The adventure continues ... battling for birthday cake in the 3D dungeon

It was another Saturday and a chance to continue the adventure with my son. I've been pretty busy the past couple of weekends so it was nice to have him demanding we play a game from Thursday this week! As it happened I was clearing out the loft that morning and dug out a huge box containing my prized 3D dungeon.

This was the first big project I worked on when I got back into gaming in 2011. Before the bug truly hit, my goal was just to create a 3D board that I could play games like Heroquest or Warhammer Quest on ... and I thought I'd be okay with a few orcs, zombies and skeletons to populate it ... suffice to say my collection has grown somewhat since then ...

This is one of the more advanced rooms ... with spider and fomorian

Anyway, this was back in the BC days (Before Children) so I had plenty of time to work on the project. Pretty much any weekend, or any day I was on a late shift in work, I could put in a couple hours. And I had space to leave polystyrene, knives, glue and paint scattered about the shed which would not really be advisable these days! I managed to make a pretty sizeable dungeon, but as the baby was born and life turned manic, the work had to be put to one side and the rooms and corridors packed away in a dusty box to be home to a few fat spiders.

All the while I was making it, though, I was thinking how someday I might get to use it in a game with my son ... as yet unborn. Yesterday it got a new lease of life as we took over the lounge floor and spread out the dungeon to his design. He delighted in seeing the water room with the dragon fountain, and the pit full of snakes.

Every dungeon needs a dinosaur. And in the background you can just see the snake pit.

It was his birthday during the week so this time the "treasure" was bits of left over cake and blue icing! Cut up pretty small - that blue icing does crazy things to kids.

We had the Paw PAtrol out again as the heroes of the expedition! And when he realised their vehicles could fit inside the corridors - wow. There was huge excitement. I actually argued AGAINST bringing a fire engine into a dungeon but hey, it's as much his game as mine. And it paid off when he started to use the imagination: "Marhsall will climb the ladder to get to the bridge. He can use his water cannon to shoot the dragon's mouth".

We needed to take over the living room floor to fit the dungeon in!

He also put the Roper in the water room because he thought it looked like an octopus.
And he has a point...

'It's a bit lika an octopus! He likes the water'. Fair enough....

By the way, in case anyone's interested in the making of the dungeon:

The technique was pretty simple and the early rooms and corridors were fairly basic. I would get a flat sheet of polystyrene, score it with a pen and ruler to divide it into a grid of 1.5 inch squares. Onto this I used chunks of packaging polystyrene cut into bricks to build up walls, pillars and doorways.

Initially I was using some messy epoxy glue but then I found Hard As Nails which is great stuff. It is cheap (I get it in the bargain store for 1.50 euro) and it has a texture like tile filler, so it glues pretty much anything. It is not quite literally Hard As Nails, you do get the occasional breakage, but a dab more glue does the trick.

 I coated all this with a mixture of plaster-of-paris, water and PVA glue, to give it a rocky effect and seal it. This was important as if I wanted to spray the polystyrene, it needed to be sealed otherwise it would melt when sprayed.  I then discovered Stone Effect spray paint. It created a decent finish which I sometimes then painted over AGAIN with basic acrylic craft paint and a large, cheap brush.

Bear in mind this was back in 2011 and my modelling and painting skills / knowledge were EXTREMELY rusty after a 15 year hiatus! But at least I had plenty of time to work on them...

The later rooms got a bit more sophisticated. I added extra features like pits, pillars, wooden bridges (using coffee stirrers stained with brown ink), stalagmites (chunks of polystyrene coated liberally with the PVA mix as above). I also inserted a few wall features, mostly stuff scraped from bargain stores like plastic skulls, shields and so on.