having to be continually used?
I don’t like having walls in play, they get in the way too much so I wasn’t about to start building a set of 3D rooms and corridors either. I don’t believe these things ever offer enough flexibility and they’re not at all convenient to transport.
I decided to make some ‘Dungeon Blocks’. These would be fairly plain blocks that could be arranged to make whatever raised areas I needed. They would be easy to put out and dismantle and light enough so they wouldn’t damage themselves too easily during transport.
Some Ral Partha Skeletons give an idea of the scale of these 25mm x 50mm blocks
With these criteria in mind I investigated several material options and settled on balsa wood as my final choice. Balsa wood is easy to cut, easy to glue and paint, cheap and surprisingly hard wearing. An added bonus was that it came in 50mm x 50mm and 50mm x 25mm planks, both perfect sizes for what I envisioned.
Since this was in my early days of making things I didn’t posses a mitre box so all my cutting was done by following pencil lines. Mostly everything turned out alright, the odd peculiar angle is allowable because we’re building a dungeon after all, not a modern structure.
I began with some 50mm x 25mm lengths of balsa. These measurements give a 10ft x 5ft x whatever length you cut to block in game terms. I cut a couple of scale 10ft, 20ft and 30ft lengths to begin with and, since this was my first try, I also cut some 50ft and 60ft lengths.
This was a mistake, three 20ft lengths are much more useable than one 60ft one. Oh well, live and learn.
I painted the blocks black to seal them, the balsa soaks up paint and black craft paint was cheap. Then I painted them all over with Games Workshop Ghoul Grey. This was the old Ghoul Grey which will have changed by now but any mid to dark grey will do. I then painted on black lines to represent the irregular bricks and stones that the blocks were constructed from. I made my initial bricks too small, another mistake due to not planning properly. Lastly I painted inside the lines with Games Workshop Elf Grey, again any light grey will do, as a highlight making sure that some Ghoul Grey was left showing around each brick’s edge. Small bricks meant lots, really lots, of light grey painting.
Never mind, they were done eventually and looked the part. I painted all the faces of the balsa wood so that the blocks could be used in any orientation and would thus be as versatile as possible. The balsa wood comes with some dents and imperfections in it, such is its nature, and I painted these as if they were damaged sections of stonework rather than trying to hide them.
A Mithril figure surveys some examples of the steps and a couple of ramps made from off-cuts
Lastly, I needed a way for characters to access my new levels and walkways so I cut out some steps. The little steps are cut from 25mm x 25mm x 50mm blocks and the ‘upper’ steps are cut from 50mm x 50mm x 25mm blocks and then everything is painted accordingly.
Having the steps like this means you can climb 5ft or 10ft at a time in game terms. Any higher requires an intermediate platform of some sort. The steps can be placed end-to-end or side-by-side depending on the space you have available.
Some Chronicle kobolds lurk amongst the 50mm x 50mm blocks
With my lessons learned I turned my attention to the 50mm x 50mm planks. I cut four scale 20ft lengths and four scale 10ft lengths for maximum versatility and painted them as before. However, I didn’t paint all the sides because, having regular cross sections, one side could always be the base. Also, I made the bricks much bigger which cut down the painting time considerably. You can see the difference in the pictures.
A Knight Questor guards the wooden bridge while a Ral Partha mimic waits below
As a bit of an after thought I made two stone bridge lengths from thinner balsa wood so I could span a gap and a wooden bridge from a very thin piece so I could span a gap with something that looked more flimsy. I also turned some short lengths of 25mm x 25mm balsa into some 5ft square by 20ft long blocks for added variety.
It took me about a week to make everything, discovering as I went. Today I could make the whole lot in a day or two I suppose, but these dungeon blocks have seen hard service for over 15 years now and don’t need replacing yet.
The bare bones of a setting using several blocks...
....comes alive with the addition of some resin doors and a party of Adventurers.
