When it comes to villages, cities or castles no one does it better than WWG! I never have a problem with how to make my above ground terrain.

Dungeons on the other hand.....

What to choose! There are many options to be had, and I realize that many of those choices depend on the needs of the customer.

I first got into WWG through Hirst Arts. I made HUGE dungeons using the Place-As-You-Play style. I had a seven bedroom house with one of those bedrooms being my personal hobby room. I had plenty of room to store my enormous dungeons.

Then the word came that we would be leaving the USA for UK and I sold all my dungeons and other Hirst Terrain and switched to WWG.

I built an amazing Chunky Dungeon! I loved how modular it was. Of course I could not take it with me so I stored it back in the States and Kitbashed a Chunky Gothic for me to use here in my new home.

I love using my Chunky for my Mage Knight Dungeons. Great set up. However now I'm also playing GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and I need to make a new dungeon. Do I kitbash a Chunky Dungeon with a Hex Grid? Well I am running out of room in my small house (Houses are small in Oxford) so I start looking at other ways to have a second dungeon.

Free Form
Build anything you want. Breaks down easily. However it can be tedious to set up and keep into position. Up keep on re gluing the Velcro all of the time.

Floating Walls
Really offers the best choice for storing. Everything lays flat. Although I personally find it has less options than the Free Form.

Place-As-You-Play
If you have the time to plan your dungeons you can really make some fantastic looking dungeons. Not sure about the break down as I have not seen the final product. Storing could be cumbersome.

Tiles
Fantastic storing. Easy set up and break down. Tend to slide around. Not as awe inspiring as the 3D dungeons.

Now there is another company that only does tiles and only in 1" and with about 60% less detail than WWG. No not the one recently discussed in another forum. This company has hundreds of tiles all in different styles that can fit together. I've been copying the ones I own in Campaign . Although after seeing the Place-As-You-Play I have thought about making them 3D in that style. Kitbashing current sets into that style would be no problem for me.

So what do you use? What are your pro's and con's of each style? Did I miss a dungeon style that is related to WWG?

I haven't seen an ideal solution.

Place as you play - definitely not. Requires too much storage space, and is simply too limited.

Free form (chunky dungeons) - very nice, but a LOT of building and materials. So the layouts simply become a lot smaller.

Floating - Superquick, minimal storage. But the floating nature clip-it nature of the walls are very prone to shifting when bumped. I use removable poster gum to attach the walls to the board and use hair pins to connect the walls. Which is semi sturdy, but visually the yellow gum and hairclips don't add anything to the layout.

Tiles - superquick and great to actually play on since the poses of the figures never hit walls. And in the case of dungeonlinx they can be super beautiful. But they're flat. I play games to make use of all the models I build, not because the games themselves where the big drawl.

Interesting.

For me its a weigh up between floating and free-form.

Free form looks great but time & materials expensive,
and as brought up they are generally smaller.

Floating walls are great but aren't as good looking (although the passages and tunnels in caveworks are pretty good)

Tiles, never tried but love the sound of it but would have to kitbash some walls + 3d ishness or I could just get my descent boardgame stuff out with pretty much the same results.

At the moment I am running smaller dungeons with chunky dungeons and will make larger ones once I grab Gothic realms.

I chose free-form just for the sheer asthetic quality

Storage is a serious issue. In our 3 room flat, I simply don't have enough space for multiple boxes or shelves cramped with 3D elements, paper or not. If I started storing my Terrain collection along the walls and ceiling, as suggested elsewhere on this page (which, besides, is a splendid idea, as far as I am concerned), my wife would probably kill me.

So I have accumulated a huge selection of 2D tiles mounted on 3mm MDF board (both faces have tiles) which store easily and don't take up a lot of space. These I use for RPGs.

If I had another big room or garage at hand, just for hobby and stuff, I'd opt for 3D terrain. Probably a mix of scratch-built (foamcore, plasticard, polyfoam, balsa wood etc.) and cardstock stuff. But right now, 2D tiles is my only option.

