The guys who make Dungeons and Dragons (TSR, Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro) have had hits and misses over the years.
Like version 3.0.
Miss.
Oh dear god, what a miss.
And like Dungeon Tiles.
The exact opposite.
Serious hit.
So much so, that you can't even find the first two kits in the series any more.
Released in August 2006, the things retailed for less than ten bucks.
And they were an instant hit among the graph paper set.
When my pen and paper game went to version 4.0 six months ago, one of the things I wanted to do, in keeping with the spirit of the new rules, was to speed up the battle-preps.
Which meant moving away from hastily scrawled graph paper battle maps.
Dungeon Tiles looked like the answer. Sturdy cardboard cutouts, gridded, and printed with different images on either side, they provided fast builds of complex rooms for combat.
The Wizards D&D site still lists the first group of tiles as if they were still available in stores.
Wrong.
Thirty bucks on Amazon.
$32 on Ebay.
None of the bookstore sites carry them, and good luck finding them on the shelves.
Burned about 40 miles bouncing between 9 different bookstores.
There are maybe seven or eight volumes in the series now. Most of them are still around, retailing for $9.95.
I've put together enough tiles to work for me using several of the later sets.
But those first two?
Ghosts.
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