A Hirst Arts Christmas

I can't possibly complete with others who deliver a more compelling Merry Christmas message: the angel of death is a poor substitute for the christmas angel. 

Still, these images represent some amazing Hirst Arts dungeon porn.  Full disclosure, i`m not responsible for the following dungeon pieces, nor the accompanying embellishments.

You can find the embellishments here, at Scibor Miniatures, and the forum thread at the Hirst Arts site, both of which you will find quite inspiring, if only from a Hirst Arts construction standpoint.

Hirst Arts Walls

In original Dungeons and Dragons, Dwarves have the ability to note new construction in underground settings.  That OD&D Dwarven ability heavily informs my approach to Hirst Arts dungeon tile construction:  I am building tiles that feature different construction styles, depending on who built the particular dungeon area, and during what epochs they were built.

Hirst Arts provides a plethora of options, including gothic, fieldstone, egyptian, and other themed construction molds.  Even within those broad classifications, there are varied pillars and block sizes and shapes around which different construction styles can be aggregated.

I've been spending much of my limited spare time building wall sections.  I have plenty of floor sections.  The wall sections tend to be more complicated, with more pieces, so it has been a drawn-out process building them, not to mention that the related construction elements are more detailed and less common on the molds than those for floors.

Almost all of the currently buit walls have been built with gothic elements.  Because there are two different sizes of doors, door arches have to come in two different sizes, thus explaining the two photos above.  One doorway is peaked, the other is arched.

All of my floor tiles are built in 3"x 3" sections.  In order to create corner sections, I have sandpapered the edges of the walls where they connect at the corner.  Dental plaster is a pretty hardy material, so this takes some time.  I recommend wearing a filter mask while you are sandpapering, as you generate significant amounts of plaster dust.

There are several different sizes of wall bricks.  The above photo shows a "bricked-up" door arch, representing those door arches that have been bricked-up, to prevent access to the area beyond, or prevent whatever is behind the door from getting out.

The Death Frost Doom Map That Never Was

Still getting my head around a different kind of megadungeon design for the endless stair; something that appeals to my naturalistic adventure design aesthetic.

This is a map of St. Paul's catacombs in Rabat, Malta. That catacomb map would have made for an inspirational reference for Death Frost Doom, a James Raggi adventure full of menace and horror but lacking in evocative cartography.

I continue to be attracted to maps and images like this one of St. Paul's catacombs. As an adventure designer, there is an honesty in using real world subterranea for the basis of one's own maps, if only for the designer's own moral fortification.

The user of the adventure may not appreciate that the environment does, and therefore can, exist. But from the creator's point of view, there is a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that the environment makes sense.

What's most challenging for me is attempting to visualize these catacombs. There are a handful of images on the internet, but I think it would take actual exploration of an environment like St. Paul's catacombs to truly appreciate the depicted map. The next challenge would be to communicate what you have seen to the end-user of the adventure in a way that is not burdensome.

The Endless Stair: Dungeon Inspiration

I've been busy working on a 3-page dungeon design for The Endless Stair, an idea I had for a mega-dungeon, and have been searching for inspiration from the plethora of cave maps available on the internet.


My disenchantment with the traditional graph-paper-constrained dungeon maps continues to grow, as I pore over the myriad underground systems mapped by cavers.


The deeper I fall down this rabbit hole, the more tempted I am to dispense with graph-paper altogether, in favour of a scale legend and dimension map-notes.

Hirst Arts: Three Dimensional Dungeons

I've been spending much of my time, lately, casting Hirst Arts blocks.

Hirst Arts is an web-based company that offers a line of rubber molds. Those molds produce plaster-of-paris blocks that can be used to build castles, dungeons, buildings and table-top gaming terrain elements.

From the 20 Hirst Arts molds that I currently possess, I am creating a set of three-dimensional dungeon tiles, complete with walls and dungeon dressing, to add some visual interest to our dungeon-delving sessions. Thus far, I have produced nine different kinds of dungeon floor tiles.

Each dungeon tile shown below is 3" x 3", comprising a 10' x 10' section, so that the tiles can fit together to make hallways and rooms. The walls will sit on the inside edges of the tiles, providing sufficient room in the middle of the tiles to have two 28mm miniatures walking abreast down a hallway.
The above picture shows my favorite set of tiles so far. Those dungeon tiles have a decorative edge running along the borders of the tiles. The edging appears to be made of runic script. I will use those tiles when the players find a section of dungeon that is more skillfully hewn from the surrounding rock, and the path of the runes will carry them to specific encounter or dungeon elements.
Most of the dungeon tiles will be comprised of these chipped stone numbers.

The benefit of this tile configuration (with the one-inch blocks in the center and smaller blocks around the edges) is that you can put the tiles together and the half- or quarter-blocks on the edges create full blocks when placed side-by-side. Those tiles can be used both for room and hallway tiles.

