Tabletop Roleplaying games are mostly a blend of story telling techniques and tactical boardgames. Though one can play games such as D&D, Blades in the Dark or even Pathfinder without a board (or even a table), sometimes it’s really useful to know where things are.
Campaign Case: Terrain is Wizards of the Coast’s solution to tricky problem of explaining to players where everything is in relation to each other. It’s designed work with the Campaign Case: Creatures box, but you can also use it for miniatures. It’s essentially a collection of grids, board pieces and static clings.
First up is the Adventure Grid, a double-sided 22×25 inch grid; dungeon on one side, wildererness on the over. It folds easily for storage. Similarly double-side are the 5×5 inch interlocking terrain tiles, for DMs who want to slowly reveal terrain as the characters explore. These are both solid board-gaming tools, useful for dungeon crawl games of all types. They have a standard grid on them and if you aren’t in the mood for D&D work with most games. (It would be weird to run something like, say, Warcry on it, but totally do-able, they’re that flexible).
The board pieces seem to work well with dry-erase markers, for Dungeon Masters who like to scribble on things.
What’s unique here are the clings, these two-dimensional stickers that ‘fill in the gaps’ for any scenario you may want to run. We get wall pieces, trees, fountains, barrels, beds, fancy chairs, bridges, pretty much everything in a sticker format. These are weird, well-drawn and quite useful.
The whole thing comes in a fairly hard cardboard carry case. The case is portioned into two bits; the top bit has the big board and a folder full of clings, the lower section has the interlocking tiles. A nice ribbon makes it easier to separate the two. The carry case comes with a thick rope on top. The set is very secure in it’s packaging and it’s little tricky to unpacked, the box the case comes in feels like it should be something that can be re-used, but it’s just packaging.
This is a neat idea for a games accessory, and combined with the creatures set it’s a useful, space conserving tool. Fun, useful but not for everyone, especially if you already have some mats.