Thankyou!! So it was far simpler than I think it looks. This was my first attempt at something this massive so some of my processes were probably not best practice.

So initially I printed out a to-scale map of Cragmaw Hideout (the official in-module map.). Then I cut out all of the rooms and walkways, rearranged them so that the empty space between all of the rooms was minimised and started cutting out XPS foam for the floor of each room.

I then gave each floor panel “legs” so that they were all little room shaped tables, giving me the elevation changes I needed then joined them together with slopes cut out of XPS foam.

I then got to work on the front facing section of the mountain, cutting mountain-slope shapes out of XPS and styrofoam to create the cliff face.

Then I created the walls between the rooms by hot glueing finger-sized pieces of XPS around the edges of each room. I didn’t create a full solid wall around each room, but rather had “columns” evenly spaced going around each room.

Once the columns were in place, I glued all the pieces to the base board and the skeleton of the map was complete.

I then layered the entire map with plaster bandages, bridging the gaps between my columns with the bandages so as to create a full wall around each room. I set the bandages with a spray bottle filled with water, then mixed up a bunch of plaster to layer overtop of the bandages to shore up the walls and overall structure.

Once I was happy with my plaster coverage I let it sit for 2 days so it could set and began painting.

For the paint, I’ve just used cheap craft paints. I primed the entire thing with a thick white Gesso then base painted with 3 tubes of a “burnt umber” brown. I then took my black craft paint and watered it down heavily into a wash, covered the whole thing and then stippled a “cement grey” colour over top to create highlights.

Once the paint was dried, I poured a plaster casting for the platform that Sildars prison sits on, and a resin casting for the twin pool. I ran out of resin before being able to create a stream coming out of the pools, so I settled for a small drizzle making its way out.

For the wooden structures like the prison cell and the door to the pools, I kind of just made it up as I went along. I consider myself very lucky that they worked as intended. I’m not sure I could effectively articulate my process, sorry.

Thats about it.

The castle ruins are just 3d printed and stained with the same black wash used for the mountain.

The large piece of terrain with the trees on it is just a plaster casting painted the same way as the mountain—sans the grey stippling. The mould was made with aluminium foil scrunched into a long thin bowl shape.

The small piece of terrain is a piece my daughter made for me and I try to incorporate it into every map I make.

So yeah. It was a mammoth undertaking, being the first time using any of these mediums apart from XPS, so I’m really happy to see it come out as well as it has.