Terrain getting in the way?

[morganm]

I really love terrain but some of it seems to get in the way. Especially walls and doors. I carved up some stone walls from foam and sculpted some doors from poly clay. They are great to look at out on the table but as far as actually gaming (AD&D) it's hard to see where the minis are behind the walls and doors. I stopped using walls and just draw them on an erasable battle grid. The doors I leave up until they are unlocked or opened then I remove them from the grid and just draw which way they swing open.

 

Are we just sitting at the wrong angle? Does terrain get in the way for other people? I'd like to make some trees but I'd think those would just get in the way too; is that why people use "stumps" to represent trees instead? I was almost going to buy some Hirst Arts molds but after the foam walls being so cumbersome on the battle grid I didn't want to waste a bunch of money on molds and plaster to make wall's I'd never use.

 

Release the commentary!

[kristof65]

For an RPG, I think you're right, too much terrain gets in the way, unless everyone is willing to stand around the table.

 

For a minis wargame, though - I love terrain. The more, the merrier.

[Heisler]

For RPG purposes I prefer half walls, high enough so you know where everything is but not so high that you can't see. Doors can be full sized this way. Hirst Arts released a mold for the Dungeon Twister board game that work this way. You don't need that mold specifically to do this but it looks pretty handy for this.

[Rastl]

I think things like walls and doors are necessary to identify line of sight, etc.

 

I'm with Heisler on the half-walls. My dungeon walls are only one inch high but they get the job done. Doors are separate pieces and when they open, they stay in place. Again helps identify what you can and can't see from where the characters are.

 

A cluttered tavern scene is great because you can really 'see' what's going on and what the characters are into. "I see that at the bar." "Um, so you can see across the crowd of thirty people and around the bed of the bar? I don't think so."

 

"I charge the guy over there." "Roll a reflex save. You just smashed into the door."

[Bruunwald]

We play RPGs exclusively. We use maximum terrain. For the most part, this doesn't seem to be a problem for us.

 

For indoor terrain, I always build modularly with a maximum two walls to any piece. I intentionally place the walls on the edge of the floors. As we play, I attach modules to make hallways or rooms, always building towards the players. Basically we are breaking the "fourth wall" rule of movies, where we are positioning the "camera" (the players' view) behind what would ordinarily be a wall, but is removed for the "shot."

 

This works for us because my players are all lazy bums who refuse to sit at the table, and instead lounge on the couch.

 

Some people refuse to build indoor terrains with fewer than four walls per piece. I made many with three at first, but the problem it creates is obvious. We are all okay in my group with breaking the fourth wall. Everybody is happy with this. Occasionally, a single door or item will be big enough to block somebody's view of some small part of the room, but this is navigable by means of lazy susans, sliding the terrain, or just plain using one's imagination for the two or three rounds you can't see the one square the item is blocking.

 

Outdoor terrains only present a problem when something big - say a tower - is blocking somebody's view. It's easy enough to set up a scenario that minimizes this possibility. On the other hand, if somebody needs to get up off their lazy butt once in a while, so what, right? Again, if you are using a small terrain, or a very large lazy susan, this is easy to mitigate. Areas of high density items like trees, to me just seem more fun. You have to pay more attention, and it increases a sense of danger. I think we have less trouble with this than some playing groups because we all are from that generation of players who never used minis through the eighties and most of the nineties. We are used to imagining space. Though our game is minis-heavy now, we could do without and never miss a beat.

 

The one area where terrain blocking remains a problem is where one is using a single large interior space, such as a castle, or tavern, or even house, built as a whole. One obvious solution is to build the piece with a removable fourth wall, but this takes a lot of pre-planning (I am working on this matter myself). The bigger the piece, the harder this is going to be. I have thought of keeping a mirror handy to hold over the piece at an angle to acommodate my completely couch-ridden lazy-butt players on this matter. The notion of setting up our video camera has occurred to me, as well, so that they can watch the playing area on the TV behind me.

 

Disclaimer: Undoubtedly, some here would scream at the prospect of those things. That would be their (read: your) problem, not mine. It's not a big deal to me. I like the novel approach, and if I'm game for some crazy idea or other to get something accomplished, I do not see that as a weakness.

 

Anyway, like I said, I am working on the big single-piece issue. The other techniques I mentioned at the start seem to work fine, otherwise.

[morganm]

Thanks for the tips and insight everyone. We'll just keep playing with terrain and figuring out what we like as we go. We all sit at a table which is a way better vantage point than the couch but I doubt people are going to want to stand around for 4-6 hours each session. This next session we'll be using a lot of paper models. Have to see how that goes!

 

Thx

[Joe Kutz]

Barstools.

 

I made a dozen bar stools for game nights, and they allow you a much better perspective than sitting in normal chairs. Leave the tables at the same height though. Contrary to some of the larger couch potatoes feelings - you still do need to get up to actually move your miniatures.