It wasn’t long though before I started designing settings that weren’t as two dimensional as my playing area. I started putting ledges and platforms into my rooms to make them more challenging and interesting. I wanted to start using the third dimension more but it was fairly difficult to represent it during play. Characters on ledges would end up standing on upturned cups, stacks of dice or similar. I never liked this, what’s the point of having painted miniatures and scenery if the effect is ruined by makeshift items having to be continually used?
I don’t like having walls in play, they get in the way too much so I wasn’t about to start building a set of 3D rooms and corridors either. I don’t believe these things ever offer enough flexibility and they’re not at all convenient to transport.
I decided to make some ‘Dungeon Blocks’. These would be fairly plain blocks that could be arranged to make whatever raised areas I needed. They would be easy to put out and dismantle and light enough so they wouldn’t damage themselves too easily during transport.
Some Ral Partha Skeletons give an idea of the scale of these 25mm x 50mm blocks
With these criteria in mind I investigated several material options and settled on balsa wood as my final choice. Balsa wood is easy to cut, easy to glue and paint, cheap and surprisingly hard wearing. An added bonus was that it came in 50mm x 50mm and 50mm x 25mm planks, both perfect sizes for what I envisioned.
Since this was in my early days of making things I didn’t posses a mitre box so all my cutting was done by following pencil lines. Mostly everything turned out alright, the odd peculiar angle is allowable because we’re building a dungeon after all, not a modern structure.
I began with some 50mm x 25mm lengths of balsa. These measurements give a 10ft x 5ft x whatever length you cut to block in game terms. I cut a couple of scale 10ft, 20ft and 30ft lengths to begin with and, since this was my first try, I also cut some 50ft and 60ft lengths.
This was a mistake, three 20ft lengths are much more useable than one 60ft one. Oh well, live and learn.
I painted the blocks black to seal them, the balsa soaks up paint and black craft paint was cheap. Then I painted them all over with Games Workshop Ghoul Grey. This was the old Ghoul Grey which will have changed by now but any mid to dark grey will do. I then painted on black lines to represent the irregular bricks and stones that the blocks were constructed from. I made my initial bricks too small, another mistake due to not planning properly. Lastly I painted inside the lines with Games Workshop Elf Grey, again any light grey will do, as a highlight making sure that some Ghoul Grey was left showing around each brick’s edge. Small bricks meant lots, really lots, of light grey painting.
Never mind, they were done eventually and looked the part. I painted all the faces of the balsa wood so that the blocks could be used in any orientation and would thus be as versatile as possible. The balsa wood comes with some dents and imperfections in it, such is its nature, and I painted these as if they were damaged sections of stonework rather than trying to hide them.
A Mithril figure surveys some examples of the steps and a couple of ramps made from off-cuts
Lastly, I needed a way for characters to access my new levels and walkways so I cut out some steps. The little steps are cut from 25mm x 25mm x 50mm blocks and the ‘upper’ steps are cut from 50mm x 50mm x 25mm blocks and then everything is painted accordingly.
Having the steps like this means you can climb 5ft or 10ft at a time in game terms. Any higher requires an intermediate platform of some sort. The steps can be placed end-to-end or side-by-side depending on the space you have available.
Some Chronicle kobolds lurk amongst the 50mm x 50mm blocks
With my lessons learned I turned my attention to the 50mm x 50mm planks. I cut four scale 20ft lengths and four scale 10ft lengths for maximum versatility and painted them as before. However, I didn’t paint all the sides because, having regular cross sections, one side could always be the base. Also, I made the bricks much bigger which cut down the painting time considerably. You can see the difference in the pictures.
A Knight Questor guards the wooden bridge while a Ral Partha mimic waits below
As a bit of an after thought I made two stone bridge lengths from thinner balsa wood so I could span a gap and a wooden bridge from a very thin piece so I could span a gap with something that looked more flimsy. I also turned some short lengths of 25mm x 25mm balsa into some 5ft square by 20ft long blocks for added variety.
It took me about a week to make everything, discovering as I went. Today I could make the whole lot in a day or two I suppose, but these dungeon blocks have seen hard service for over 15 years now and don’t need replacing yet.
The bare bones of a setting using several blocks...
....comes alive with the addition of some resin doors and a party of Adventurers.
