If you’re a continuing reader of the site or you’ve visited my Flickr album of D&D pics, you’ll notice I’m a big fan of Dwarven Forge. I wrote about these heavy resin-based 3D dungeon props in my Dwarven Forge Review, and my Battle Map Comparison articles. I recently received an email from someone who had about $600 to spend on Dwarven Forge and wanted to know how to get started.
First off, the disclaimer. Dwarven Forge is expensive and addictive. A single set of Dwarven Forge costs as much as 14 Dungeon Tile packs and you can’t buy just one set. You don’t buy this stuff if you want a low or even average cost solution for your game. There’s no reasonable explanation when spending this much money on your D&D game. You simply buy Dwarven Forge because you want the best.
That said, there are ways to maximize your dollar when you’re buying Dwarven Forge. It is this maximum Dwarven Forge per Dollar that we’re going to talk about today.
Rooms and Passages
With your first $600, your best bet is to buy a few sets from the Rooms and Passages line. These are relatively generic brick-style pieces that can fit in just about any setting. You can build ancient temples, crypts, castles, buildings, basements, or catacombs with them. They are the most universally usable pieces in the Dwarven Forge line.
This is a double-edge sword, of course. Too generic and your players will become bored of it. It loses the excitement after your first few times using it. There’s a way around this, however, and that’s to use a lot of the unique accessories that fit in well with this set. These accessory packs, however, come at a price.
Here is a list of the sets you will want from the Room and Passage line:
Room and Passage set: $119
2x Room sets: $99
Wicked Additions 1: $99
Wicked Additions 2: $99
Fantasy Floor set: $69
This is enough sets to build out a variety of rooms and interconnecting hallways. If you want fewer wide-open rooms and more hallways, buy an extra set of the Room and Passages instead of the extra Room set.
The detailed accessories of the Wicked Additions and Fantasy Floor sets will give you nearly unlimited options to make the rooms different and exciting. They add a whole variety of floor and wall pieces as well as much-needed stairway pieces to help you build upwards with your Dwarven Forge sets. Building multi-platform 3d environments is what really sets Dwarven Forge apart from flat maps and tiles.
Caverns
Though not nearly as universally usable as the Room and Passage set, the Cavern line is easily my favorite line. It uses large 4×4 pieces instead of the normal 2×2 pieces. The detail is amazing and the look is just awesome. It works well for any ancient chambers, caverns, or underdark realms. You don’t need as many sets of this to build out a few nice rooms. Here’s a buyer’s guide priced out at $550.
2x Cavern sets $140
Cavernous Passage set $120
Cavernous River and Wall sets $150
If you want more elevated platforms, consider adding a Cavernous Chasms set into the mix for another $119.
Realm of the Ancients
Finally, if you’re looking for something more detailed than the room and passage set, the Realm of the Ancients set is the most detailed set I’ve used. It’s very well designed with lots of options and setup arrangements. It isn’t as universal as the room and passage set but it is very highly detailed. It works perfectly for ancient temples, crypts, castles, and other ornate setups. You can also build a lot of different arrangements with only three sets:
2x Realm of the Ancients 1 $140
1x Realm of the Ancients 2 $140
Your Set of Expensive Golf Clubs
Dwarven Forge is for those who want to take their hobby up a notch. It doesn’t work well if you travel a lot or play at any other home than your own. It’s heavy, expensive, and not as flexible as your standard dry-erase mat or a bunch of Dungeon Tile sets. That said, Dwarven Forge will make your encounters look as cool as they ever can. I have never been disappointed with my purchases. Be warned, however. Once you buy a set, you won’t be able to stop. There is a reason Dwarven Forge enthusiasts call it “The Addiction”.
That said, the above guide can get you on your way with the best bang for your buck.
If you enjoyed this article but Dwarven Forge just isn’t in your budget, please consider using these links to buy D&D Dungeon Tiles from Amazon or the Gamemastery Flip-Maps from Troll and Toad, an official Sly Flourish sponsor. You can also support Sly Floursh by bookmarking and using this link to purchase anything from Amazon.com.
I sent an e-mail to Mike, and bought the Realm of the Ancients set based on his recommendation. That was a couple of months back. Since then, I’ve dropped another $1100 on Dwarven Forge and I don’t regret it one bit. Sooooo nice, and Mike’s advice is spot-on.
I know this report specifically mentions options for pre-made dungeon terrain, but I wonder what the DIY cost comparison is using Hirst Arts blocks. Obviously, the time comparison isn’t even close (pre-made vs. DIY), but cost & flexibility would be interesting to explore.
Sure wish I had the room & the scratch to start buying this stuff. Dwarven Forge most certainly sets the standard for dungeon terrain.
Thanks for the post!
Do you find that using these pieces substantially increases your pre-game setup time?
deadorcs,
I’ve been pricing out Hirst Arts stuff lately for myself. For $100, you can get the molds you need to build generic rooms, door, passageways and stairs, along with a few other goodies like pillars and such. The advantage is that you can make as many sets as you want, which brings the price point way down. The disadvantage (as you said) is that you have to make them yourself and it’s very time consuming.
Dennis,
I’ve used a friend’s Dwarven Forge before and if you are semi organized in your pieces, it doesn’t take much more time to place these tiles down then it would to draw out a map on a tabletop grid or lay down dungeon tiles. The modularity of it makes it quite easy to slap down a dungeon easily. Be warned though, if you’re not playing at your own house, it’s not always the easiest thing to transport.
First, thanks Mike for the posts. Your tips have been some of the best on the web.
