3D Printed Dungeon Tile Recommendations
So I'm running a D&D 5e campaign, and so far have been doing "theatre of the mind". But it has it's limitations when I want the players to use actual combat strategy in some areas. I have experience a few years ago with using a 25mm paper grid for 3.5e and Pathfinder, which worked well because it was quick to draw a map with whiteboard marker.
Now I have a 3D printer, and I'm wondering if anyone has any dungeon tile recommendations, considering the following:
Firstly, are there any systems that are quick to assemble/disassemble as the players discover new rooms, or we need to clear table space?
Second, stability of the map is important. If a player knocks the map with their hand, will everything collapse, simply shift slightly, or is it rigidly held together?
Third, community: A larger community that contributes (and takes contributions) would be better than a propriety system that doesn't allow homebrew designs.
I've seen a few systems (openlock, openforge, and almost any keyword combination that I can think of is on kickstarter), but I'm finding it hard to get a feel for how popular the systems are, and how well they actually work when on the table.
Does anyone have any recommendations on a good system? I guess i'm most interested in the game flowing smoothly, but I'm not opposed to going to a blank paper grid if that's really the better solution.
Sorry I can't help with any recommendations but this is neat, I didn't even know 3D printed tilesets were a thing!
I have always just drawn my own maps and dungeons, but also used my old Heroquest+its expansions tiles, scenery and models for added dimension and flair... or when playing online have made them in Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds, depending on whichever virtual tabletop software my current group prefers to use. I was looking at Dungeon Painter recently too since it looked neat, but haven't taken the plunge yet so can't tell if it's any good.
I will have to keep 3D printed stuff in mind if I ever manage to get a physical group together again to play, so thanks for making me aware of this as an option!
p.s. Offtopic, but have you ever considered signing up for 3Dhubs, or any similar service that allows people to order 3D prints from you? I have used them a few times get stuff 3D printed by a local in my area and it's been great. I dunno how economically viable it really is on the printer's end, but if it is, it may be a good side gig to help you pay off some of the cost of your printer. :)
You may be offtopic, but that is indeed something I was looking at doing in the future. I'm still setting up my CNC router, and want to do a few more upgrades and prints on my printer, but it's going to happen in my future.
On the topic of online tabletop, how does it 'feel' compared to being there in person? I imagine it isn't as good, but I've never actually tried it. I assume the standard setup is a microphone+webcam, with the map+dice done using the software?
Every group I have ever played with online has done it with just mics, no webcams, and yes the site/software takes care of a vast majority of the job for you, like dice rolling and making sure all the players see the correct maps at the correct time (and much much more). As to how it 'feels'? It's much better than not playing :P ... but can never be quite as rewarding or fulfilling as playing in person, IMO.
However, it does have to be said that in many ways playing online is actually significantly better than in person though. Finding/organizing groups that can play with you during your available hours is much easier since the world is essentially your oyster, and roll20 has a very active LFG forum... /r/lfg is reasonably active too. Both Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are pretty slick and take a lot of the "administrative" work off your hands, like generating NPCs with full stats, keeping track of character sheets, initiative/turn order, character hp/stats/status effects, calculating hit probabilities, keeping track of the player's combat abilities complete with macros available to utilize them in combat, etc... and if you put some time/effort into it you can craft really detailed and great looking maps and scenarios for your players to adventure in, which really adds to the overall experience. Both even have cool fog of war features that hides all map elements that the players shouldn't be able to see until their characters would be able to, which can lead to some amazing dramatic moments and also allows you place all the NPCs/creatures down ahead of time so players don't have to wait around so much while you do that live.
Overall the process is just much more streamlined using R20/FG and the pace of play significantly faster than playing in person with pen & paper, dice and rulebooks at the ready. From what I have heard a lot of groups even when they play in person are now using the online packages alongside their tabletop setup for exactly that reason.... which totally makes sense since that's basically the best of both worlds.
How easy is it to play with a non d20 ruleset?
Are you asking in reference to a specific non-d20 setting/ruleset you want to play, or one you have custom made yourself?
If the former, you can look up the ones with already built-in support in roll20 on their compendium and in Fantasy Grounds on their wiki (scroll down to Supported Game Systems) .
Edit: For Roll20 there is also a Character Sheet Index for community and officially created character sheets for various other settings/rulesets not listed in the Compedium, as well.
If the latter, I have actually played a few campaigns on Roll20 using a completely custom setting and ruleset that a friend and I developed (loosely based on Eclipse Phase) which was d100 based. It took a while to get everything set up and the macros for player abilities all working properly, but it was not particularly difficult. And even if you don't want to have to learn how to use their custom character sheet and macro system, you can always just use one of their myriad roll commands to get a result (e.g.
/roll {3d100!!}>65which would output something like this:{(83+23+17)} = 1 Success) and then you can manually apply that outcome to whatever you need to, similar to how a normal tabletop GM would do it. See their Dice Reference page for more on all the dice rolling mechanics supported in Roll20.I can't speak to how difficult a custom ruleset would be on Fantasy Grounds though, but I suspect it's a bit more involved a process since it's an external piece of software and also does a lot more automatically for the GMs/players than Roll20 does, based on the rather complicated ruleset files you import into it.
The goal is to run an In Nomine campaign (original French version, 4th ed), so that would be the second option. Thanks for all the info!
No problem. And good luck with your campaign. If you need any help with Roll20 let me know. I have a reasonable amount of experience with it.