I volunteered to run Paizo’s short dungeon crawl module “The Gauntlet” at Dragonflight 39 in Seattle in August. Whenever a run a dungeon crawl type adventure I like to ensure the dungeon is as authenticate as possible to engage the players as much as possible. In this style of adventure, the role playing opportunities are minimal and it’s mostly roll playing. To that end, I decided I’d attempt to 3D print the dungeon based on the several 3D model Kickstarters I’ve backed. So low and behold…

Bilbo and Frodo (Monoprice Mini V2s) are cranking out prints daily. They’ve been slightly modified to avoid the known issue with the heated bed cords. One actually had to be sent back to Monoprice after the heated bed stopped working, before I was aware of the known issue. I still don’t fully trust them to leave alone in the house, so on any given day they only run for about 10hrs or so.

The first room of the dungeon is a basic rectangle and easily represented by pre-made tile sets so I’m saving it for last in case I run out of time; however, room two posed a few significant challenges:

• It’s 30 feet tall AND on those 30′ walls there are features (no spoilers) that players have to interact with, so I needed something that could stack easily.
• It has a lot of notched alcoves which are a pain to model in Dwarven Forge or other tile sets
• The room is supposed to be filled with a multi-color gas

I decided to utilize Printable Scenery’s Ramage 3D printing tile system for this room primarily because it has the ability to stack well and unlike Fat Dragons tiles the walls lock into each other. While this means printing a whole lot more clips, for a structure that needs to be vertically stable this is a godsend. Thus far Frodo and Bilbo have printed the floor and one layer of the walls of The Guantlet’s room #2.

I’m going to move on to print out some of the other rooms in the dungeon first, but I’ll be back to show what the room looks like with the full height walls, features, and oh yeah… how we’re going to make that multi-color gas.