Designing a Tile Floor

Castle Tiles 2: How to model a castle room using tiles in RPGs

This is the 2nd of a 5 part series on making castle tiles. To start at the beginning, click here.

Let’s say you have an adventure module that shows you a map of the layout of a castle. You need to convert this to a tile layout so you can show the room to your players during the game. You need to move the miniatures around on it and put doors and other props down on it. Let’s talk about the basic process of taking that room picture and dividing it into tiles we can use on the tabletop.

Divide Up the Room

First you want to draw an outline of the room and divide it up into simple rectangular shapes. We are going to make everything in multiple of two squares which is 10 feet in our universe. This makes it easy to accommodate large doorways and other features and have rooms line up. (Besides your big monsters will need wide openings to get through to attack the players!)

Let me show you an example. Say you are creating a simple tower room in a castle that you saw in a drawing in your DM’s adventure module. For simplicity, we’ll assume it’s on the lower level so there are no doors or windows. Just a round room with a staircase.
Original drawing of castle tower room
Now let’s simplify it. (Ignore the stairs for now. We’ll add stairs in later.) In our tile system, that round tower room is just a rounded off rectangle. So we get out some graph paper and draw out the outline of the room.
Simple castle tower room outline
To figure out what tiles we need, let’s subdivide the room into sections like this. Make a bunch of two square wide rectangles around the perimeter. Remember, to always work in multiples of two squares so things will line up well between rooms. Preserve that big area in the middle so that can be one big tile.
Castle tower room divided into sections

Identify the Types of Tiles

Now we need to see what types of reusable tiles we can use to construct this room. (This list is based on Wyloch’s Armory.) Here is a list of the basic types we can build.

  • A – Basic floor tile with no walls
  • B – Outside floor tile with one wall
  • C – Narrow floor tile with two opposing walls (seldom used)
  • D – Corner floor tile, two joining corners
  • E – Closet or tiny room with three walls
  • F – Curved wall – Corner with curved walls
  • G – Angled wall – Corner clipped at an angle

Different castle tile shapes

Using this list, we can decompose the tower room into the basic shapes shown. For the B shapes, we use the notation B2x4. This means we have an outside wall that is two squares by four squares long. You will find this shape to be very common.

The main floor of the room is of type A, and is four squares by four squares. The corners are tile F.

castle tile design

So we need the following tiles:

  • (1) A 4×4
  • (4) B 2×4
  • (4) F

We need 9 tiles in all for this room.

Make a Master Checklist

Go through all of your rooms and repeat this process. Then write down a master checklist and it’s time to craft!

In Laying a Foundation, I will show you how to cut these tiles out for our castle using paper and foam board to create this tower room.

If you have any questions, ask them in the comment field below.

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