ADVANCED HEROQUEST - DUNGEON TILES

I have been thinking a long about getting some Advanced Heroquest dungeon tiles.

I have always loved the concept and the versatility, especially for a product from the early 90s.

You can buy the dungeon tiles on Ebay. Just search for Advanced Heroquest and you will find plenty of offers, from the whole set to single pieces.

These kind of tiles had, and to a certain degree still have, a good combination of quality and usability.

However, today we can obtain excellent results by exploring other means to reproduce those type of tiles.

MAKING YUR OWN DUNGEON TILES

To the present day, I know of three main techniques to reproduce puzzle-like dungeon tiles.

Handmade. Simple and straight. You make the tiles, one by one, with your own hands. This is possible, but you are going to have some problems when it is time to make the puzzle-like junction that characterize each tile.

3D-printing. This is another interesting solution. I suppose it is the most expensive one however. Using 3D-printing for such kind of product, basically a flat shape, doesn’t sound like a practical way. I’d rather employ 3D-printing to make dungeon features and furniture, other than tiles.

Laser cutting. Here we are. This technique is the most efficient to make such kind of tiles. You obtain uniform tiles and it is not going to be so expensive. However, you are not going to use cardboard. Acrylic plastic remains the best solution. I also say that, being transparent, it is even better. By using transparent acrylic plastic you will be able to overlap the transparent tiles on themed terrain, thus making the tiles even more versatile. Nothing prevents us from exploring the possibility of using colored (and semi-transparent) acrylic plastic, but this, more than an option, is just an add-on. In addition, laser cutting allows us to explore wood as an alternate and elegant solution to obtain what we want.

LASER CUTTING

I run a school/workshop where we teaches patternmaking and clothmaking, and I draw and sell special rulers for this kind of profession.

As you can guess, all these rulers are made in acrylic with laser cutting machines.

It took me few minutes to realize that laser cutting was the most practical solution.

So, I “grabbed” illustrator and managed to recreate the matrix of the Advanced Heroquest dungeon tiles.

I just decided to make a few changes, to make the tiles a bit more practical.

First. I decided that each corridor tile had to be six squares long, just to represent the average movement rate of a D&D/Pathfinder (or whatever) rpg game. Advanced Heroquest base corridor was five squares long for the same reason.

Second. Each square had to be 28 mm (a bit more than one inch). Again, due to practical reasons. Most miniatures employs 25 mm bases, other 28 mm (not a lot to say the truth), but when you employ 25 mm miniatures on 25 mm squares, you may have miniatures too close to one another, creating a mess.

Third. The internal lines that create the effect of a squared grid have to be light marks. I did not want those line to be groovy. The lines just need to be seen for practical purposes, but they must not be the main trait of the tiles.

Fourth. Advanced Heroquest used tiles known as “Dead End”. These were tiles 2 squares wide per 5 squares long, and represented a dead corridor. A set of dungeon tiles need to include such kind of tile, but not necessarily they have to be long as a standard corridor is. So, I decided to “cut” the Dead End tile to make it a 2 x 2 squares tile. More practical after all.