Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[robert4818]

Just rumaging through some ideas here.

When my gaming group gets some new thing in the mail (computer, tv, roomba cleaning robot, etc.) we look at the styrofoam packaging material and decide if it can be used as a building for our gaming table. Often times the answer is yes, once we cock our heads to the side and let our imagination run a little wild.

This got me thinking. This same sort of pre-molded styrofoam could be used to create floorplans from the get-go. So, you could get a piece of styrofoam that is a large mansion/dungeon piece, stackable for multiple layers, and modifiable with a hot wire cutting tool (Say for external dungeon connections.

My question is this, what sort of price point would you be willing to buy an unpainted styrofoam structure that covers roughly 2ft x 2ft for?

Beyond painting, how much other work would you be willing to put into a piece to make it table ready? (For example would you rather have pre-cut doors and windows, making a layout an automatic mansion, or would you rather cut them yourselves so it could be used as a dungeon or a mansion?) How much would it affect your price point?
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[robert4818]

Right now I'm in very early phases of this concept.

Though here's a very rough sketchup version of what I'm talking about more clearly.



This would be a basic floorplan, say a temple. You can see the cut-outs at the top and bottom of the walls that allow for easy stacking.

You can see there are not exterior doors or windows, which is part of what I'm thinking. You'd have to cut those yourself, meaning this could work as a dungeon, ground floor, or above.
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[Vinzent]

Well I can think of a few problems.
First, styrofoam isn't very durable. I wouldn't pay a high price for something that's likely to get trashed at my table.
Second, as you pointed out yourself you are competeng against "free" packaging material.
Lastly it isn't very easy to transport, as are paper maps or even papercraft structures.

At most I would pay $10 for a 2x2 styrofoam model, and that's being generous. I don't know what your time and materials cost for each one would be but I doubt you'd make much money that way, unless you are injection moulding.

Edit- Although it would be a cool gimmick if this "level" was the packing material that also included figurines or pogs and a module.
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[robert4818]

[Cryonic]

While this is an interesting concept, I think the problem is, for the cost of getting a 3D setup for a module, it would be a one-shot thing which is a large expense. Also, storage and transport of them makes them less than ideal for a lot of gaming.
This kind of thing is more likely to be used by wargamers where they can keep mixing and matching the 3D sets to create terrain for their battlefields.

I've played in many games. Most just avoid terrain. A few have used 3D terrain and I've found that while the 3D terrain was visually interesting, it tended to detract from the use of the miniatures. Walls make it hard to position a figure and stairs would really have to be tiered flats instead of the real slopes. And reaching around in the terrain has tended to lead to more messes from fat fingers.

Stacking the items sounds interesting, until you split the party and have to be able to move minis around on both levels. So, why bother ever stacking them up except for transport/storage.
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[robert4818]

[Cryonic]

So, basically a variation on the Dwarven Forge stuff

http://www.dwarvenforge.com/classic-dungeon-sets?page=shop.browse&category_id=4
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[robert4818]

[robert4818]

Google Sketchup allows me to mock up ideas fairly quickly.

I knocked out two of them today playing around.

The first is a Parking garage, which shows off the Stacking concept fairly well.



The other is an Arena. Its not as versatile as other ideas, but you can imagine it being placed in the middle of other tiles to be part of a bigger complex, or on its own as a part of rpg adventure.


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[Jordan Peacock]

Okay, applying "FORNESS(R)" thinking to this:

I am FOR:
* Lightweight pre-fab scenery.

* Customization options.

* Cool 3D modeling you've shown for your concepts.

* Low cost for large terrain.

* Modern/futuristic terrain that isn't "space-Gothic." (I love 40K terrain, but sometimes I just DO NOT want "skullz" on everything.)


I WISH FOR:
* A way to cut the material that doesn't result in "crumbs." I have a hot-wire cutter, which works well with insulation board (AKA "those big sheets of pink stuff at Home Depot"), but not so much with styrofoam. Would it be possible to mold "the pink stuff" or something similar into these shapes and still have fairly low cost and lightness?

>>> Possible Solution: Make some sort of prefabricated "doorway insert" piece that fits into a hole you cut, with a bit of a "lip" around it, sort of like a grommet, to in essence HIDE the ragged edge of your own cut-out doorway, and provide a standardized width for a door piece to be fit into. I don't know what this doorway insert piece would be made out of (hey, it's just a brainstorm), or else I'd be doing this myself.


* A way to paint the styrofoam. If it's pre-painted, that would be nice, but would surely add to the cost ... and if I'm supposed to cut it up, the cuts would expose un-painted surfaces in need of touch-up work. (The pink stuff would have the same problem, unfortunately -- hence my use of acrylic house paint for a base coat to completely seal things before I start spraying.)

