Introducing Modwall v1.0

What the eff is a Modwall?

Modwall is a modular, multi-level building system for 28mm-ish terrain. I designed it to work with Marvel Crisis Protocol, though due to the dynamic poses of many of the characters, it's still only ~80% compatible with the human-sized figures (calm down, Thor. grumble.). That said, due to the modular, destructible nature of the design, you can wreak all kinds of havoc to fit your bulkiest model into a building if you like.

How does it work?

Generally speaking, you use joints and base rails to lay out your floor plan. Base rails hold walls, and you can top any square room with a roof. The roof has a hole suitable for stairs, but a roof cap can be used to cover that hole if you just want it to be a floor/ceiling. The walls are designed to slide easily in and out without disturbing the rest of the structure, and you can usually lift an entire room and transplant it pretty safely as well if for example you need to get into the first floor of a multistory building. Base rails are designed for a tighter fit on the joints than the walls.

The system is designed to be a compromise of space and flexibility. Hopefully people can and will contribute their own designs to extend the set so more and more options will be available to everyone.

What about curved walls?

I've made some 90-degree and 180-degree curved walls and base rails, but I haven't put as much effort into variants yet. Brick texture will be a huge pain, and I haven't done doors or windows yet. Maybe I'll do those soon, maybe someone else can contribute. I haven't tested the 180-degree walls yet, but 90 seems to work fine. The curved handrails are also untested.

Any tips for printing?

Yes. And this is important.

In a filename:

• [s] indicates support may be useful due to bridging (doorways, windows, etc.)
• [S] indicates support is absolutely required due to large floating components.

As for build plate adhesion, I find that the joints can be hard to print unless you use a skirt or a raft. Most other stuff works okay.

Marvel Crisis Protocol doesn't have rules for modular/destructible terrain or stairs. How is that supposed to work?

You'll need to use some house rules. I'm still workshopping these, but what seems to be working so far for me is as follows:

• Ascending/descending stairs simply requires a character to move onto the stairs; if any part of their base can touch the stairs at the end of a movement action, you may choose to position them in contact with the stairs/floor opening on either of the floors the stairs connect. Feel free to roll your own house rules if you want to add "shoving superheroes down the stairs" to your possibilities.
• Doors fit anyone size 3 or lower. Any bigger and you need to make your own door. Hint hint.
• Traveling through windows is free. Superheroes are cool like that and can dive through windows like it's nothing.
• Most Modwall terrain components can be targeted with any normal attack, except for joints and base rails. Anything else is fair game. Use your discretion - I don't know if there are psychic attacks in the game, but obviously some things won't damage the masonry.
• Doing 3 damage in a single attack to a wall, stairs, or other feature destroys it, but damage resets with every attack so you can't chip away at it with 1 damage. Such an attack also does not provide Power. Since walls can't roll Dodge, this means throwing anything Size 2 or larger will destroy a wall or other Modwall feature. Also don't forget that beam and area attacks can cause some fun collateral damage.
• If a wall is destroyed on the ground floor, replace the wall with the appropriate destroyed model WITH rubble. Any terrain objects that intersect with the rubble are also destroyed. Player models intersecting it take 1 damage and are moved so they are within 1 of the rubble. Above the ground floor, ignore this effect.
• When a movement lands you on rubble, place the character on the ground touching the rubble on the same side of the wall as the center of their base. This, we can imagine, is the hero dramatically executing a controlled slide down the rubble and striking a cool pose at the bottom.
  -Destroying a roof/floor is totally fair game. Similar rules to an above-ground wall. Your call if you want to work out fall/debris damage rules for unfortunate heroes on the upper floor.
• You can devise your own rules/interpretations for things like "Can I throw the stairs?" or "How do I calculate line of sight with destroyed walls? Just keep to the spirit of things.

Any other tips for building or playing with Modwall?

Yes.

• Put objectives in buildings for some extra challenge. Make your wee little heroes navigate the building, make the big chungi bash their way in.
• Mix it up if you can; put non-Modwall stuff in, on, and around your Modwall buildings. Get crazy. Keep it lively, spice things up and reinvigorate your game room. Just remember your safe word.
• Be creative. Not everything has to be a box on a box. You can use joints to support a floor on stilts and create a garage/carport, a covered patio, or a beach house on stilts.
• That said, think before you build. It's surprisingly easy to make a stupid or unreasonable design like stairs that block windows, unreachable rooms, or a floorplan that you couldn't actually navigate normally.
• If a character that should be able to fit in a room can't because they're making some kind of big fancy pose, you can either use an empty character base as a proxy to represent them while indoors or force them to take out the ceiling before they can go play. Up to you.
• Figure out if you want to come up with house rules for architectural collapse, e.g. fewer than 2 walls and an upper floor comes crashing down. Most of the ingredients are there for some pretty wild stuff to go down.

What's next for Modwall?

I dunno, I'm thinking a pitched roof might be fun. But hopefully what's next is lots of you cretins making bizarre and much prettier, more skillfully modeled stuff that works with Modwall. Whip out your huge talents. Let's get weird, people.

How can I add to Modwall?

Good question. I don't really care. Download the components, fire up Tinkercad or your favorite modeling software, and upload what you've got here. Use tags Modwall and Modwall_1.0 just to be sure. I doubt I'll make lots of iterative versions of Modwall since it'd mean reworking a ton of models each time, but if I don't keep this updated past 1.0, I'm totally open to anyone forking the project. You could see if you and someone else want to fork. Or maybe you can just fork yourself. As long as everyone's having fun.

To help you out, I've also provided some "* component.stl" files, which are various interfaces to help you create your own:

• joint rail component: the rail that fits into a joint so you can create your own walls.
• wall base component: a straight wall base that seats in the base rail, also so you can create your own walls.
• roof access post component: this is a set of 4 posts that match what's on the underside of the "roof access" object so you can create freestanding objects that fit around the outside of a square roof. Air handlers, signage, other fun stuff like that.
• roof center corner post component: this is a pair of posts for the middle of the roof. If you want to make something that sits in/near the center of a roof, you may want to build it on up to 4 of these.
• 180d curved roof post component: since the 180-degree roof has a specialized pair of round holes for the handrail, I provided the posts for that too. Go nuts.

Something in Modwall is weird, broken, or doesn't work right. What do?

Let me know in a comment/message and I'll try to fix it. Even better, fix it yourself. Make a beautifully modeled, support-free, elegant solution to the issue and upload it yourself for fame and glory across the Thingiverse.

ENJOY!