Category Archives: Blog
Paint Your Own Dungeon Tiles
Before I took my tabletop RPG hobby into the Virtual/Digital Tabletop world, I tried crafting my own dungeon tiles rather than drawing maps. It gave the encounters a more textile feel and saved me from having to draw on a grid map (like I’d been doing for the past three decades.) There were premade tiles and terrain that you could purchase from places like Dwarven Forge but I just didn’t have that kind of cash. Crafting my own was much cheaper, and still looked better than what I’d been doing in the past.
To this day, I still appreciate those crafters who come up with creative ways of playing their favorite RPG. People like TheDMsCraft who is constantly putting out tips for enhancing your TTRPG experience. Like this one, for example. Here’s one way to create some dungeon tiles on the cheap! Check it out, won’t you?
The Danger Room
Matt Colville is an old-school Dungeon Master from way back. Probably as way back as me (post-dawn of time), and maybe further! The man knows his stuff, is what I’m saying here.
One of the many things I like about Matt is how he draws from previous games to enhance his current campaign. His most recent video is a great tip for players and DM/GM’s alike who want to not just build chemistry between characters, but for players to test their new characters without getting them killed.
Welcome to The Danger Room.
I did something like this a few years back when my players started our Pathfinder campaign, Second Darkness. Everyone sat around the table, I let the players give a brief description of their characters, then I set out a map with some minis and said “Roll for initiative.”
Now they didn’t know that the characters were not in any real danger, so it wasn’t a true Danger Room kind of scenario. But they got to flex their muscles and see how those stats and abilities worked in “real-time”. Afterward, I told them that if they wanted to make any adjustments after what they had seen, now was the time to do it.
I really like the Danger Room concept, and think I’ll use it more often in the future.
Rokk Talk 