I actually do have some 3D cardstock pieces (mainly wormhole, firstlight etc.), but not that much, and nothing at all for dungeons. My fantasy dungeons presently are all 2D.

So far it's been Free Floating for me. At least in dungeons. I also got four 37.5"x37.5" street corner boards for Mayhem based on Andorax's City Planning method. Storage is a growing issue with that set up. I have an old workshop building I use for building and storing my layouts, and playing as well, but it's not well insulated so doesn't see much use in winter. And I found that wierd things hapeen to foamcore exposed to extreme cold. Major warpage on some finished pieces. I didn't know cold would do that.

Luckyjoe

I really like the solid feel of the Free Form, ie; Chunky Dungeons. Visually, nothing beats it. That said, storage is most definitely an issue. Thankfully I have an understanding wife with a book collection that takes up more space than all my hobbies (video games, terrain, minis) combined...and it all fits in our closet fairly well.

All this talk of collapsable bits made me think of a new option, though. Similar to Microtactix old dungeon. Instead of basing on foamcore, base on a bottomless box and have the walls slot into the base instead of gluing to the base. You would have to assemble each piece before using, making it a bit labor intensive, but with all that base face area, attaching pieces could be done in any number of ways.

The age old WWG conundrum A lot of the above has to do with personal preference. We are constantly looking for new solutions though.

With our Pathfinder line, you'll see a nice consolidated mix of options. That will make more sense when we finally dump our remaining promos. I think its a balance that will satisfy most people.

Other than that, I've been sitting on a new system for the past year or so. I just need some "true believers" on my side to make it happen. In my view anyway, its the best of all possible worlds.

Have you got any pics of examples?

I'd love to have more ideas of things to do

I'm thinking a combination system that uses large and small modules and even some free-form for fine tuning things. I could see breaking those large rooms from the Pathfinder promo shots into maybe 9 medium sized pieces for easy storage...or maybe even just 4. Would make them more flexible too.

That said, can't wait to see the actual solution and not just my morning rambling!

I'm inclined to something close to the CaveWorks format: a combination of 3D pieces (not full rooms), stand-up walls and tiles.

Other than the PathFinder range - I just want a new Dungeon!

The first DungeonWorks is o...k now - back then it was da'bomb.

Gothic is my standard Dungeon now - I like the corridors and the feel of the darkness. Though I am getting tired of it - there has been so much done since then that makes this look like the cousins from Farm.

Chunky is good but to me it looks more Labyrinth than Dark, Damp, dungeon. Plus I want set pieces that I can plug and play with.

D-Linx is in flavour the closest that I get to my visual of a dungeon but it's in tile format.

I know Denny is sitting on a very cool new system, a system that he would love to see in the print production run. I don't know how that system works but I have a fair idea and will be very happy once it comes out.

What I want is a very nice (Dennyesq) dungeon that is a pleasure to work with once it has been constructed. Something that looks as though I have one fracking big lcd screen that does 3D graphics as a tabletop.

The upside is that my money is safely with WWG as the other dungeons out there just don't have the texture quality.

I guess what I am wanting is like Bruce's Castle Molds dungeons in layouts - set rooms with the ability to interconnect them with passageways. Having a system that is released in a basic layout format then selling single room addons that have been crafted to plug and play would totally rock. Just think of buy a room ( - Dwarven Forgeish) that is designed like an enoucunter. You can use the room out of the box or mod the crap out of it. This would be a very nice cash cow - standard set $16.95, room addons anywhere from $4.95 to $9.95 depending on size and content.

The above gets back to my Sims style buying - use a core and then small addons that add so much flavour and deserved.

I also understand that Pathfinder is taking front and center for the time - I am ok with that as it will put food on the table and cloth on their backs - for that I am happy.

I will just be even more happy when Denny bites the bullet and gets this new system online. Rich, dark textures mixed with some of the best layout systems to date coupled with the fact that he can add a room at any time without having to do a whole new system.

Lord Abaddon of Wormwood