Have you ever got tired of those cardboard cut out D&D dungeons? well im putting together a guide and tutorial for building your own D&D board with high quality details as cheap as possible.

This project started as i am a fan of Games Workshops warhammer game as well as D&D and wanted to make a Warhammer board that was D&D compatable that you wouldnt just see but feel had the right atmosphere for the game.




Beggining a Warboard project:

To begin the project you need to to focus on design and planning.. its no good build things if you dont know werver your board is going to be a dungon or a city and its also not very helpful if you build an amazing board and then find its too big to set out in any of your rooms to play on.


Step 1 - The Playing Area

The first thing you need to do is have alookat your playing area if you play on the dineing room table you need to figure out a suitable size for the board so that it isnt balanced with risk of falling off, you may wish to set up your own special playing area, for example my personal board is 1cm thick MDF board strengthened by an aliminum bar that is attached to my wall by hinges. the iunder side has a painting on it (im kinda arty) so it dosent look horrible and it unlocks and folds down into a large 4X8 Ft Playing area supported by 3 steel legs that scren onto the bottom quite easily.

obviously not everyone has room or the money to build something so a large dineing room table or even the floor can be a as equaly a good space, just osmehting to hold up your board.

Step 2 - The Board Base

now obviously if your playing ona table or onthe floor you cant glue your buildings down to the surface, but if you have a large tower or tall construct you dont want it toppleing over the base of the board is there fore quite important.

for my board i have 8X4 ftarea as i said previously it folds up against the wall and thusi cant stick anything to it so i designed a modular board system were every peice of scenery fits onto ft by ft boards of mdf that can easily be store and rearanged to make a large combination of dungeons and boards

these boars ar 5mm thick mdf that you can buy in large sheets for about 4 or 5 pounds in most hardware or diy stores such as B&Q or Wicks how ever some of you may choose to make a hexagonal grid d&D board in wich case a carefully mesured hexagonal tile system must be calculated for the base..

Step 3 - Planning

Planning is the most important part if you dont figure out in detail what your doing you could go over budget or just find it keeps going wrong...

firstly you need to decide on atheme..weather its an old mine a creepy castle a quiiet village or a loud city..
on top of that you have to think about its architecture if your building an elven city look up some pics on the net for research its no good building a medievil styled town with thatch roof buildings if its ment to be an underground drow city.

once you have decided on the theme its useually a good idea to make a short list of all the things it needs, in the case of a dungeon youd need to figure out the rooms library the prison how they get food in and out and dispose of waste products how the creatures survive... in the case of a village or town youd have to decide on wich buildings they would have how many shops they have were abouts their stables are and how big their tavern is.

in my case i decided to build the village of todd its a quiet human lake side village with 1 stable 1 tavern a general store wepon shop armoury a couple of watch towers and a row boat hire.

Step 4 - The layout

once oyuve got everything you need listed down its a good idea to draw a top down veiw of your board. in the case of a modular board perhaps drawring out the a grid mathcingthe sections of modular tiles.

i drew and 8X4 grid with 2 inches to every 1ft of board on an A3 peice of paper i then drew on roads and buildings as nesisary.

if your building a modular board tryand put a building per a tile or road per a tile ect, dont build across multiple boards because you will end up with acomplex multipart building to pur together every time you wish to play.

(to be continued when i have pics and can be bothered )