About a year ago I started DM’ing for my group running Old School Essentials. As we were going I started building terrain to use, and that worked fine.

I started wanting to run something bigger, a full on dungeon with a bespoke model to play in. The above is the result. The module that this was built for is The Incandescent Grottoes

Breaking this down

Area 1: Entrance

The main entrance to the dungeon is this cavern with a water fall:

There’s things i both love and learned from in this room. This was the first time that I used a technique to get the water texture on the floor. It’s a bit more on the cartoon-y side when your looking at it in person, but I’m all for a goofier ascetic.

I’m happy with how the carved rock walls in here (and the rest of the model) turned out. Looking at it now, I kinda wish I would have put more thought into the side of the stairs beyond glue + pebbles.

One big noticeable issue (which happened in a few places of this model) is the rooms not lining up (bottom of the first picture). It doesn’t matter the most, but something that I figured out how to manage better in the future. Each room area is i’ts own module for easier transport and use in play, but it could have been lined up better. So live and learn!

Area 2: The mushrooms and the ruined entrance

The players entered into this area through the orange and purple crystal lined walls. I’m pretty happy with the mushrooms and the sand work.

Area 3: Ooze Cult workshop

Man bricking these 5 rooms was tedious! I wish I was consistent with the doors here (and elsewhere in the build). I give myself some slack, after all I built this for fun!

The main theme of this faction’s area is slime and ooze. I love the Different effects I was able to make for these (though I wish the green slime was more translucent since it has stuff embedded in it).

To get these effects I used clear silicone caulking and mixed it either with a translucent acrylic lime green ink, or just some mini paint from my rack for the pink and purple.

The module with the lights was my first foray into using LEDs and resistors in a model. I ended up making two separate circuits as each light needed to be flipped off and on to represent the force field over the bars. It’s not pictured here but the are attached in with magnets to be removed as the PC’s would be fiddling with the leavers.

Area 4: Trog’s den

Man I had so much fun doing the finishing touches on this area. Story wise there’s a power struggle going on in the troglodyte tribe that lives in here as their leader (on the table) was murdered. It gets a little muddled about all the blood though, as the room with the blood is their store house for their fish.

I wish that I could have signified a cobbled together doorway that was more easily readable from the player’s perspective. I made it even more difficult for them, as they didn’t have the whole view of this module due to a removable cover I added for each area (not pictured). I’m noticing that in one of the pictures you can see some unpainted foam (that did get touched up in the end). I still wish that I had added in a dwarf hanging over the hole in the last image, but you have to stop somewhere.

Area 5: The Ooze Temple

Some more angles on the last two:

This is one of the places that the PC’s could accidentally fall to floor 2 of the dungeon. The big black pit next to the frogs (and the hole in the sandy area) both lead down to the caverns below. In the ritual chamber (the room with the hole, raised platform, and 2 bronze skeletons) also drops them down to level two (though it’s a trap room so a bit more dangerous of a fall).

The pink, green, and blue statues are all supposed to be different forms of ooze, so easy peasy to make out of clay.

Area 6: No touch!

There’s a very low probability that it would happen, but if one of the PC’s knew troglodyte, they would read the graffiti on the floor as touch means death next to the skull statue. These skulls were the first time I used any speed paint and god do I love how it makes the bones look!

Thanks GW for the skulls pack, having a drawer of 25mm scale skulls in my item caddy helped a lot building the pillar.

I had some Halloween skeletons around so I figured I’d try adding some bones into the rock on the top where the cut-away is to give the players something else to look at rather than just black felt. I could take or leave that decision.

General thoughts looking back on it

• I wish I didn’t worry so much about having flooring that had a 25mm grid where there wasn’t sand. It added more work without much benefit to play.
• Planning planning planning! I ended up making this floor about 2 times partially, and then this final iteration. It’s hard to plan on figuring out ways to build that are so much better/easier/better looking, but I wish that I had built the whole floor such that each piece was in the same stage of development.
• Tolerances matter when it comes to hall widths. There are a few halls that aren’t playable (you can’t put a 25mm mini in the hall) due to my tolerances being to tight. In the next build I’m working on I am attempting to fix this by using 30mm scale for the terrain, but 25mm scale for the minis. Generally that extra 5 feet on the edge of a room wont make or break an encounter. It also means there will be some more room to add finishing details (couches, tables with books and scrolls, etc.)
• The black felt was a solution to the dead space between the rooms, but I also could have opted for making them rock or brick. If any of y’all have thoughts on what to do with the dead space, let me know!
• The water effect is one of my favorite things from the build in terms of effort to payoff. (talking about the flat water, not the waterfall)

More to Come

There’s a whole other floor to this dungeon, but I don’t have pictures at the moment (and I’m lazy). I want to start posting more, so that definitely will be the next one!