Tenfold Dungeon is a brand new range of modular terrain for tabletop RPGs, made from cardboard to hit more affordable price points. Funded on Kickstarter in 2019, a range of Tenfold products were backed by over 1,200 people. Today, we are taking a look at two sets from the range: The Town and Dungeons & Sewers. The Town focuses on inns, town halls and townhouses, while Dungeons & Sewers includes the likes of lairs, slimed corridors and more. However, do the Tenfold Dungeon sets allow dungeon masters to craft stunning locations straight out of the box? Let’s find out!
Regardless of which Tenfold Dungeon base set you choose to get, the rooms are literally the box. Taking off the sleeve gamers are able to lift the top half of the box, flipping it over to reveal one of the two biggest rooms. Within the two main big room boxes are a number of smaller rooms, accessory pieces and rather importantly clips. With T shaped, corner and door clips, Dungeon Masters can quickly push various rooms together and then lock them together.
In both The Town and Dungeons & Sewers sets 12 room boxes are included, with a variety of included sizes. The largest two in each set house all of the others, though within that some medium rooms or corridors then contain smaller boxes. All of the rooms feature a 1 inch grid. This sizing is ideal for those that play the likes of Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. The grid is subtle enough to not distract from the visual appearance of rooms, whilst making distances in encounters easily readable.
Whilst not featuring the 1 inch grid each set includes 6 staircases, again made from cardboard. These take a few minutes to construct, but once built they can be stored within the boxes – so this is only time being spent during the initial unboxing. Combining with the doors, these accessories allow players to easily have builds that traverse multiple floors of a building or go deeper into the dungeons.
An additional usage from the rooms is keeping them upside down, which seems counterintuitive. This is because on the outside of the room boxes in The Town set are external house designs, with grids for encounters on the outside of the rooms in the Dungeon & Sewers set. The Town external buildings even have roof tile patterns on what is normally their base. It does mean looking at The Town boxes when used regularly the outside designs are upside down, though having the option to flip them for a secondary usage makes this worthwhile.
Regardless of which way up players use the Tenfold Dungeon rooms, they feature detailed illustrations that help bring locations to life. With The Town locations including inns, town halls and even a clock tower, there are cosy looking fireplaces and elegant areas for adventurers to explore. The colours aren’t as vivid in the Dungeon & Sewers set – compared to the photos or The Town set. However, their dark cobweb filled and damp looking environments set the mood perfectly. While there aren’t windows with light spilling in across the floors in the sewers, like the glorious Magistrate room in The Town, there are water zones, candlelight corners and crumbling stone.
Tenfold Dungeon rooms and walls are predominantly 2 inches tall, allowing the glorious artwork to flourish. Walls of this height can restrict visibility slightly, when miniatures are placed right up against a wall. The height allows for the illustrations to shine though, with great details making locations more believable – such as the light coming through windows hitting the floor. Plus, in the wide open rooms miniatures are clearly visible from around the table. The height also allows for the tall door accessories to be the right heights, flush with the top of the walls.
When it comes to 3D terrain, especially as they are normally made from plastic, there is often a high price tag. While if something seems affordable to you is very much a personal thing, with Tenfold Dungeon there is certainly the potential to be better value. With an RRP of £50, this is half the price of a single base set of WizKids WarLock Tiles for example. Dwarven Forge normally comes out more expensive again, if pre-painted, and the options of 3D printing aren’t readily available to most. There’s also the fact that for that price gamers are getting 12 rooms, of various sizes – each with their own unique illustrations.
With these sets, players are easily able to construct small and medium sized builds. Be that a tight tavern or a higgledy piggledy row of houses, a dodgy basement or branching sewer system. Combining them is where things get interesting though, with the difference between the rooms’ themes. Dungeon Masters can have a multi-story building for players to work their way through, before finding a secret trapdoor into a spawning dungeon below. Having the distinct change in art style from a master bedroom to a sewer crossing, is great for players to instantly understand the shift in environment – with the visual change very obvious.
Customizability hasn’t been lost as part of this trade off and this goes above the included doors and stairs. While the rooms are all of fixed sizes and shapes, a range of walls and clips are included. These allow the dungeon master to cut a large room in two, box off a small section and customise the floor plans of builds. They can even be used to hide the illustrations on the side of the box, despite how visually captivating they may be, if they don’t quite fit with the environment the DM is going for.
One concern I had when unboxing was if I’d ever manage to get it all back in the box. Tightly packed, with accessories and clips, both Tenfold Dungeon sets are surprisingly easy to pack back up. Both sets do a wonderful job of bringing common D&D locations to life, whether that’s stopping off at night at a roadside inn or diving into the rat infested dungeons of a castle. They each have a special edge, the Dungeons & Sewers set has slightly higher usage potential – given the fact that dungeons are more likely to see combat and thus the 1 inch grid and the stunning illustrations can bring those to life. The Town then flips the boxes upside down to give DMs another usage for bringing outside scenes somewhat to life. Either way DMs will be able to immerse their adventuring parties that bit more with Tenfold Dungeon.
(Editor’s Note: Tenfold Dungeon The Town and Dungeons & Sewers were provided to us by Asmodee for the review. These RPG accessories are currently available from local board game stores! Find your local store here.)