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I did a look and didnt see a thread for this yet, DF's next kickstarter is off and running, already over the $1M mark. The pledge levels and stuff have been a bit confusing trying to figure out what you actually get but they just had an update that kind of explains it better

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dwarvenforge/caverns-deep-by-dwarven-forge-handcrafted-game-ter/description

Still got rediculous prices I see.

I’m not gonna be making a dungeon when 1 room is in excess of $300.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Still got rediculous prices I see.

I’m not gonna be making a dungeon when 1 room is in excess of $300.

Looks like a lot of other people will.

Mugaaz wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Still got rediculous prices I see.

I’m not gonna be making a dungeon when 1 room is in excess of $300.

Looks like a lot of other people will.

Looks like a comparative handful will. DF joined the long tradition of hobby companies deciding they'd rather sell more expensive things to fewer people because there are always folk with more money than time(or, frequently, sense), and it's the easier option. So long as nothing comes along that disrupts your market of course, good thing that whole 3D printing thing is a total fad...

There's a lot of disposable income out there, it seems (or folks who feel they can dispose of their income, anyway)

DF stuff is fantastic, but really expensive. I have a bunch and it rarely gets used beyond toy/doll houses for my kids. One of these days, I'll get a game in on it!!

There is nothing wrong with catering to a certain crowd.

I own way too much Dwarven Forge, but it's 90% the old resin stuff which I really liked and was borderline reasonable. I did, however, buy up everything on eBay in a 2-3 month period many years ago when I had a job which afforded me an extensive amount of spending capital.

I bought into the initial dwarvenite Kickstarter and was very pleased with what I got - a lot of stuff, good quality, and not super expensive. However...I have not bought into any of the other, what, five or six since then? They've gone increasingly far from layman pieces to absurdity and more and more less-useful, less-modular pieces. Sadly they've essentially lost a customer, and I still have the means to buy in to most of the Kickstarters.

I do agree they've probably realized they can get 200 people paying $3-4K per Kickstarter easier than 2500 people buying in at $100 or whatever. It is a bit of a shame though, their initial sets were modular and excellent (and match well with the old resin stuff). I'm happy I have more than enough to have a great dungeon, but I think I'm probably done with them. Sad.

Same ditto. I have noticed that you can find more budget-friendly game tile KS (eg. Forge Prints), so that's one market reason to cater to a higher-end crowd.

They have a market, and that's good. THey do inspire me to
maybe get a 3d printer someday.

I love this stuff, but I kind of wish I had never started down the road in the first place - the last couple kickstarters have been downright baffling to figure out, and price aside A. my use for it is largely aspirational and B. it's a pain to store.

But, like, I have some cavern pieces from their second KS, so it feels almost negligent not to pick up a couple of pieces from this one to add some variety...

Not that they make figuring out how to do that easy, of course.

 malfred wrote:
They have a market, and that's good. THey do inspire me to
maybe get a 3d printer someday.

I did this. you can get a good printer for $250-300 and each tile is roughly 25 cents to print. Plus you get to make anything you really want.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
There is nothing wrong with catering to a certain crowd.

Nor being disappointed that DF has decided to cater only to those with 6-7 figure salaries who want overly fiddly dioramas vs. gaming products. We're over $700 for ONE room. It's absurd.

ubik2000 wrote:
I love this stuff, but I kind of wish I had never started down the road in the first place - the last couple kickstarters have been downright baffling to figure out, and price aside A. my use for it is largely aspirational and B. it's a pain to store.

But, like, I have some cavern pieces from their second KS, so it feels almost negligent not to pick up a couple of pieces from this one to add some variety...

Not that they make figuring out how to do that easy, of course.

And that's more or less where they lost me. Confusing Kickstarters and a heavy, heavy emphasis on little doo-dads and nicknacks, for which I have zero interest. I don't need magnetized or plug-n-play sconces for my walls. What I'd like are large, robust pieces. The taverns/building Kickstarter was a killer for me, and what started me down the road of ignoring future stuff by them. Rather than a simple, useful tavern-esque set matching the old stuff (which was grand, I have a couple sets), they went with an overly complex, baffling super-mega-modular build, wherein one or two rooms cost the same as the entire tavern kits used to.

I am sure (proof is the success of their KS) that there is a market for the wave of tiny doo-dads...but I'm more interested in genuinely adding to the layout of my dungeons. The more bespoke, tiny, modular the pieces get the less I'm interested. I have an entire box of 'dungeon dressing" stuff I've sourced and that's more than enough for me. I really do wish they'd simply re-do the older style sets...just make those in dwarvenite and call it a day. The fiddly stuff is a huge turn-off.

194 people bought their top tier pledge. I wish I had $2200 to toss into a pit.

These look amazing, but they're only barely usable for something like D&D, which usually relies on squares for movement and combat.

 McNinja wrote:
194 people bought their top tier pledge. I wish I had $2200 to toss into a pit.

These look amazing, but they're only barely usable for something like D&D, which usually relies on squares for movement and combat.

Most of the people buying these will spend FAR more time playing with their army mans alone than actually using them in games. None of these multi-tiered, removable wall, castle setups are remotely useful for actually playing something like D&D. The old DF pieces were somewhat usable on the fly, but now that seemingly every part has lightup crap, magnets, smoke machines, sound effects, and kung-fu grip my players would fall asleep before I got the rooms finished.

I'm sadly amused that what started as a cheaper alternative to their resin sets has now become so much more expensive than their old sets were because they keep bloating them with niche features.

Sure they're useful! I love them!