As an owner of 15+ DF sets Arcade is right, setup isnt so tough. Within an hour you can create some pretty amazing rooms and locations. What’s really the issue is if you don’t finish your session and have to keep the setup between games. The more elaborate the setup the less likely you will want to tear it down and rebuild it, so be careful not to overplan and just put out only what you definitely need.
That said, if you have the space and the money Dwarven Forge will bring your game to a completely different level. I just finished an Eberron Campaign and wow’d my players every single session. The only other thing I would add to this post, is you should really accessorize your DF sets. DF has accessories you can buy but they are also an the pricey side. I would check out World Works Games for some great paper based solutions as well as Mage Knight stuff which can be found on eBay.
Good luck!
Dwarven Forge is not quite right for me, even separate from the cost issue. It is too cumbersome and too heavy and a little hard to properly move minis around upon. I might consider it if I only ran games in my home and if I had lots of disposable income. Overall, I prefer the freedom of battlemaps plus tiles, with the use of cheap additional 3D elements. A site like http://nalsworkshop.com/ is great for purchasing add-on terrain that achieves that wow factor for a fraction of the cost. Keeping an eye open to other elements will yield a lot of results, from craft stores to old Mage Knight pieces to cheap kids toys to things you can find in nature. You save a ton of money and the wow factor is more dynamic and present than the repetitive use of DF.
I should add that Naloomi’s will also sell molded Hists stuff, so you have the option of buying some things you want but not doing it yourself. They even can paint some pieces (the paint job is excellent) and the owner is very approachable and reasonable.
The set-up time is half the fun, honestly. But one of the unexpected effects of using DF is that it added MUCH more tension to the combat encounters. It’s one thing to have your PCs pinned against a wall drawn on a battle mat and it’s a completely different level of anxiety for the players when the wall is a tactile presence. It really does amp up the level of conflict from the player’s POV — at least that’s what I’ve seen so far.
Plus, my six-year old daughter sets up the tavern and dungeon sets and then uses the minis to play “college,” complete with “dining hall.” Pretty funny stuff to watch, actually.
My wife originally looked into buying me some Dwarven Forge sets last year, for my birthday, as she’d seen me ogling their website for about a week straight. The sets were just so expensive, though! I completely understand the niche they fill, and I’d love to be able to afford their products, but it simply couldn’t be done on our budget.
At the same time, though, I discovered that a friend of mine had a few Hirst Arts molds he wasn’t using, so I borrowed those from him and started casting blocks of my own. I used Activa Permastone to start, which I found on sale at my local craft store, and I’m using Excalibur Dental Stone now, which I recently purchased from my friend, along with his molds and all the blocks he’d cast so far.
Depending on which molds you buy, you can be extremely flexible in the kinds of scenery you are capable of putting together. I only have the Fieldstone Wall Mold #70, and the Flagstone Floor Tile Mold #260, and it has allowed me to put together many different pieces, including pillars and stairs. The best one so far was a really nice bridge, and everyone who’s seen it swore that I had bought a specialized mold for it. I’ve even been using failed casting attempts as “ruined” pieces, which helps with my D&D group being in a large ruined city right now.
Personally, in addition to the Fieldstone Wall Mold and Flagstone Floor Mold, I would really like the Cracked Floor Tile Mold #203, the Cavern Floor Mold #281, the Rock Cavern Root Mold #83, and the Rock Cavern Pillar Mold #84… and it would be great to get the Cavern Floor Accessories Mold #282, and the Fieldstone Accessories Mold #71. All told, that’s $223, not including shipping. The Permastone has been about $3 for a 12oz container at my local store (although regular price is around $8), and the dental stone runs about $40-50 for a 50lb box. So, it’s still not an altogether inexpensive option either, but it is a cheaper alternative than Dwarven Forge, IF you have the time to cast and build everything yourself. And that’s a pretty big IF.
These just aren’t for me. We even gave up using the dungeon tiles, nothing beats a chessex mat or a large gridded pad for speed and portability. If I did play at home I may entertain tiles or even casting my own walls but the amount required to do a really good set up just seems so expensive. Your setups on flickr look amazing, however.
How are they in actual game play? With odd shaped figures, fingers trying to move figs and lay down counters, etc I would think that walls would really get in the way, especially in corridors.
I got into collecting DF a little over a year ago and I love it all! Sure, its expensive (and with an upcoming wedding and a kid sure to follow it seems even more so) but nothing beats the realism it adds to my games. I’m still learning how to optimize my set-ups with the tiles I have and to get a little creative with multiple levels but my players are impressed every time. I’m springing the Den of Evil sets on them in our next session…can’t wait to see what they think of that!
There are plenty of other solutions out there but if you have the cash and you aren’t an artist (even on a dry erase mat i have the artisitic ability of a 3yr old) nothing beats DF!
After reading the other comments I have this to add:
Making it yourself is very time consuming (and time is money friend), and still pretty expensive, though not as much as DF. We have starting making our own 3d dungeon tiles and the visual quality is certainly not up to par with DF, but it is still very sturdy and functional. If we had the money to spend we would definitely fill the gameroom up with DF sets, for the price the quality and the benefits really do match up.
Using the tiles really does enhance the immersion factor in the game. You put down a black tablecloth and the focus is immediately on that micro scale dungeon. A fight in a 10′ by 10′ corridor feels cramped and almost claustrophobic. And the excitement of climbing 3d terrain to gain a better tactical position or to escape a very formidable opponent is very exciting.