WHQ/DnD home made floor plans / dungeon tiles

[Billiam Babble]

(Apologies about the sizes of the images but I've fallen out with the way Photobucket is handling code for thumbnails at the moment. Moderators: also feel free to move to a more appropriate section.)

These rooms were inspired originally by the modular rooms in Warhammer Quest, but they are also intended for Dungeons & Dragons games.

Incidentally, when I've played WHQ I like having a multiple door rule (1d3 number of exits per room) - which works like the T-junction where you have to split the remaining room cards - it makes for much more interesting layouts.

Originally, I hand drew some rooms with pen and coloured pencils - featured here: downloadable dungeon rooms.

But the ones in the photos above were drawn, then scanned and coloured on computer. This, I am told, provides an "old school" style of tile harking back to days when most accessories were illustrated - as opposed to computer generated.

The "Dungeon" section of my Deviant Art gallery: http://billiambabble.deviantart.com/gallery/#dungeon-stuff - includes outdoor stuff.

A fairly ropey wiki I started a while back: http://dungeonfloorplans.pbworks.com/

I rarely get the chance to actually play test them but if anyone here would like to use them for their own campaigns. I'd love to hear any suggestions or comments.

I've also been prototyped some 3D cut-out blocks on DA, perhaps with the idea of cheaply marketing and range of similar sets (as an alternative to the extremely expensive but plus Dwarven Forge-and similar- products) - but maybe 3D scenery deserves a separate thread. ;)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Great stuff! Your tiles have that awesome nostalgic retro feel to them, they remind me a lot of the tiles from the old Dungeon Floor Plan Packs that GW used to produce back in times of yore


^ nostalgic montage

Your tiles look like they will work really well for any dungeon based game. It would be really awesome to see  some custom WHQ  Room Card cards to accompany them.

Billiam Babble wrote

<P>Incidentally, when I've played WHQ I like having a multiple door rule (1d3 number of exits per room) - which works like the T-junction where you have to split the remaining room cards - it makes for much more interesting layouts.</p>

I use a similar system myself to generate doors in my HeroQuest games using a dice from SpaceCrusade that is marked with the numbers 1 to 3 and a bunch of 0's, I then use a second dice, also marked with lots of 0's and a 1 and 2, to generate secret/hidden doors when characters search for them.   This allows for multiple exits but also means a room can turn out to be a dead end.

BTW the picture sizes are fine (we almost never do thumbnails around here) also feel free to upload your tiles here in PDF format if you like

[Billiam Babble]

Thanks! :)

Even the old packaging makes me drool.
I have the one in the middle!
(I must resist going onto Ebay to search for the others!)

I think when I was first drawing the rooms I was frustrated at the number of encounterless corridors in random soloplay in WHQ, so I may have had a system where when a corridor card was drawn there was a 50% chance of it being one of my new rooms (selected by die roll).  Also, I didn't like to complicate the game too much with extra rules (like fighting up stairwells by a deadly abyss, which actually sounds quite exciting now that I read it here) - because I'm a very lazy player ;)  so I hadn't thought of making extra cards until now (that and it being a really old game) - but maybe I should mock some cards up. :)  

Somewhere I scrawled some rules to work with forest tiles.  Basically it worked like a dungeon - and at some stage the player(s) would find the entrance to the dungeon or ruins (finding the entrance was like the Quest Room card).  The forest "walls" are impenetrable - poison ivy, thick brambles - but the sudden appearance of monsters is justified by the concept of ambush.  (forest map example)  Encounters could also include a market where players can trade (like they would normally in a settlement) - and allows for gold to be spent during the adventure itself.  The tiles I haven't finished include stone circles, river bridge and a sort of tree house.

I remember being fascinated by pictures of Advanced HeroQuest and wanting my own copy years later but when I went out to look for it Games Workshop were only stocking Warhammer Quest.  But I was pleased that WHQ has solo-play/random dungeon play system.  To make it simpler I've sometimes played with only one or two characters and halved the number of monsters on the cards (which is a throw back to Fighting Fantasy game books - I'm a big fan of soloplay).  

In the back of my mind I think I always wanted to merge WHQ with Basic D&D or Tunnels & Trolls.  Has anyone here played Dungeon Bush or Descent?  Any good?