* Texture. If I'm going to get pre-fab 3D terrain, I want surface details. I have enough of a handle on basic construction techniques that I can cut up mat board, illustration board, cardboard tubes and such, in order to make large, broad structures. The little details are what prove to be problematic, and which really bring the terrain "to life" -- sci-fi corridors with anti-skid/diamond-plate textures, conduit along the walls, control panels; modern buildings with brick textures, tiled sidewalks; dungeons with "flagstone" floors and nooks in the walls, etc.

>> Possible solution: Pre-printed cardstock inserts, which would make this a sort of hybrid "papercraft/foam" deal. The "texture" would only be in print, but it might still look nice on the table, which is the key point, and the foam would give it more body and ability to hold up miniatures than mere papercraft.

>>> Related to above: Perhaps you could have some cardstock or die-cut cardboard door markers, similar to the standing doors in the Doom Board Game or Space Hulk, with plastic standing clips (doesn't someone manufactures those already?). You cut the doorways, and here are some doors that will go with them.

* Easy storage and transport. How big are these pieces? Instead of having one huge flat piece of styrofoam that's likely to break with a little leverage, it might be better to have smaller modular sections that can be joined together to make a larger design, or stacked up for storage ... or, if applicable, rearranged for slightly different layouts.

* Brainstorming: Multi-purpose. We've got these big styrofoam shapes, right? Wouldn't that be great for storing and transporting miniatures? Maybe there could be some added value in having a styrofoam "starship interior" set that has a few molded foam modules that can be used to represent your starship battleground, but you could also insert some foam spacers in the various compartments that could be used to store minis, and stuff the whole thing into a box for storage and transport.

[Jordan Peacock]

It's not entirely relevant, but I thought I would share some pictures from my Slipstream store game I ran on the 18th, in case this might offer any inspiration.



This is half of my "star base interior" set. At a local thrift store (sadly, recently closed down) I found a plastic cassette tape holder set. This consisted of four plastic trays with ridges set in the sides so that it could hold cassette tapes. The four trays all went into a cloth zipper case, with two sitting side-by-side, and then the other two stacked on top of them.

In essence, what I had was a bunch of little plastic "rooms," and I used a Dremel cutter to cut doorways in between those chambers. (I then had to do a whole lot of cleaning of the plastic "crumbs" left behind -- quite the mess.)

I put down a layer of insulation board foam in the bottom of each chamber (except for some rooms -- not shown above -- where I had a bunch of techno-junk to represent "generator rooms" with greater depth). I used plastic cross-stitch grid from a local craft store (JoAnn Fabric) to make the generic "grill" flooring on top of the foam, and used some old Grendel resin-cast scenery and some broken Star Wars Micro Machines play-sets and other broken toys to supply "techno bits" for the more permanent fixtures, and then supplemented those with other scenery as needed. In my example, I'm using some Space Hulk doors that I acquired after a friend bought the Space Hulk game just for the plastic Space Marines. (Yow.)




Here's a closer view of some of the chambers in use. As you can no doubt see, I had some trouble cleaning up the cuts for the doorways, as you can still see places where the plastic melted under application of the Dremel cutting tool. On my "low priority to-do list" some day is to make some sort of frames for the doorways to hide the ugliness of the cuts.




Here's an older picture of the whole set in use at Necronomicon 2011.

As with my previous thought concerning having the terrain double as storage, I used the case as transport for miniatures and small "sci-fi furniture" pieces for my scenario, so that I would have it all together. I could just stick a piece of foam with "pockets" cut into it to hold miniatures in the open spaces within the trays, put the doors on their sides in other compartments, then stack the thing up, zip up the case, and I'm ready to go.
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[robert4818]

[robert4818]

[robert4818]

With discussions from the manufacturer, I have updated my products images to reflect closer what they'll look like when made.

(Close, this is meant to resemble the grey foam that they produce, as seen in the picture above.)
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Aperture Science:
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[Jordan Peacock]

Ah, I like the mottled grey look. That seems like a much nicer starting point that would work for various settings.

Another thought: Grids. Will there be any indication of grid-lines on the models? I can see pros and cons for including such a thing, but I just thought I'd mention it. (I personally just use a tape measure, rather than being confined to a grid when it comes to terrain.)
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[robert4818]

[robert4818]

New question.

I'm thinking that 2ft x 2ft will be a bit unwieldy, and am thinking of dropping it to 18in square.

Would that work better for you as a user?
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Aperture Science:
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[robert4818]

Figured I would share what these things are starting to look like as you tile them.
This image uses 18" square tiles vice 24" tiles.


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Aperture Science:
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[Other Mike]

[robert4818]

Just an update.

I've finished putting together a prototype of the product. This is pieced together from Foamboard, not EPS, also, it is glued together, whereas the final product will be one solid piece. However, this should give you fairly good idea of how this thing will be shaped when its finished. Forgive the chunky look of the cutting. My knife has dulled quite a bit. Needless to say, the final piece will look much better than this.

Later, I plan on smoothing out the edges, and probably putting on a coat of textured paint.

Enjoy!


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Aperture Science:
We do what we must, because we can.