For a time, I agonized over the configuration of my dungeon tiles. Based on the design, the floor scale is 1" = 3 ft. 4 in. Compare that to 28mm figures, which translate to a vertical scale of 1" = 5 ft. Ultimately, the convenience of laying out connectible dungeon tiles (with the walls internal to each tile) won out over my need to keep the horizontal and vertical scales congruent.
This 10' section of dungeon tile is for cobblestone floors. It has an irregular edge so that the seams between floor tiles are less obtrusive.

I envision using this style of dungeon tile for hallways such as the entrance to the Tomb Of Horrors. In the ToH, a path of differently-colored stones winds its way down a 20' wide hallway.
Here is a dungeon tile with a herringbone pattern. The tiles lock together. This particular set will take some time to produce, since there is only 1 of the 1" blocks on the Hirst Arts mold, so I need to cast that mold 9 times to create one 10' x 10' section.
The same is true of the above tile. This decorative tile will be a good choice for royal chambers, temples and other lavish rooms.
The above dungeon tile has a neat octogonal pattern, however, the seams between the blocks is too pronounced. I'm still trying to find a way to fill those seams so that they don't distract from the tile pattern.

Don't ask me to tile your home. As you can see, I didn't do a very good job of laying down these smaller blocks to create floor sections that have tiles set at a 45 degree angle to the direction of the hall or room.

The first of these two tiles is of chipped stone, the second in smooth tiles.
This last dungeon tile is made up of cracked, smooth blocks. I prefer these less than the chipped stone blocks, since it's more difficult to give the final, painted version of these tiles visual interest.

My next task is to start working on the walls and dungeon dressing. Fortunately, I have well over 120 different elements to choose from, based on the Hirst Arts molds I already have access to. I will post some pictures of some of those other block elements so you can see the breadth of elements available in creating a three-dimensional dungeon environment.

Dungeon Design Elements: The Portcullis

Those of you that are familiar with Hirst Arts will be aware that one of their Gothic Molds includes an iron gate, that can used as a portcullis feature in your dungeons.

Bruce Hirst, the owner of Hirst Arts, has this to say about the inclusion of the iron gate on one of his molds: "I placed the iron gate on this mold because I thought it needed one badly. Most crypts, graveyards or cathedrals have gated off areas to keep people out of the holy places or to protect relics."

Portcullises and bricked-up passages are two dungeon elements that get nowhere near as much play as they deserve. In those few instances where portcullises are used in a dungeon, they are typically employed as a trap, with a portcullis dropping behind the party after they open a false door at the end of a long hallway.

Few people think to use a portcullis in lieu of a door. In some ways, I think a portcullis is actually superior to a door. It impedes transit in the same way as a door, but entices characters with a glimpse of what is beyond, while frustrating attempts to search or navigate the area. And because there are harsh rules for bending bars and lifting gates, it is more difficult to bypass a portcullis.

Under the AD&D rules, successive attempts to open a door are permitted. Failure simply increases the danger of wandering monsters, and alerts those beyond the door to your presence. A bend bars/lift gates roll, by comparison, can be made only once: failure precludes further tries. This heightens the tension around the table when a bend bars/lift gates roll must be made. The worst that can happen with a failed open-door attempt is that the monsters beyond the door cannot be surprised. With a failed bend bars/lift gates attempt, you may never gain ingress to that area; an area important enough to have a portcullis guarding it.

When including portcullises in a dungeon, it's important to provide some mechanisms to unlock or otherwise bypass them. Dungeon Module B1, In Search of the Unknown, contains just such a mechanism, found in a storeroom filled with implements. As the DM rhymes off the items in the storeroom, she will eventually announce the existence of four hacksaws. I'll bet your party didn't think to bring those into the dungeon, particularly if they aren't listed in the miscellaneous items for sale.

Other options for bypassing portcullises include levers, found elsewhere in the dungeon, that lock or unlock certain portcullises, depending on their position. The important thing here is to allow the resourceful player to bypass the portcullis, either with a pre-determined dungeon element or through the employment of some clever stratagem (think of Pirates of the Caribbean's Jack Sparrow, using leverage to dislodge the door to his prison cell, for example).

If portcullises suggest something worth protecting, walled-off or bricked-up areas suggest something that characters need to be protected from. Ghouls, vengeful ghosts and other undead immediately come to mind. Bricked-up areas can be even more player-maddening that those defended by portcullises. Clearly, those who built the wall were fearful, embarrassed or ultra-protective of whatever lay beyond. With a portcullis, the builders imagined that they would want to eventually access the blocked area. With a wall? That sends a pretty clear signal that the builders have little intention of ever returning to the area so blocked. Are the characters willing to break out the mattocks and shovels, dig through the wall, and brave the potential horrors beyond? A delicious conundrum, don't you think?