(Maybe I should just invent my own pick-up-and-play system ...)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Scans of most of these packs are floating round the Internet along with scans of the WHQ stuff, I've downloaded a whole bunch them over the years.
An old friend of mine from years back (who coincidentally also recently joined the Forum – [Deadlight]) owned a game called 'Mighty Warriors' which contained much of the contents of the Dungeon Room pack (top right) and the same figures as Advanced HeroQuest (I seem to remember the rules that came with it were not very good and we used to play dungeon based games using the GorkaMorkA rules and Warhammer 5th edition stats)

I my self, so far as Dungeon Crawling games go, own Advanced Heroquest (twice), the original Heroquest (no less than 5 times) the D&D boardgame, DragonStrike, DarkWorld (which is terrible BTW),The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (based on the FF book), DungeonQuest, SPACEHULK and SpaceCrusade (do SH and SC count as Dungeon Crawlers? I guess their Sci-fi Dungeons).
I still have yet to get my claws on a set of Warhammer Quest (but I do own 1 of the door arches a friend of mine who used to run a games shop gave to me lol) and Decent gets more and more tempting every time I see it in a shop.

++SYSTEM WARNING: FULL GEEK OUT MODE HAS BEEN ACIVATED++

Ha! I love the Fighting Fantasy books, yet another thing I obsessively collect – I even got my copy of Death Trap Dungeon signed by Ian Livingstone in person!  
Man I should really add a FF section to the forum...

++GEEK OUT OVER++

Billiam Babble wrote

In the back of my mind I think I always wanted to merge WHQ with Basic D&D or Tunnels & Trolls.

As it happens thats my group are doing the same sort of thing with the HeroQuest rules under the working title 'MortiS Quest' basically the Houserules have got a little out of hand so much as to be on the brink of spawning a whole new system ...

I've played a few Tunnels and Troll Solo-Quests and I think it might have potential  to be adapted to play with miniatures, basic D&D works well with miniatures, but is a little long winded for fast play and Chainmail is always worth a look.
I'm going to repress the urge to rant about 4 th edition D&D and the Combat Grid here ... 1” = 5 feet and the miniatures are smaller than normal 28mm minis, what is everyone in D&D a midget? ... Repressing the urge ... repressing

Billiam Babble wrote

Has anyone here played Dungeon Bush or Descent?  Any good?  

Never heard of Dungeon Bush, and sadly I've never played Descent, but I'm always hearing good things about it. George (Screamin' Mad George) and Ingrid (Krippie) own a game called Dungeon Twister which I've also heard is very good. You might also want to check out a game called 'WiZ WaR' which I understand is very similar to Dungeon Twister and is Free to download here: http://www.wizwar.com/rules.htm

[Billiam Babble]

MortiS-the-Lost wrote

Ha! I love the Fighting Fantasy books, yet another thing I obsessively collect – I even got my copy of Death Trap Dungeon signed by Ian Livingstone in person!  
Man I should really add a FF section to the forum...
++GEEK OUT OVER++

*grin*
You could always sneak a couple of threads in the Books and Fiction section - or would that be contentious?  Do you like the Lone Wolf books?

5 x Heroquest? :o
I was shocked at how similar the D&D Board game was to Heroquest.  I mean it was really a very shameful copy.

Oops.  Major embarrassing typo: not "Dungeon Bush" but "Dungeon Bash"
I think I was curious about Dungeon Bash because I read that was D20 system based - and a while back I still had ambitions about writing something under the d20 OGL License* and wanted to see how a simplified system worked - did it use levels/campaign rules for example?  There's nothing more depressing that introducing new players to a game who run 1st level characters who then kept wiped out by vermin.  At least most of the Warhammer systems acknowledge a heroic (you can kill multiple Orcs) element from the outset.  But I'm going off the point.  I wrote to Dragon/Dungeon magazine a while ago proposing a solo-play text, and they wrote back saying that it would have to work for first level characters of all classes.  Yikes.  Fortunately they dropped the idea later anyhow.  D&D was a social game for groups with pretzels or something, apparently.  Incidentally, it's interesting to see that the recommended numbers required to play the game have dropped over the years.  I'm sure my old Basic set and various modules suggests 6 to 9 players, whereas now a party of 4 seems to be base of the mechanics of the system ... yadda, yadda, I'm rambling.  (I'm on holiday this week, does it show?)  

(*The D20 OGL seems to have been altered since 4th ed. D&D, less "open" for starters, or maybe the 3ed system is still OGL.  Man, 4th Edition is a different and confuddling beast.)

I think the closest I got to GorkaMorka is Necromunda (am I right in believing that the system is similar?  Parties/clans with skills progression?)

