Dungeons and Dark Souls 1: The Board

The board in situ at the con.

For a couple of months, I've been working on a secret project called Dungeons and Dark Souls, based on a scenario that a friend ran with modified Dungeons and Dragons rules. I finally got to run the game at a mini-convention, and it was phenomenal.

To the right, you'll see the map. Made primarily out of foam, the main portion began life as packaging for a flatscreen monitor (seen in the lower picture). The different elevations were pretty inspiring. Later, I decided to expand it and used insulation foam sheets to expand the map some more. Currently, it covers a 1/4" plywood sheet that's two feet by four feet (so I can also use it for Mordheim).

Most of the fittings (such as the fences, the mausoleum, the tombstones, the cart, and the statue) are from Reaper Miniatures. The trees (and flocking) are from Woodland Scenics. The chests are from the Bloodborne board game. The wooden planks, the little doors, and the other wooden stuff is built from coffee stirrers and little craft wood stuff.

The ground is textured with Vallejo "Dark Earth" earth texture gel. Two 200ml bottles were enough for the whole thing, with some left over (which I will use to finish a couple of spots). I then painted it up over a black primer with a layer of FolkArt Matte "Real Brown," then a drybrush of "Coffee Bean," and finally a light drybrush of "Coffee Latte."

I attached the flocking and clump foliage with Mod Podge Ultra matte spray-on glue and sealer. This also sealed the board and made it much more resilient. (As a side note, the sprayer top on the bottle was absolute trash, so I just poured what I needed in to my Woodland Scenics spray bottle and it worked really well.)

An early photo, laying everything out on the styrofoam.

Some of the walls were covered with 1/4" corkboard sheets. Others were textured with the same Vallejo earth texture gel as the ground. The walls were layered up and drybrushed with whatever grey paints I had lying around.

All of that said, it was a ton of fun to run this game and the players all enjoyed it. There will be a few more posts about other parts of this project, like the player models and the skeleton horde. There's a lot to go over!