The 3D Tower Of Power (Coming Soon In 4D)
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As our Dungeons & Dragons campaign winds down, our characters are making many discoveries. After fighting our way to the top of the Tower of Power, a tower designed to channel magical energies for summoning a Dragonborn-Orc hybrid (the players affectionately call a Dorc), we made many discoveries about the campaign. Here are a couple pictures of the Tower of Power that we fought our way to the top of.
The tower had a layer of mist that covered the middle portion of it. So when you were on the ground, you could see up about half-way but no further. Once you reached the top, you could see down about half-way but no lower. It was a pretty good battle that we actually had a little bit easier of a time than we expected. One of our players did get knocked off of the top of the tower by one of the hybrids. However, he landed on one of the middle levels and made a good skill roll to avoid some of the damage. He managed to avoid serious injury. Some of the NPCs were not so lucky.
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February 11, 2009 at 7:33 pm
What in the world??? Do the steps go all the way around the tower?
February 11, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Yeah, it spirals around from the base to the top.
February 12, 2009 at 3:59 am
Again, I’ve got to ask, is this a scratch built piece or a PDF kit? Either way, it’s freaking amazing.
February 12, 2009 at 4:31 am
Thaks for the comments.
First I went to Wal-Mart and got 2 black foam boards ($3.50 a piece).
Next, I printed several sheets of a floor tile from E-Z Dungeons (Fat Dragon Games). Yes, it soaked up a lot of printer ink.
The Tower of Power consists of a large box (it originally had an assortment of potato chips in it), and a smaller box (a double-bagged Honey-Nut Cheerios box).
After glueing base cut-outs of the foam board to the boxes (for stability), I wrapped both boxes in the floor tile. The boxes were not glued together, because it would be harder to store, and I could use the pieces differently in the future.
Then I made the steps. Each step was two pieces of black foam board… a 2×2 piece and triangle base. The 2×2 platforms were also covered with the tile, and they were all glued to the boxes (the corner pieces were slightly different).
When it was all done the whole thing sat atop a Lazy-Susan, so that it could swivel around for the players, negating the need for anyone to move around the table.
The whole set-up took about 4 hours. In the end, it was not the most difficult of my props to make, but it was one of the most fun to play. My crowning achievement of that battle… a failed attempt to knock three dwarves off the top (I know, my mistake) resulted in me focusing on the archer, who did get knocked off… stupid acrobatics skill.
February 12, 2009 at 4:39 am
Chris, that’s a scratch-built piece? Amazing! Absolutely wonderful stuff. I can only hope once I get my gaming area set up I can make pieces a well constructed as yours.
February 12, 2009 at 8:23 am
Yeah the tower was great….until you were falling from it!!!!!
February 12, 2009 at 9:56 am
That is sweet! Great job. I wonder how a person on a budget could reduce the colour printing expense?
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February 12, 2009 at 10:06 am
@Johnn: Looking at it some more, I wonder if the tower could have been handled differently. I don’t see a need for the tower itself to have the Fat Dragon Tiles on it, except for the need for it to look like it was made from stone. Were I to put this very nice looking set together for myself, I’d probably use spray paint that had a stone finish to it and if I was really feeling industrious, put in all the joints where the stone blocks meet each other on the tower by hand using a pen. This way, all you need to do is print out the stairway and the top portion of the tower.
February 12, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Spray paint is definately something that I will be looking into/experiementing with. That will really cut down on printer ink for certain props.
February 12, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I’ve used several different types of spray paints including textured paints and ones that leave a finish that looks like some other material. I’ve tried a couple of different stone finishes, marble textures, and even a pantena finish for old “bronze-work”.
I also like using brush-on textured paint available at craft stores and Wal-Mart.
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June 23, 2009 at 6:46 pm
the benefit to using tiles is that you can easily tell how far someone has fallen (for measuring damage) then again, you could just have a scale off to one side for that as well.
June 25, 2009 at 1:20 am
@ VisforVice – That is a pretty good point. Because we DID have players and NPCs fall off of areas. So we did have to calculate damage based on how many squares they fell. It was pretty easy with the layout that was there.