The Dungeon of Kazamir, In Miniature

You definitely need a longer and wider table for the beast!

A lot of work for only twelve or thirteen rooms--better make them count and filled with interesting things. Not pictured are two separate pieces of the dungeon entrance chamber and tomb vaults.

Hey the dungeon paneling is coming off! It needs some buttoning up with glue and maybe a suitable calk to cover the foam tops of the walls and conceal cracks and paper edges, maybe painted to look like mineral deposit. Kazamir is, in fact, submerged beneath a lake.

I don't know how a super mutant from Fallout ended up here but the thief looks a bit nonchalant; hopefully he is holding an orb of power or a set of ioun stones in his hand.

My most ambitious styrofoam model to date is a level of Kazamir dungeon, giving me a few thousand square feet to run encounters.  It is definitely in need of some finishing touches and doesn't have much realism but it's definitely ready for table top action.

A modeling tip I can pass on for very cheap and easy rock terrain is the use of paper towels dipped in glue-water mixture and pressed, draped and folded into, over and around cardboard insert forms. I grew fatigued and skipped the final application which would have rendered the rock formations very realistic looking and that would have been to have made a paper mache pulp compound or some other filler and rubbed and worked it into the folds of the paper towels which would have concealed their nature and texture.

The cardboard tiles work well as flagstones and they too are free materials from a recycle bin and can be cut easily by making strips with a box knife and then chopping them up with a paper cutter. You can get a gob-load of floor tiles pretty quick. If one were meticulous enough they could be in perfect one inch squares to facilitate movement calculations faster. However, in hindsight, the tiles should have been coated with something to fill in the grooves on their surfaces and to fill the cracks in the floor.

Ultimately, due to skipping these steps, I must deem it a bit of a washout in terms of hiding what it is made of and achieving any realistic effect. In terms of sheer fun and practical use, though, I am more than rewarded. It is not without a certain aesthetic vibe, and it will most likely be unveiled, room by room, by candle light since I like to play my games by such light.

I like my cave system-most of the cave chambers are accessible only by use of secret doors and are scattered throughout the level, with a tripartite cave chain as a final ultimate destination.

Total time in model, probably a little under 20 hours. Total cost, not more than $20. And I do have to say it is surprisingly stiff and durable. It can be carried sideways with nothing breaking and stored up right on one end with no bending.

I am currently researching professional and serious hobby modeling techniques and planning on using some higher grade materials and more painstaking methods to create some really pretty, durable dioramas and terrain sculptures. I find the train model enthusiast tutorials very helpful on the video sharing communities sites.

Hope to share more and may post a play-through of Kazamir with pictures when I finally get to test some players against the ruins of the Jennerak!