For my special holiday ICRPG one-shot in my version of Alfheim, a weary party of dwarven adventurers enters the remote village of Whitethaw high on the northern slope of the Kinder Mountains. Scratched into the standing stone at the entrance to the town is its motto: “United against the storm, the cold is our only enemy…”
Rocks: Corrugated cardboard and facial tissue
Pit Houses: Dollar store foam core, popsicle sticks, and felt
Half-Timbered Buildings: Dollar store foam core, chipboard, popsicle sticks, coffee stir sticks, and felt
My opening board isn’t precisely “index cards,” but it’s definitely the ICRPG DIY philosophy applied to fully playable 3D terrain: simplicity, versatility, functionality, modularity, and priority on the narrative. For example, most of the roofs have removable panels, so the snow can be replaced with sod, thatch, or shingle panels, and the floors of the larger buildings are detailed playable surfaces that index to stack for multistory structures or stand alone. The bastle house (far right) is magnetic and converts from a stand-alone into identical halves that can serve as facades to line a city street or town square.
Game on!