I think Space Hulk definitely counts as a dungeon crawl.    My set was somewhat cannibalised by a friend who was into mini-dioramas -he'd depict struggles between genestealers and terminator marines and the plastics were easier to convert.  A group I briefly played WH 40K 3ed with (or was it 2ed? large box flimsy rules cardboard cut out of an Ork dreadnought) suggested that I used the WHQ tiles to run a sort of Temple of Evil on a Chaos Planet.  Never got around to that, but I think they might have been humouring my preferences for guided quests as opposed to open battle fields.
I also totally suck when it comes to collecting armies - no dedication and then I discovering that my favourite characters get written out of new rules editions ...  Game Workshop is a frightening cult I tell ye! ;)

You have the Warlock of Firetop Mountain board game!?  Now, there's a floor-plan and a half. :)
I think I must now investigate Dragon Strike, Dungeon Twister and the WiZ WaR link.
 

[MortiS-the-Lost]

I hadn't heard of Dungeon Bash either ...

I recently picked up (among a hoard of other things) a 1 st edition D&D module called Thunderdelve Mountain which was designed for solo-play with characters level 7-9 and came with 6 pre-rolled characters (all Dwarfs) designed for the adventure. A section at the back goes on to detail how to use the module as a regular D&D adventure (with DM and all) for a party of 5-8 at Level 4-6 and again has more Pre-rolled characters, once of which is called 'Zemon Trist' which has got to be one of worst character names ever.

It seems like solo play used to be a big selling point at one time, a lot of Tunnels and Trolls adventures were Solo-Quests then of course you had the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books. Advanced HeroQuest even had 'Includes full rules for SOLO PLAY' written on the box lid in large friendly letters. Another thing I've always found interesting about the Advanced HeroQuest box is that the cover art was clearly meant for the original HeroQuest box featuring as it dose the all the classic HeroQuest monsters battling with the 4 original HeroQuest Heros – none of which you get in the Advanced HeroQuest box. (Ok I've strayed a little off topic there, but it's not like anyone can complain to admin about it). In AHQ and WHQ solo-questing is more a by product of GM-less play which (for me at least) takes away a lot of the Role Play aspect of the game as it becomes a series of random events lacking a plot structure and the sense of achievement you get when reaching the end of written adventure. This can still be fun though but GM-less play in games like AHQ and WHQ tends toward players competing to see who can get to the Exit first with the most treasure. In contrast the Solo-play experience you get from things like Fighting Fantasy is more that of an interactive story, like the old text based adventure games for the ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and early PC (man dose that make me sound old).

Back on point now. Having looked up Dungeon Bash now, it seems to have a good mix of AHQ style random dungeon generation and D&D 3.5 rules catering toward a GM-less (well DM-less I suppose) dungeon crawler experience. I'd be interested in giving it a try.

I don't know for sure but I believe WotC may have taken away the OGL for 3.5, I seem to remember a lot of fuss around the time of D&D 4 being released with several independent companies who where making D20 based games threating to switch to GURPS and other systems. The Dungeon Bash website dosn't seem to have been updated since D&D 4 came out. Although D&D 4 is more Miniature and BattleGrid orientated I don't know anyone who prefers it to the earlier editions, even for that reason. To me the whole D&D becoming more Miniature based is less a step forward in combat system development and more an excuse for Hasbro to sell a bunch of badly made pre-painted 'collectible' rubberized plastic miniatures. Have you seen how much people are bidding for crappy figures of Drizzt on eBay? (and I'm off topic again)  

GorkaMorkA and Necromunda are both 40k skirmish games based around the usual Warhammer rules system with an advancement system added. GorkaMorkA is more vehicle based  (it's like Mad-Max with Orkz) while Necromunda concentrates more on gang-warfare and obtaining territory.

Billiam Babble wrote

 large box flimsy rules cardboard cut out of an Ork dreadnought

that would be 2 nd edition 40k

Check out Dungeon Twister and Wiz-War as for DragonStrike ....

“Feeling brave tonight?”

[Billiam Babble]

In AHQ and WHQ solo-questing is more a by product of GM-less play which (for me at least) takes away a lot of the Role Play aspect of the game as it becomes a series of random events lacking a plot structure and the sense of achievement you get when reaching the end of written adventure. This can still be fun though but GM-less play in games like AHQ and WHQ tends toward players competing to see who can get to the Exit first with the most treasure. In contrast the Solo-play experience you get from things like Fighting Fantasy is more that of an interactive story, like the old text based adventure games for the ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and early PC (man dose that make me sound old).

