3D Printing Possibilities and Limitations for Gaming

What are the cool possibilities and/or limitations of using a 3D printer to supplement board gaming. I just found out that my public library installed several expensive 3D printers that are available for use. You send them an STL file online, they calculate the material/construction fee, you approve it, and then your item is added to their print cue.

For example, I recently experimented with it by sending them a 3D print job for a Nexus Ops (FFG edition) monolith which elevates the center hex as did the original AH edition. This greatly improves the overall experience of the FFG edition of Nexus Ops by giving it its intended King-of-the-Mountain feel for the center hex! I found the file in the public domain for free download. It cost less than $3 to print at the public library.

Here are some other examples for free gaming sources materials to 3D print. It has miniatures, treasure chests, architectural features, etc.

rpg.brentnewhall.com/2014/05/open-licens...is-you-can-3d-print/

What other cool stuff have you done or found for a 3D printer that could improve your board games?

Eventually I will sell some of the last games in the collection plus a guitar or two and get one. Being able to come up with your own proto game parts would be bad ass. I want to make little gangsters, and hookers, and piles of drugs for Hoodrats, a sort of grail project I've been working on for eight years or so.

That said, I could make all kinds of neat shit. I've always wanted to make a smoke-screen for my car....again. But one that's pushbutton and dumps oil onto your hot exhaust for the moment that asshole is tailgating you and you want to ruin his lungs and sense of smell for a while.

Our campus has a great 3D printing lab, but they charge $5 per cubic inch for the plastic. That seems far too expensive to me.

My 1st gen M3D printer sits here collecting dust; but its resolution is too shitty to make adequate game parts. Unless I wanted to make GIANT CATAN.

I can barely draw a straight line with a pencil and ruler, so I doubt that I will ever be able to design 3D objects worth printing. The technology is cool, but until they make the interface super-easy, I won't be using it.

It's already super-easy; almost anything you want is already built by someone and made available for download. Your only concern will be scaling it up or down to suit your needs, which is usually simple.

My buddy printed out multiple Man O War fleets for me from files in Thingiverse. They are obviously simpler than the sculpts, but easily recognizable.

One use of 3D printing would be to upgrade components to either add bling or improve playability. Before I received the rest of my Kickstarter shipment, an acquaintance of mine printed me a couple Targa Pylons for Shadows of Brimstone since the core set only comes with tokens. I would also love to have a set of faction-specific colored ring bases for my Cthulhu Wars minis without having to buy in on an entire Onslaught 3 pledge. Something else I would like would be some Mad Max: Fury Road vehicles to play in my copy of Thunder Road. I don't know if current resolutions would allow one to print cars that small, but an epic running road battle with 20+ cars would be so awesome.

3D printing could also be used for making replacement parts for games that are long OOP, like furniture bits for Heroquest or board clips for Space Crusade.

In practice, I don't think it adds much. But that's because I think shiny components don't tend to add much to a game. It undeniable makes miniatures and other fancy components much more viable, which is good, I just don't think it makes gaming per se much better.

Of course, there are things like Cosmic Encounter's stackable ships that do add to gameplay significantly and I can stuff like the Ghost of Intrigo being more common but other than that, I don't see it as being significant.

I've been buying a lot of stuff from WargameVault lately (Print 'n Play games that are easy to print, and there's been some great titles coming out) and I am licking my chops at this concept becoming more of a common thing for gaming. I just built a copy of Table Battles that has just a couple of physical components required, that I ended up building from matchsticks and painting myself. If the game came with the print files for the two physical components I could have created a very nice copy with just a couple of pushes of a button. $12 plus the cost of printing supplies.

We'd be at the point of this being a viable solution were it not for the crowd that gets up-tight about the "quality of components" which they promptly say doesn't matter very much but it ends up being all they talk about.

Check out Hollandspiele's stuff on WargameVault.com. There's a couple of great titles out there, a game company that has no intention of being profitable. Table Battles was $12, I think An Infamous Traffic was too.

Erik Twice wrote: In practice, I don't think it adds much. But that's because I think shiny components don't tend to add much to a game.

BLASPHEMER TO THE GODS OF AMERITRASH!

Hand in your fucking card, buddy.

My 3D Nexus Ops monolith piece came back from the Public Library. Here's a pic.

Cool. I should do that.

A useful item for miniature painting. I've been using old pill bottles, but, perhaps, I'll print this.

www.thingiverse.com/thing:2432144

I want cube trays/racks for games like ECLIPSE and TERRAFORMING MARS where you have to keep track of shit on a flat surface using cubes. A little overlay with indentations in it to hold those fuckers in place.