How To Take Your Ruins Battle Map from SAD to EPIC!!!! (D&D Battle Maps) 

Regarding your “concerns” about this type of video: 1.) I’ve been playing D&D many years and it never hurts to hear a reminder about “basic” ideas to enliven combat 2.) Your design order and process may be different from others and help them create fresh scenes with new perspectives. It helps to use different methodologies when planning different encounters to help mix things up. 3.)This looks beautiful and fun etc. and it helps inspire the imaginations of viewers. That is a huge aspect of content creation and consumption that drives people to click - they want to be inspired not just taught or reminded. This layout looks inspiring. FWIW This is a lot of terrain and may be unrealistic at this size of board for many DMs - a quick comment and “tear down” to a show a smaller focused scene with only two buildings, a few trees, etc. might help that. Great work! Subscribed

Im into fantasy but I’ve never played D&D, my brother does. I make potions and i love to craft. I stumbled across your channel not long ago while searching for inspiration. I love your excitement and very much enjoy these videos. Your channel has encouraged me to try D&D and i will be having my first beginners game at the end of this month. My brother will be the DM and give us some guidance. I just wanted to let you know because when you think it might be something “everybody already knows” its people like me that truly appreciate the knowledge you share. Love your videos and I’m enjoying looking at all the past things you’ve made. (Also you mentioned you went to school in boston before and thats where im from, wicked awesome. 😂)

i love these kind of episodes, they are definitely useful even if i already know all of the tips, every time i actually see it in practice and not just in my head i feel like i get better at coming up with creative scenes. and it's fun seeing all the terrain you have. my collection is pretty small so far but i can make some pretty cool smaller encounters with what i have

Huge thank you to Garman and the Storycraft Society team for working with us again!! You guys are the best! Let us know if you have any questions at all about our terrain and which of our models might work best for your next encounter!

Man absolutly dont think like this, your vídeos are super usefull and inspiring! Love your vídeos, hello from Brasil! (Sorry The bad english)

Thumbnail build looks perfect to me for an armymen battle field especially since I have/had tons to set up 😅

Really cool vid! Really like the scene, it especially hit it when you added the walkways. Personally I felt the tent made the scene a little bit overcrowded. I'd keep everything as is (including props) but I'd remove the tents (or most of them anyway). The narrative in my head was that inhabitants (bandits or whatnot) would use existing ruins as base for their shelters, just adding a few planks or tarp here and there for the roofing and walls.

Dont you worry mate, that table isnt ordinary at all. Nor did i think "yeah...and?" or something on the line. Amazing table for sure. :)

Garman, I love watching your videos. You both inspire and encourage me. You seem like a normal dude having fun! You're the reason I bought a few things from your links and now my players are even more excited to play! You're doing a great job! Seriously.

Thank you for making this video. I really appreciate that you show your process.

My god, would love to have the chance to do stuff like this... That's amazing and I love this series, it's really helpful :)

Your comment at 8:20 is exactly why I think a good bit of terrain is SO important for cool encounters. Creating problems that aren't necessarily solved by using the character sheet.

really like the last peace that look sweet and gods I want to paint it

Very good insight, and the table looks amazing

Great video and great looking set up. I definitely find that thinking about what they were before they became ruins helps with the set up. The only caveat that I might add (which I do because I've been 100% guilty of it and thankfully my players called me out on it afterwards) is that DMs should be conscious of not turning a battlemat into a wargame table. I've sometimes found that too much space to run around in can really bog down combat.

I very much appreciate this video. I started DMing for the first time in like 25 years. This really added to my concept of how to set up an encounter.

These videos are inspiring. I don't at the moment have space for actual 3d terrain, I miss it.

100% love these kinds of videos. Like some others have said I probably know most of the tips on some level, but seeing it and hearing your take on it out loud is super entertaining, useful and inspiring. Hope you keep doing ones like this.

This video has been so so so helpful for me! I know I am going to come back to this video when I want encounters to become more memorable in my campaign! I always forget that I could do more with elevation levels! and the tip about the poster putty is something I never would have come to all by myself!

Keep it up!. I love the setting the scene videos. They're an inspiration...and not just for dnd.

That looks amazing! Nice job! :D

Great work Garman! Love your vids man and wish I was your neighbor! LOL So many beautiful toys....

Great video, I enjoy all your your videos, I've learned a ton just watching you. Thank you for you hard work sending these out.

That set looks fantastic!!

You might want to add some bushes to your scatter terrain. A ruined area would be full of them. I personally don't think the trail of platforms going nowhere fits in with fantasy as it does with science fiction. Actual finished boards are a valuable thing for making more weather proof shelter, or an improvised watch tower/platform with cover so you can keep an eye out and not get seen/shot. The improvised hut of the "lady of negotiable affection" from the Romance of Alexander manuscript is a cool example of the sort of thing you might see in an army or brigand camp that uses reclaimed lumber. It's on my list of things to make, you might find it inspiring.

