We're closing in on the final few days of the Dragonlock 2 Kickstarter by Fat Dragon Games. This project gives you all manner of 3D printing files to create modular buildings, crafting a fine Fantasy or Historical town on the tabletop.

Each set will come as .stl files and there is no limit on the amount of pieces you can print. They are scaled to 28mm and are an interesting step on from their regular print-and-play creations.

Here's how the buildings look once you've been tinkering away with them...

...and while they might look it you can actually get inside them and play around within the interiors too.

Importantly the buildings can also be packed away in their component pieces thanks to the Dragonlock design. Effectively you have a base that is then added to with the timber frames and walls. Even the roofs as you see above slid on easily.

It's quite impressive and we'd be very interested to see what regular consumers end up getting when they finish printing their own designs.

A Chat With Fat Dragon

We were able to ask a few questions of Tom Tullis of Fat Dragon Games to get a better idea of their motivation behind the project alongside some of the files you can get ahold of...

BoW: To sum it up what is the new Dragonlock 2 Kickstarter all about and what are you offering?

Tom: Dragonlock™ 2 is a follow-up project to our first Dragonlock™ Kickstarter last year that focused on dungeons and caverns. When we began designing this system, we wanted something completely modular, but with the added ability to snap-lock individual pieces together, so as to allow the user to build large sections and stack them for a true multi-level layout.

We took things a step further with our new Dragonlock™ village project by borrowing the core design from our E-Z LOCK paper terrain system, in which corner posts fit into openings in the base tile, and you then attach walls to those posts.

By merging that system with the Dragonlock™clip design, we have developed a truly modular village construction system. Full upper-level floorplans of the user’s design can be created and linked as a single unit for stacking and creating massive buildings.

What made you want to move on from the papercraft print-and-play you'd been doing to 3D printing?

3D printing is something that has been on my mind since the early 1990s when I first saw stereolithographic 3D prints making prototypes in the model industry I worked in. About eight years ago I started watching the RepRap community closely, waiting for print quality to improve and for when quality printers would drop to about the $400 level which has always been the target I set for pulling the trigger on FDG beginning to offer 3D printer terrain files.

In late 2014, Gartner Reports indicated that sales of 3D printers had reached their inflection point and would see about a 75% increase over the following 4 years through 2018. It was then that I decided to have FDG take the plunge into the 3D printing market in 2015.

We are still going to produce papercraft terrain as demand warrants it, and I see FDG as being the one stop place for print-n-play terrain, be it 2D papercraft PDFs or 3D printed STL files.

For those looking to get into 3D printing what would be a good start for them? Would you recommend the use of FabLabs as well as home printers?

FabLabs, Maker Spaces, and public libraries are all great places to get 3D models made. Extremely high-quality home printers now start around $399 (such as the Printrbot Play we used for most of the models in our Kickstarter campaign.)

We have a lot of information for beginners over on our forums as well.

What do you hope to do next for this range and in 3D printing in general?

We will be continuing with fantasy and Sci-Fi terrain in 2017, as well as releasing a full 15mm 3D printable wargame called World War Tesla on Kickstarter in the spring.

We will also be continuing our line of 3D printable miniatures, for which we just added a giant miniature of Orcus to our current Kickstarter.

Accessories & More

As well as the buildings you see above they are also working on all manner of interesting Add-Ons. One of our favourites is this particular set packed with accessories which can be used to add life to your buildings.

They've also put together a model for you to print off too, Orcus.

I don't imagine he'd have much of a place in the village but maybe his demonic followers have pushed up through the sewers and attacked the streets, driving folks from their homes. Your heroes now need to head in and send them back from whence they came!

Have you taken a look at this campaign?