Choosing 3D Printable Terrain - Monolithic or Modular?
There is an abundance of choices when it comes to 3D printable terrain. My introduction to the possibilities came when I was perusing the various offerings on Thingiverse for STL files to print on my RepRap printer. My initial reason for building the printer was a passing interest in robotics, but since discovering terrain I can use for my tabletop gaming, my printer has now predominantly been relegated to churning out cool plastic pieces for my TTRPG hobby. There is terrain for almost every imaginable scenario including: forests, rivers/lakes, mountains, ships, dungeons, castles, and towns/cities. If you can imagine a 3D representation of your location, it is possible to create 3D printable terrain for it.
Almost immediately after printing out my first few pieces, I knew I was going to need to make a choice. Was I interested in monolithic or modular components? The terrain I'm discussing here are the larger pieces like buildings or dungeons, not the smaller scatter terrain like barrels, chests, or furniture that would accompany the larger pieces.
Ulvheim CottageUlvheim Cottage
The cottage consists of just two printable pieces; the base has the walls, windows, door opening, fireplace, and floor and the second piece is the roof. There are benefits to this approach from a design perspective. The user of this terrain is getting terrain exactly as the designer intended and the designer did not need to worry about how the user needs to fit the various components together. Because of this, monolithic terrain does not have unsightly seams between the parts. With monolithic terrain, the designer is able to have asymmetrical pieces and that can be very liberating when designing stylized or very detailed terrain. For a user, there is very little cost in time to use this terrain since nothing needs to be assembled.
The lack of modularity leads to a fixed design. The user of the piece cannot decide where a window goes or that they do not want a fireplace in the cottage. Another drawback is monolithic terrain can take up considerably more space when storing than modular pieces.
Rampage Castle TowerRampage Castle Tower
The walls, doors, windows, floor, stairs, and battlement are all individual pieces that need to be assembled. The pieces are joined along defined sides that use clips to hold them together. This provides flexibility to the user on how the tower is laid out. Another advantage to modular terrain is it can be broken down into the individual components allowing for it to be stored in a smaller space than a modular piece.
One obvious tradeoff to modular terrain is asymmetry can be harder to realize. To promote modularity, components are generally symmetrical to allow the maximum options to the user. If a designer wants asymmetry, that has to be accounted for where pieces are joined. Not having asymmetry limits what can be designed in a highly modular system, but using asymmetry invariably makes the parts less modular. Also, the joining of pieces have a visible seam. For a user of a modular system, there is a cost in time to assemble the terrain as well and this mostly precludes using modular terrain for improvised situations.
Conclusion
After weighing the pros and cons, the choice between monolithic or modular terrain was a simple choice for me. I have limited space to store large pieces, so I mostly went with a modular system for my terrain. This is not to say that I do not have any monolithic pieces. I have a few of the Ulvheim buildings and Sophie's Revenge from Reaper which almost always gets used for nautical settings. If I have to improvise terrain, I also have OpenForge terrain pieces designed by Devon Jones that utilize magnets for connecting the components.
Sophie's Revenge
Generally, the asthetics of monolithic pieces tends to be superior to modular pieces. I have seen some terrain designs in recent years that attempts to bridge the gap with monolithic pieces that provide options on how they fit together, but even with those, they tend to be large and consume more storage space.
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