[kristof65]

Obviously there are a lot of people here who are pro terrain for RPGs. I love terrain, I'm not faulting you for it, but there is one big reason I don't use it for RPGs, and I'm wondering how those of you who do handle it. Unless it's an actual dungeon crawl, my games tend to be, well, all over the place. For instance, we might start off an adventure session with a brawl in the local tavern, have that lead to crashing an evil noble's masquerade ball and end the session with a chase through town.

 

Any one of those is worthy of terrain, but actually having terrain prepared for them, and the setup/tear down between scenes eats up too much of my game time. So how do you guys deal with it?

[Joe Kutz]

I have a tendency to build a lot...a whole heck of a lot.

 

Way back in the 1980s - TSR put out a book called the Dungeoneer's Guide (something along those lines - good book too). It contained a concept that they called geomorphs...basically a series of interchangeable tiles which allow you to create dungeons and caves on the fly (for the most part). They presented them as equilateral triangles, squares or hexagons in the book. Anywho, over the years I have done up a hundred or so different tiles which are based on that concept in the hexagon form. I use those for cavern crawls on the fly. When I need something special...I'll take several of the blank tiles and join them together in order to get enough room to create a special purpose tile (stuff like drow settlements and similar things which aren't just a maze of tunnels).

 

For cities - I built a similar set of tiles using squares and octagons. Due to the configuration I can build a standard grid layout but I can also have streets running at angles and what not for that urban sprawl feel. Right now I have three different sets of those (middle ages Europe feel, 1920s-1940s feel and Feudal Japanese). In addition to somewhat generic tiles - I have built several special tiles for temples, shops and other special buildings.

 

For dungeons - I went back to the geomorph concept...accept for them, I use the square tiles. Again, for special areas, I make special tiles. I have also made a few dozen transition tiles which allow the dungeon tiles to link up with cave tiles.

 

Now for the speed issue. When I do my maps ahead of time...I end up using a grid with a tile code for each one. When it comes time to set up the dungeon - I grab the tiles from the corresponding shelves and toss them on the table. Goes pretty quickly...though you do need to keep things organized. The dungeons are also interchangeable with the building tiles for castles and what not.

 

For the random caves - each tile side has a number. This number corresponds to a tile which will link to it (12 numbers right now). When I need to place a tile - I roll a dice to see which one of the tiles which has a matching side will get put into play. As the game moves forward - tiles get removed and added like a treadmill. In order to keep things straight, again I use the hex graph paper to keep track of which tiles were in play down a given cave system (I also keep that for future reference for that cave system and will flesh things out ahead of time for the next game).

 

Takes a bit of time in order to get the system working (I've been playing with it for 20 some odd years now I guess) - but after a bit...it becomes second nature and you can do the initial setup while everyone is grabbing a drink from the fridge or what not (5 minutes tops.)

[Mr.Wizard]

My two pfennigs is that it's good to get out of the chair now and then.

[morganm]

Kirstof: Same here; we tend to move around a lot. Which is why I also want a much larger, and probably more, battle grids we can draw on. You know how people like to go back to one location and I don't want to redraw it but I also, currently, don't have enough battle grid to just leave things drawn up. I only take the time to setup and draw out encounters. If they are just walking around town or in the woods then they can look at a city map or regional map. However when we get to an actual encounter worth spending time on then I'll draw it out, throw down some terrain, and place the minis. Having things predrawn on graph paper, keyed, and even notes on how long certain walls are or how far some distances are in squares really helps me quickly translate from graph paper to battle grid. If something is going to take more than 5 minutes to setup then ppl usually take a bio break :) I also have minis and objects preorganized and labled ahead of time so I can just grab a box for a given encounter and start throwing them down and not waste time digging through boxes of minis or terrain. This next session we'll be integrating a lot more 3D models but not every wall will be 3D. We'll see how it goes for our group; if we really love it then we'll expand upon that but if it becomes cumbersome we'll probably stick with drawing most walls and tiles but using 3D models for just objects and minis for PCs / NPCs.

 

 

 

Joe: It's an interesting concept you outline there. I somewhat grasp what you are explaining as far as the organization of everything and laying it out. However I'm having trouble visualizing these geomorphic tiles. Could you post some pictures of them?

[Joe Kutz]

I'll see about pulling out some of the tiles later this evening and getting a few pictures snapped. We are still in the process of rebuilding things with a more sturdy material than foam so that they can withstand the heavy use they get (also will allow me to fix some problems which I have noticed over time).

[Lithian]

I had the same problem. I made foam 3d terrain only to discover that when you go below 40’x40’ (scale) the scenery gets in the way.

 

I found some foam sheets at Wally World and cut them into 2” wide strips by 8”, 6”, 4”, and 2” long. I lay them out as we go along and just scroll the tiles. For big cinematic sets, I pull all the stuff out. Eventually, I was thinking about a half wall redesign myself.

 

Foam pics

 

 

In use.