Dungeon Tiles and Counters: A Storage Solution
Posted on : 01-01-2011 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Advice, D&D, Links
Tags: dnd, rpg
1
I am an avid collector of WotC’s Dungeon Tiles; they’re sturdy, attractive, and versatile, and I use them in every game. As such, I have quite a few of them. I have at least one copy of every published set except for, I believe, Hidden Crypts (no longer in print). I also just purchased the City Master Set, though I do not yet have either the Dungeon or Wilderness Master Sets (though I’ll likely pick up one or both at some point). I also just recently picked up the Monster Vault, which comes with a metric buttload of monster counters. In addition to that, I have the counters from the Red Box, as well as counters from an earlier starter set. All this begs the question: where the heck do I keep them? I’ll tell you, with pictures.
This is my storage solution. There are two craft carts here, stacked one on top of the other, and the whole thing rolls. I obtained both of these from JoAnn Fabrics, where you can buy one for around $70 (I got both of mine at half price). Some of the drawers are empty, but I’m going to show you what’s in all the drawers that are not.
On top of the cart is the box for the City Master Tile set. I store all of my urban, sewer, and building interior tiles in this box, for easy of reference and transportation. I’ll probably do the same with the Wilderness set when I get that.
In the top drawer, which is divided into neat compartments, are all of the tokens that come with the Monster Vault. There are quite a few, as you can see, and I have them divided into categories for easy searching. For example, dragons have their own compartment, as do fey creatures, elementals, and undead.
The next drawer down contains the tokens obtained from the Red Box and other sources. These ones aren’t sorted in any way. See, each of these tokens has one monster on one side, and a completely different monster on the other; this makes sorting them by type pretty much impossible. I’m treating these tokens as spares, for when I need a few more of a given bad guy. Nice to have, but not my go-to drawer.
After a few empty drawers, the next two drawers contain my minis. I’ve grouped them by size, but there’s not really any other organization here. I don’t have a lot of minis, and they’re easy to pick out visually, so I don’t think I need any more organization.
In the bottom cart, the top two drawers are both divided into compartments. I used these to sort and store my small, fiddly tiles, so that I could find them easily.
This drawer contains my underground/cave tiles. I only have a few sets of these, so a single small drawer suffices.
The next drawer contains my lone home-made dungeon tile, an airship that belongs to the party. As I create additional custom tiles, they’ll go in this drawer. I made this tile by printing it on card stock and mounting it on foam board.
In this drawer I have my various poster maps, obtained from a variety of sources, as well as a dry-erasable, fold-up, blank battle map that I can use when my tiles simply won’t cut it. I love poster maps, and I’m very happy that WotC is starting to include them in their products again.
This big, deep drawer contains all of my generic dungeon/crypt-themed tiles. I have quite a few of them, so if I wind up getting the Dungeon Master set, I probably won’t be able to keep them all in that box, or even in that drawer.
These are all of my outdoor and wilderness tiles. I’ve got a few sets of these, and the Athas tiles are in here, too. When I get the Wilderness set, I’ll probably put my wilderness tiles in that box and separate the desert tiles out into their own, smaller drawer.
The final drawer contains all of the three-dimensional tile elements that I’ve collected so far. If I get more, I’m not sure where I’ll put them; I guess I’ll have to start a new drawer.