Great tips and cool layout! It'd be nice to see a before and after pic at the end of the video for these. Keep up the good work!!

They are useful, and entertaining, keep up the good work.

Great primer on upping the game. 3D terrain is so good at showing where things are, in relation. May as well raise it up a notch, and it need not be complicated. Good stuff

This was very engaging and helpful! I loved this video and it made me hit subscribe because I’d LOVE to see more videos like it ❤

Great job 👍

I really like the style of the terrain being designed at Terrainify, and will happily buy their files to print at home, I think that's the best value you can get as a customer. I'm a busy guy, I love spending money on efficiency - paying for labor, paying for paint, it makes sense a lot of the time if its reasonable. Unfortunately this is where I think terrainify falls well short - $129 for the naked ruins, I can somewhat get behind. You're basically paying for the file ($30) + materials (lets just assume a spool of PLA...but its more likely a half spool...so $20-30), and paying $70 for the labor of design and implementation - I can totally get behind that, and if you are someone who doesn't have a printer, absolutely I think they do offer good value. A table's worth of terrain for your skirmish game or role playing game for $129 is right about what you should expect, not expensive, not inexpensive, middle of the road. But then the painted options - I am staggered. $300 for a grey drybrush, just does not make any economical sense. Looking at some of the Grimdark stuff, its even wilder - $800 for a grey set of grimdark ruins? I don't know their operation, so its entirely possible that as a small company they are intentionally making painted options super expensive so that people don't buy it/inundate them and overload their small team, but it feels a little out of touch with the scenery commission market place. As an avid printer/painter/hobbying DM/wargamer, I recommend that people absolutely buy the files, absolutely buy the unpainted sets, I think those have great value. Best value, honestly, is to buy the file and pay your buddy to print them, and spend about 2 hours painting the set in black primer with a grey drybrush. Almost forgot - Garman great video, love the thought that goes into setting up your encounters, it has absolutely helped me in making my tables more dynamic and engaging for players. Elevation is so key, even in a forest encounter, or a ruin encounter, or any encounter - put things on the board that make your players think differently, and watch the fun unfold. Love love love!

I really like this style and topic of video

Another highly enjoyable video. As far as the "thoughts", for me when I make a video I don't worry if some thinks 'Yeah and???' I know that there are some that don't know what may be obvious to a more experienced crafter/gamer. I just make my video and maybe it'll help someone out.

Useful and entertaining

Great vid.

I love it!

There is a big difference between terrain for war gaming, and terrain for adventuring. The former is often confused for use in the later. Thanks for your vid.

Focus management helps the game to flow into an exciting story of epic adventure ! Good presentation

I agree, you have to plan the board out, but there is a such thing as being too convoluted. A little abstraction goes a long way.

Great video and top tips. I need so much more terrain 😂

Good key things to keep in mind for sure. Though the difference between the first and last scene is seems a bit cheeky. One is a scene with 4 pieces of terrain, the other has probably close to a hundred. That difference is always going to make for a better encounter. That being said, your advice is still good as someone who lazily laid out their 100 pieces would be much less interesting then what you have done.

0:14 Well, actually, that's a corner of a building *adjusts glasses*

So glad to see you discuss the use of skills, checks, elevation, and sight lines in an rpg combat situation. Walk and thump combat sucks and just becomes an hour of attack and damage rolls.

Great table for a skirmish wargame (Sellswords and Spellslingers or Rangers of Shadowdeep for example) but far too much work/time to set up and clear away on the fly for an in-session rpg encounter. There has to be a balance between railroading your games to ensure the party reach a given encounter at a given time so you can set all this up beforehand versus putting down less terrain to run an unplanned/unscripted encounter just as your party find it. Lovely table regardless.

That is such an awesome set scene!!! Do your players know how good they have it??? I sure hope so

Huzzah,, just an idea but maybe take a high resolution image of your maps and sell printed maps to the rest of us that have not the time or skills to produce such good terrain sets .

Great video. Can you tell me where you got your battle mat?

could you please tell me where you got those hay "blocks"? they look amazing and i cant find any good ones :c

I'm pretty new to DnD but I'm curious about all the walkways on the top. I was checking the PHB (don't have the DMG) and there is no benefit for having the high ground. So why would you players care to get up there?

You need to make a privy. Where are they to go potty?

What battle map is that from? I have tried searching but I can't find it

*_1st thing you did wrong was having a flat printed mat. You should have had made the board, static grass and all. The rest is very well done, adding and adding, except the cutesy pine trees; keep those out of your board and only use the other type of trees. Cutesy trees are for children._*