It is done, it is FI-NA-LY done! Well, part 1 is, the construction parts and the very first modular set of tiles to use with it. I am so happy; it took me so long and it was so much work, but I am glad I did it.
I am extremely proud and happy to present:
The WDhex Revolving Labyrinth
I have mentioned it before, in my blog in April 2021 when I had the first parts of V1 ready. So yeah, I worked on this a looooong time. But that was not the start of it. Since I am over the moon, I am just going to tell the whole story. If you do not care for that, that’s fine, the links where you can download the files (for free, as always) can be found at the bottom of this blog.
I think it really started in 2017. I had been helping my friend from Jack of Dice selling dice at his stall at festivals. Because I also got a lot of questions about tabletop RPG and D&D5e in general the idea of doing demos had creeped into my mind. When I asked my friend, he immediately said that was a great idea. In December 2017 I did my first D&Demos at the Archeon MidWinter fair, and I loved it. It probably was a success because I got to do more demos at more festivals.
When I was preparing for the demos to run at Elfia in April 2019 I got this idea in my head: a revolving labyrinth. I have a love for mazes and labyrinths, and I even know the difference between them. I am not going to bore you with the explanation. I wanted to use a circular labyrinth, but I wanted to make it a bit more challenging; I wanted to make the rings spin.
Now, keep in mind that this was for D&Demos. About half of the people who join in are experienced players, but the other half has never played before. Some people have not even heard of a thing called tabletop RPG before. I had already discovered that I really needed maps to be able to let those people understand what was going on. Getting people to wrap their imagination around this on a static map would probably be very hard. So, I decided to make a moving map, which I did, and it was lame. I had some crafts stuff, and with the help from Willem I made a great little crappy revolving labyrinth out of foam, paper, glue, and lots (lots!) of sticky tape.
The demo was a great success. The players loved it, I loved it and while running the demo’s I discovered the possibilities of a labyrinth like that. When characters would end up on different rings in a round, I would split the party. It was hilarious and great. It also had a great little feature: because I could control how fast the players went through the labyrinth, I had a lot of control over the duration of the demo. With only 1-hour timeslots and players who have different paces in each group, this was very nice to have.
Around that time, we also got our first 3d printer and just days after that Elfia I printed my first D&D stuff and I learned that it was possible to make your own 3d designs. The first thing that popped in my mind was: I can make this labyrinth, but durable!
It took me some time to acquire the skills I needed. I had to learn Fusion360 to make the base construction rings. I made V1, where I did not listen to Willems advice on how to make it sturdy. After that I made V2, and I did listen to him. And I made modular tiles in Blender to put on the base construction rings.
I even dug up my chaotic and incomplete notes from the demo in 2019 and made a somewhat decent (I hope) little adventure out of it, in case someone needs inspiration for what kind of quest you could run with the labyrinth. Does that make Evaldir's Labyrinth my first published adventure? I am not sure more will follow but I think the idea is pretty funny.
To be honest, this first set of tiles is a bit boring in my point of view. Don’t get me wrong, I like it and I am very proud of it, but the name of this set says it all: basic stone set.
It is basic, it is functional, it is great for a first set, I am happy.
Now, let’s start making something more interesting…
Links to get the files:
Printables - the base construction
Printables - the basic stone set
MyMiniFactory - the base construction
MyMiniFactory - the basic stone set
