My kids and I played Gloomhaven virtually every week-end last year, thoroughly enjoying building up our characters through combat and exploration of the game many scenarios.

And then … we ran out of scenarios!

What if we could create our own role-playing game? and make it easy to create any shape of room, not just rectangular rooms? and even add staircases and multiple levels?

As a start, we modeled a simple hex in Blender, to match the size of Gloomhaven hexes - 33mm wide, 8mm tall.

The holes are designed to fit 5mm Neodymium Magnets, such as those. Simply hammering them in place. They can freely move and align with othere magnets once in place.

We can then add some texturees to the blocks - wood, tiles, and maybe a few objects - treasure chests, doors, barrels. It all feels very satisfying to snap the pieces together. They align automatically, and are easy to move around and reposition.

What will happen to the intrepid adventurer?

Now that we have a reliable shape for the magnet holes, we can also add free-standing obstacles with magnets underneath, that can align on top of the tiles. This way we can add a bit of variety without having to reconfigure the tiles themselves.

And finally adding pillars and ladders, we can build in the 3rd dimension. The magnets are strong enough to support a span of 3 tiles between pillars.

What will happen to the intrepid adventurer?????

To be continued …

Last modified on 2020-12-15