Shed Some Light On Your Game With Terrain Tech
October 22, 2014 by deltagamegirl22
Last night before bed I was scanning new items for today's article and I found this interesting idea for terrain.
It is called Terrain Tech and it is a special kind of terrain technology that brings wireless, yes I said wireless lighting and motors (stay with me) and lasers to your gaming table. So the whole premise behind this is you can add a new dimension to your game table, whether it be for an RPG, a dungeon crawler or whatever strikes your fancy. It is supposedly customizable and the colour LEDs can be changed to produce different colour effects.
Now I mentioned motors, and yes, you can get motors to run things like water wheels powering machinery in a deep underground mine, dwarves anyone?
There is also supposed to be lasers included to add to the experience, does anyone else see Warren trying to use them to charge minis or dice? Now according to the projects creators, there are no wires, sans one to plug the underlying mat to an outlet and no batteries.
All the items get their power wirelessly by being placed on the mat. They also say it can be used in conjunction with existing terrain. It reminds me of the power mats you can get for some cell phones to charge on wirelessly if they have that capability. An interesting project to be sure, it is on my update list to see where it goes from here and you can see it on Kickstarter too.
What do you think, is this something worth investing in to add some variety and uniqueness to your table?
Why have they not made a tron table?
Come to think of it, why is there no Tron miniatures game?!
That + This = Awesomeness… and possible blindness…
Possibilities dancing in my head. Great idea!
Saw this the other day on kick starter an was planning to mention it. Opens a huge number of options in gaming, miniature photography and terrain design. I believe that the LED’s do not require direct contact with the power matt, meaning that a GM (or DM) could use cinematic effects through cardboard gaming tiles.
Space hulk, Dungeon crawlers, Infinity, Dead Zone….
The fact that these bothers have been in the industry for 10 years would lend confidence that the Kick starter will progress in a professional manner.
While it looks fantastic I’m not sure how practical this is for a lot of lighting projects. For example, I am expecting to receive some MDF corridor sections in the next few months and I would really like to have some built-in lighting.. but those LEDs are going to be near the top of the walls, nearly 2 inches above the wireless power ‘mat’. Is that going to work? It seems doubtful..
But hey, maybe I just lack the vision to see how this is good for anything other than fancy underfloor lighting 😉
Hmmm… good point, now that I’ve looked at that more closely. Not sure if you get juice if the LED is not touching the matt. I suppose you could piss around with fiber optic wires, but then you might as well just go back to ‘wiring’ your diorama. Still, I have to admit, it does look cool!
I suppose it depends on the effect you are trying to achieve. If you wanted a blade runner style recessed light in a bulkhead, you can use clear resin or Perspex to transmit the light. If is a dungeon crawler, floor or pedestal fire pits would work. The key being how you decide to convey the light to it’s desired position. Yes it would appear that you may require direct contact with the LED’s, however they also show concept work for an induction motor (animated water mill wheel) and the capacity to “float” a miniature above the board. There are… Read more »
The project has been online for a while now and you can read reviews about their products now (http://random-roll.com/category/terrain-tech/). It looks like the induction coils work anything up to 6-inches away from the mat, which is pretty impressive and enough for most projects. Also, the coil could rest in the base of the terrain and wires lead up to an LED at the top allowing the distance from the mat to be almost infinite.
Wonder if they can power electroluminescent wire with the mat? That could be very interesting…