Head over Heels - Dungeonalia entry

I might have to rename “my” worlds in the tabletop version of this game. Or maybe I’m just remembering them poorly. Or maybe I’ve spent far too long on the Cast n’ Play website and now just use their names for everything. But I was convinced it was called Library World – it turns out not… it’s Book World.

But to make a convincing Book World, I needed some library-looking walls.

And these little beauties were just the thing!
As with other STL files, I had to do a little bit of hacking in Blender to get them exactly as I wanted (the original models are much, much “chunkier” and would have used up a fantastic amount of resin!) but the end result is pretty pleasing.

I created a digital “jig” in Blender, and placed some 3mm x 2mm discs at one-inch-spacing, to make sure that the magnets in the bases would be perfectly aligned no matter which set of walls I used.

I also put holes for 3mm magnets in the sides of the walls too, and used my virtual jig to make sure they were consistently placed, so everything would just magically line up correctly.

Not only do the wall sections click down onto the playing board with a satisfying “click” they also  snap up neatly against each other, providing a robust, free-standing wall that doesn’t fall over or some apart if someone accidentally jogs the table.

The hardest part was getting the orientation of the magnets consistent across all the pieces (a few times I tried to put a couple of wall sections together and instead of snapping together, the magnets actively repelled each other!). But with a bit of planning, and judicious use of a Sharpie, I eventually got all the magnets fitted to all the pieces, the right way around!

You can see in the photo above where one of my wall sections suffered from the Great Mishap of 2024 (when I let the resin vat run dry during an overnight print) and one of the wall sections appears to have lost its supports in the early layers – but even though not every section is perfect, they still look great, when assembled.

I’m expecting the castle walls to just take a simple prime coat and drybrush to get a realistic rock-looking effect. And I’m expecting to lean heavily into the slapchop-and-Speed Paints approach for Safari World.

But I’m really looking forward to going to town, painting the individual books on the shelves for Book World. I think this world might just be my favourite yet!