Rune Rocks Done Right

Time for another dungeon room build inside D&D Beyond’s Acquisition Incorporated free 5e module. Hopefully, y’all have been enjoying our ongoing DM prep for every encounter inside Tresendar Manor Dungeon and providing you with some homebrewed enhancements and 3D-print ideas to make this crawl as fun as possible. Inspiration and idea generation for the win, right?!

It’s a little-known fact that stuff coming through portals is typically quite bad, but that’s the theme our players are confronted with in this fun lil’ mini dungeon exploration. Besides, when has someone or something come over from another plane and greeted you with a smile and a beverage? Danger and doom are much more likely. 😉

Today, Area 7 is centered around a ritual gone bad and hints at another Far Realm Rift area elsewhere below ground that we’ve already completed (Area 10). It’s just important to note that Area 7 and Area 10 complement one another, so we wanted the scatter terrain to share some commonalities.

This is the initial large plane jumper portal we made for Area 10. This STL is by Fantastic Portals and Effects (a spinoff from beloved Fantastic Plants & Rocks). So, you need to think of this one like The Six Franchise tried to start the ritual in Area 7 to bring forth some evil in Area 10 and things quickly flew off the rails.

Our original 5e module room description for Area 7 states, “A dozen desiccated and skeletal humanoid corpses litter the floor of this small chamber. The stone of the north wall has been etched with intricate runes, but the pattern ends abruptly.”

So, looking at the original module map from above, this room and its inhabitants clearly took some heavy damage from some powerful magic gone wrong. That’s ultimately the type of chaos and severe damage we need to convey here. No problem, right? Never get obsessed with a perfect gameboard match, as very few gameboard builders can pull that off every time. More so, build something in the spirit of the module’s description.

Dungeon Master prep is all about adapting to what one has available or can make in a timely manner. Alas, we don’t have these exact dungeon walls with rune carvings, but we do have some alternative scatter terrain that can absolutely get the job done here. We just had to roll up our sleeves.

DM Ben plans to have one central rune piece and then a couple more in the room corners (very The-Fifth-Element-esque). We’ll utilize two different 3D-print creators to produce the scatter terrain needed here.

Let’s start with the primary rune piece for the room. This heavy stone beauty is by STL Miniatures and comes from their swell Frost 3 Kickstarter. What we adored about this particular TTRPG crowdfunded campaign is that it often included both a snow version and a regular version. That’s a big deal and just shows this creative team gets it and moves in the best interests of its fans.

The second creator we’ll feature here is Fantastic Plants & Rocks. Coincidentally, their bargain June Patreon included these fantastic Sci-fi Glyph Stones. You get five certa stones (that’s “rune” in Elvish btw) in the set, but we’ll probably just utilize some of this 3D-printed scatter in our damaged dungeon room.

DM Ben willingly drew the painter card here as his motto is “no eyeballs, no worries.” For some reason, his mind immediately went to a darker, slick Obsidian rock, and wanted to convey that in coloring. Army Painter Speedpaint’s Gravelord Grey is such an excellent shade and works exceptionally well on a white-heavy slap chop base. Also, how great are the ropes around the main rune stone?!

Our rock bases will utilize that traditional, grimey gray natural stone look and pair it with this fantastic black Obsidian finish. That means we’ll slather it on the entire large stone of the central rune. For the smaller accent stones, we’ll only apply the smooth black color at the tops of each model.

So, now you can see how all the rune rocks mesh with our main Far Realm Rift jumper portal. Compatibility was important here. We wanted to convey that the runes from the failed ritual matched the main teleportation piece.

Until next time!