I'm in total agreement here.  I remember feeling that the Fighting Fantasy game-books were totally immersive.  I had a paranoid moment some years ago that WHQ was in fact Games Workshop's final dismissing of role-playing by proving that a GM was not required role-play wise (for conversations, extra descriptions, scenes, or just non-combat based events in the dungeon) - or at least replaced by an adversary who wishes to destroy the players!  (Mwhahaha so much for all this co-operative nonsense where the winners are those or have the most fun - to misquote the red D&D Basic set)  A bad guy GM is fun itself but is closer to the wargame ethos, I guess.  Then I reckon the games like WHQ and to some extent Space Hulk were dropped from GW's shelves because they didn't encourage the kiddies and hobbyists to buy enough figures.  Staff in my local GW shop were positively sneering about RPGs telling me that they we filled with far too many "beardy" rules, which I felt was a little unfair, but I was more defensive back then ;) - and was probably shopping for non-humanoid monsters, which used to be in a bit of a minority in WH armies. Of course later I was really surprised by the Inquisitor game - I mean here was a game where each player controlled one figure (I haven't played it myself, any thoughts?)  

Oops, babbling.

The Thunder Delve module sounds rather inspiring.

DragonStrike   with a VHS tape and  ropey acting?  I am both repulsed and fascinated. :D

(Flashback: I had a rough experience trying to write game books with cassette tapes.  A non-linear medium + a linear medium = don't cross the streams!  I'm mentioning them once and then we'll never talk of them again. link My scripts were too long and the acting was terrible, fortunately the small books were saved by half decent art work and shiny packaging *shudders* Thank the world that CD and DVD is now more commonplace, because at least you can choose a chapter as directed by the text.)

DnD 4 is unfathomable - but may make sense to D&D miniatures players - it certainly lacks the class of previous editions, mainly because of the standardisation of terminology across the classes ("Daily Powers" as opposed to spells etc).  

I totally agree about the bizarre-ness of the randomised booster-pack plastic figures.  However, very recently, after the job was getting me down I bought a few packs and started to enjoy the random treat quality of what's it the box (but I'm going through a dark period where I can't imagine having time to paint figures again).  Ooh look, it's a magma blob thing, followed by a something spider like, oh and a cleric ... etc.  

The whole scale thing is weird. In my own games I think I gave up on scale - 25mm-28mm-ish figures and one inch grids, it just all gets very representational.  It's worth noting that the Hasbro D&D /Parker boardgame (HQ rip-off ahem) abandons the scale in favour of smaller squares (not that that game is a bench mark for the industry *grin* they just know who to get more corridor onto a tile).  In terms of making floor plans for other people to use in their games I'm suddenly very conscious of how many rooms, using the 5ft one inch grid, fill an A4 sheet (never much more than two it seems! Not to mention compensating for printer margins…)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Yea it's kinda sad how GW went from being the top distributer, designer, publisher and manufacturer of a huge range of different Miniatures, Wargames and RPGs to supporting only 3 'core' games and  halfheartedly supporting a few 'specialist games' at unreasonably increased prices. There now even seems to be a gulf between players of RPGs and players of GW's wargames (especially 40k players) to the extent that some new gamers don't even understand the concept of GMs. GW's games are now all geared toward competitive play and spending money on large blocks of troops.
I also find myself getting strange looks from staff in GW shops when I tell them I don't collect any particular army.

Although it is possible to control one character each if you wanted, for the most part Inquisitor kinda fills a mid-ground between Skirmish games and RPGs. It's got plenty of  RPG aspects to it, but still works like a Skirmish game - 2 players controlling 2 competing warbands of 2-6 characters with a GM watching over it acting more as a referee than creating a world for the players.
(RobertTheDamned and precinctomega are the best ones around here to talk Inquisitor with, might be worth dropping a line to them in the Inquisitor section for them)

ha! I seem to remember having one of those fun fax books as a kid I have no idea which one, but I don't think it had a tape with it, so you're safe - it probably wasn't one of yours.

