Don’t Get Comfortable

Greetings, fellow gamers! We’re going to showcase a new piece of scatter terrain that we’re going to drop into an already prepped DnD encounter and then show you the completed full gameboard! Let’s proceed…but with caution.

Let’s get real here, gang. Dungeons and Dragons is filled with bad folks doing bad things. Our campaigns must be stuffed with various dastardly villains so that Bards everywhere can later sing our triumphs. So, that means there are going to be tortured prisoners and torture chambers. Sorry, but this is the actual TTRPG fantasy world we all thrive in, and we can’t ignore this type of scatter terrain. Sure, we could say that a wrongdoer ties a prisoner down and has an irresistible kitten lick his toes til he talks, but that’s not exactly Oscar-worthy cinema, now is it? 😉

This leads us right into today’s feature DnD 3D print by Cast n Play. This Chair of Torture is from their wildly successful Terrain Essentials – Interiors Volume II Kickstarter. It had four distinct sections: House, Tavern, Temple, and Dungeon (along with a ton of salivating stretch goals). This spooky TTRPG scatter terrain piece is from the Dungeon portion. Seriously, every DnD player should have this All-in Pledge.

Resident painter Kimmy Utah was the lead colorist here, and boy howdy, do her painting skills shine. This STL is stuffed with all sorts of disturbing details, and this one was way out of novice painter DM Ben’s skill range. A smart man knows when to yield to a talented professional like good ol’ Kimmy. And thank goodness we did because we love this final TTRPG scatter piece!

Ok, so the next obvious question is, where does this one uncomfy chair go specifically? Well, we’re dropping this into our newly completed DnD Acquisition’s Incorporated 5e module and the mini Dungeon Delve, Tresendar Manor. Over the last few months, we’ve built out every encounter, and now we’re fine-tuning everything because our game group hasn’t quite started this dungeon crawl yet. DM Ben always like to get an initial MVP (most valuable product) gameboard and then circle back with fine touches as time allows.

Let’s give you a quick list of every room so you can catch up on any you missed:

• Entrance: Outdoor opening Ruins
• Survivor NPC
• Area 1: The Cellar
• Area 2: Storage
• Area 3: Hall with Pit
• Area 4: The Crypt P1 | P2 | P3
• Area 5: Cells
• Area 6: Empty Room (Blacksmith)
• Area 7: Failed Ritual
• Area 8: Chasm P1 | P2
• Area 9: Cockatrice
• Area 10: Far Realm Rift
• Area 11: Workshop P1 | P2
• Area 12: Office
• Post Encounter Cleaning Crew
• Post Encounter Tavern

You’ll notice that sometimes we revise a previously completed room, and that’s very intentional. We can easily forget about a previously made piece or even discover a better STL that we haven’t even 3D printed yet. So, if we have the time, we’re always striving to improve.

That handy, clickable encounter summary from above leads us directly to where we’ll be placing our new torture chair. The story of this mini dungeon crawl centers around a competing franchise (The Six) ransacking another franchise here (The Golden Mongoose). Hence, it would only make sense that The Six would put the captured leader of The Golden Mongoose company in irons to extract all the intel their evil agents needed.

Again, we initially pondered making a new room, but an empty torture room is a bit of a story thud. What made more sense is that this brutal device was added to either the Office area or, even better, the Ritual Area. Anyone who didn’t comply with the ritual would have some “sense” knocked into them, making them follow their orders.

Let’s conclude with a big wide shot of the full Tresendar Manor dungeon crawl, as we were able to assemble all the rooms on our office conference room table these last couple of weeks. Let’s start with an overhead wide shot so you can get a nice idea of the scope. Our game table at work is long in nature, but a little skinnier than traditional tables (like, say, a Wyrmwood one). Those quirky dimensions can make things more linear, but DM Ben might just describe the hallways and then place the players in the appropriate room (and we’re leaning toward this game flow option).

Also, you’re probably wondering what the forest section is on the bottom left. Dungeon Masters rarely predict how far their game group will get in any given session. And if they do, they’re usually wrong. Sometimes the players fly through scenarios; other times, a single battle can take up nearly the entire session. Hence, DM Ben needed to build out all of Tresendar Manor just in case, but the group still had to travel back to Waterdeep first to cash in on some recently completed missions and do some additional NPC interactions.

So, he used some Dwarven Forge Magnetic Stilts and Terrain Trays to create a separate section where he could do a few more forest encounters and swap those out for some small city settings once they were back in Waterdeep. This system worked perfectly. For example, the players completed their travel back to the capital city last sesh, so now DM Ben will just swap the forest trays with some city cobblestone trays for those upcoming themed encounters.

That leads us to a second high-level gameboard pic, with all our rooms now labeled so you can make a little more sense of where an encounter is in this wideshot overview image. We initially set it up as a linear layout due to our game table space constraints. However, this mini dungeon crawl is loaded with secret doors and all sorts of connecting points, so DM Ben plans to describe the hallways and then reveal the corresponding room as they enter each one.

Pretty cool though, right? We love it when a final gameboard comes together…until next time!