/goes back to playing, alone, with his army mans and DF

It sure would be interesting to know how well used this stuff is. I have two friends who bought heavily into these KSs. One plays DnD very regularly and is a fan. The other plays fairly often (a few times a year) and uses it. I have a ton of Dungeons and Caverns, but not much else. (I agree the fiddly lights and weird tiny modular stuff is too much for me...)

My boys have built some really cool dungeons and caverns*

* And see above comment about playing, alone, with my army mans

ubik2000 wrote:
I love this stuff, but I kind of wish I had never started down the road in the first place - the last couple kickstarters have been downright baffling to figure out, and price aside A. my use for it is largely aspirational and B. it's a pain to store.

But, like, I have some cavern pieces from their second KS, so it feels almost negligent not to pick up a couple of pieces from this one to add some variety...

Not that they make figuring out how to do that easy, of course.

I'm in the same boat, I'm currently running a pathfinder game so am actually finally getting some fair use out of the stuff from the previous KS, currently backed at the 1-3 encounter level but its been a challenge to figure out wtf the pledge levels are in general.

Personally, I went in for the Tablescapes Dungeons by Secret Weapon. You get quite a bit for your money and they look great.

Ok, this one is genuinely the hardest to figure out yet.
This video spells out what they're going for though, it helped: https://youtu.be/vjc6dxyl6U8

 Bossk_Hogg wrote:

 McNinja wrote:
194 people bought their top tier pledge. I wish I had $2200 to toss into a pit.

These look amazing, but they're only barely usable for something like D&D, which usually relies on squares for movement and combat.

Most of the people buying these will spend FAR more time playing with their army mans alone than actually using them in games. None of these multi-tiered, removable wall, castle setups are remotely useful for actually playing something like D&D. The old DF pieces were somewhat usable on the fly, but now that seemingly every part has lightup crap, magnets, smoke machines, sound effects, and kung-fu grip my players would fall asleep before I got the rooms finished.

I'm sadly amused that what started as a cheaper alternative to their resin sets has now become so much more expensive than their old sets were because they keep bloating them with niche features.

I use them in D&D and other systems often. Our play group at work loves them, and the little gizmos and gadgets (like the light-up pieces) are a really fun feature; and something that even casual observers checking out what tabletop gaming is love and ask about.

 lucasbuffalo wrote:

 Bossk_Hogg wrote:

 McNinja wrote:
194 people bought their top tier pledge. I wish I had $2200 to toss into a pit.

These look amazing, but they're only barely usable for something like D&D, which usually relies on squares for movement and combat.

Most of the people buying these will spend FAR more time playing with their army mans alone than actually using them in games. None of these multi-tiered, removable wall, castle setups are remotely useful for actually playing something like D&D. The old DF pieces were somewhat usable on the fly, but now that seemingly every part has lightup crap, magnets, smoke machines, sound effects, and kung-fu grip my players would fall asleep before I got the rooms finished.

I'm sadly amused that what started as a cheaper alternative to their resin sets has now become so much more expensive than their old sets were because they keep bloating them with niche features.

I use them in D&D and other systems often. Our play group at work loves them, and the little gizmos and gadgets (like the light-up pieces) are a really fun feature; and something that even casual observers checking out what tabletop gaming is love and ask about.

I'm amazed that this stuff, as awesome as it looks, is useful for D&D or Pathfinder. We've been playing a weekly game of some sort of dungeon/castle/jungle crawl for over 10 years, and I can't imagine how I would have set those up with stuff like this. I mean, we've had individual ROOMs (full of giants) that were circular and 4' across, and underwater grottos, and fights on narrow paths on the side of a mountain, and shipboard combats, and fights in the sea, and fights in massive ruined city blocks, and villages, and haunted houses, and sewers, and clock towers, and all sorts of stuff.

This stuff looks amazing, as does all of their stuff, but I think it's for a different kind of D&D than I play. The hugely varied settings and the massive open spaces that can show up just seem like they would be almost impossibly expensive to do with this, plus, for a lot of settings, I might use them ONCE in a decade. I know the guys that play archers in my Dungeon Fantasy games would be beyond pissed if we started doing games that were mostly set in rooms a dozen scale feet across, when they are using weapons that have ranges of hundreds of yards.

Gorgeous stuff, out of my price range, but gorgeous.

Good looking stuff! Good luck on a great project!!!

I backed the original Caverns heavily, but sold it pretty quickly (and thankfully made the investment back). It was way Too modular, imo - I think their old resin line had pieces that were often the equivalent of 4 of the new pieces.

I see in this campaign they have some bigger pieces, but also some where they've split the wall and floor into two, making it even More modular.

The magnets are a good idea, but even in their construction gifs you can see pieces moving between shots relative to one another as they make adjustments. Imo, the system just isn't practical.

I can tell some people swear by it, but unless I was putting magnets in each piece (a Lot of work which most people won't do) I just can't see this being at all worth it. Ymmv, of course!

Yep, have to agree. There is modular...then there is too modular. I'm very happy my large collectiong is predominantly older sets.

Just got my Secret Weapon Tablescapes Dungeon stuff from their KS. Got a whole dungeon for the same price as 1 DF room.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 malfred wrote:
They have a market, and that's good. THey do inspire me to
maybe get a 3d printer someday.

I did this. you can get a good printer for $250-300 and each tile is roughly 25 cents to print. Plus you get to make anything you really want.

Haha, yeah I've looked a little bit into it. I'm going to have to figure out how I'm going to dedicate space to it more than anything else.

Yea, this is too much more me. I really want some of those cool pieces, but... this is way too rich for my blood.

That's not a good feeling.