Yea I'm not a fan of the random booster packs of miniatures (it's seem WotC think whatever worked for selling 'Magic the Gathering' cards will work with their other products too) most companies that make pre-painted miniatures sell them with the idea you can play the games right out of the box with out all that mucking around with glue and paints (the best bit IMHO) but you can't run a pre-written D&D adventure with figures strait out of the box when theres no guarantee  your getting the figures you need. Because of this a lot of players will use proxy and 'counts as' miniatures in their games, which can be rather confusing and for me takes away a lot of the point of having the miniatures in the first place, you might as well be playing with card tokens or plastic pawns.  

This is rather nicely parodied by OOTS here: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0413.html

I find GW's 28/30mm miniatures work pretty well at an assumed scale of 1 square = 5ft if your using a 1” grid, but not all dungeons have 1” squares. As you mentioned a few games work with squares that are smaller than an inch (HQ, AHQ and The D&D board game) 3, 3.5 and 4 th edition D&D uses a 1” grid with 1 Square to 5ft but their miniatures tend to be around 25mm or so which would makes the average human in D&D under 5ft tall. Scale-creep is also a factor in this combined with the fact some companies (Reaper and Ral Patha for instance) are a bit hit and miss with their miniatures scale and even with in the same ranges you find miniatures that look much too small or large when stood on the table together although they all claim to be the same scale.

The MK3DD sets I use works to a 2” grid system and I use 1” = 5ft as rough scale, making my corridors classic 10ft wide corridors, but this means that the MK3DD set's rather large doors are around 7ft wide and 11ft tall. I don't think anyone has really noticed this yet but I plan to some day make some custom wall sections for the dungeon with smaller doorways about the same size as the AHQ doors (about an inch wide and an inch and a half tall) and make the doors that came with the sets into double doors and archways.
 
waaaaaay off topic now ... I think I'd better stop

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Hope you don't mind dude but I was messing about in Photoshop a few night back and had a go at adding some colour and texture to one of your B/W dungeon tiles

[Billiam Babble]

That looks rather good!  Nice one.
I winced at first because I'm currently drawing some more plans with 3D bird's eye view, and I think I've managed to improve on my walls since I drew that room - will hopefully post the new stuff soon.  Love the slime and the dappled flagstone colouring. (It almost looks hand-inked - which is very much in keeping with the retro-look as well)  Very atmospheric!

[Billiam Babble]

More rooms (with improved walls!) Works in progress. Cross posted on DA.

The plan is to colour them in in the next few weeks, but feel to have a go yourself (directed at Mortis).

[little kat]

wow hun they look awesome hun love to have a game with ya soon

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Like 'em dude, I may have shot at colouring the pit room one evening

[Billiam Babble]

little kat wrote

wow hun they look awesome hun love to have a game with ya soon

*grins* I never actually have time to actually play any games any more (not with real people anyhow), only to ponder and make stuff for imaginary games.  Perhaps when I retire ...  

[Billiam Babble]

MortiS-the-Lost wrote

Like 'em dude, I may have shot at colouring the pit room one evening

Cheers.  I'm having a go at the prison/goal one first - just colouring in by numbers.  I realised the other day that I should really start thinking about light sources as well.

[Billiam Babble]

I started colouring the tile with the t-junction and two rooms but that's on a different computer and I've left my datapens somewhere useful and invisible.  Insomnia the other night led me to try the pit/bridge room - it appealed because there's less detail to pick out! :)

Not sure where I'm going with the blue-ish theme - but I think I'm getting somewhere.

Screen shot:

[MortiS-the-Lost]

The blue scheme looks good dude, again very in keeping with the retro style of your tiles

[Billiam Babble]

Thanks. :) I hope to get back to these very soon.

[Billiam Babble]

I thought I'd preview this here first.  I plan to complete a set of a about five pages of printable tile parts* and post them as jpegs on DA.  They're feeling very much like "bases" in need of shadow and colour but I want to finish the rest of the sheets before I tinker with more detail.

Edit: *top-down, 3-D aspect... (if that makes sense)



(Click thumbnail)

96dpi jpg - the flagstones were 1 inch square = 5 ft sq.  Will hopefully fix any printer scale inconsistencies by putting them in a PDF.

I wasn't going to put them on a background originally (the best would have been black) but I felt it needed a little presentation, mainly for the people on DA to whom prettiness may appeal more than the practicality of RPG campaign printer cartridge management (i.e. white background saves ink!). ;)  I think my "parchment" needs ageing a little more.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Any more progress on this project?

At the moment I’m helping Mark RG put together a short of basic ‘travel set’ for dungeon based games which he can taken to the Czech republic and play with his Girlfriend and friends over there. A laminated version of a set like this would be ideal!