From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to those still reading here
Source:
https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/gingerbread-map
Dedicated D&D fan bakes a playable gingerbread dungeon for their
Christmas one shot
A custom, Christmas-tree-shaped dungeon made out of gingerbread is
no easy task, but one Dungeons and Dragons DM committed
anyway.
Mollie Russell
Published: 2025.12.24
Christmas is a time for goodwill, being merry, and gorging
yourself on all your favorite foods. No Dungeons and Dragons game
is more festive, then, than the one run by Washington D&D fan
Jenna - who baked an entire battlemap out of gingerbread.
Jenna's level-seven one shot was a pre-written D&D adventure from
DM's Guild, titled How the Lich Stole Christmas. The layout of
the dungeon already resembled a Christmas tree, but Jenna decided
to take it one step further with her baked buildings. "We had
joked about doing it for years at various D&D Christmas parties",
they tell Wargamer.
Jenna, a 55-year-old homemaker, had admittedly never baked a
gingerbread house before. However, she wasn't about to let that
small detail spoil the vision. "It was a learning experience",
they tell Wargamer.
Jenna had to template the structure from scratch to match the
dungeon she planned to run. "I used paper to template, but the
DM's Guild module's Christmas-tree-shaped dungeon had many
repeating shapes, and the soft template was too easy to mix up",
they explain. "I had to fill in with a few graham
crackers."
Dungeons and Dragons gingerbread map
"I don't really enjoy rolling out dough or cutting out templated
shapes by hand", she explains. "You need to leave some scraps on
the edge after cutting to prevent spread, then recut the lines
when warm. The gingerbread was pretty rigid, so that was
difficult and you need to work quickly while it is still
hot."
"I baked the flat base, in three parts", Jenna says, "then
afterwards learned that most gingerbread house builders use a
foil wrapped foam board, which would have made things easier,
less time consuming and more mobile."
"Royal icing has a steep learning curve", she adds. "Mine was
structurally sound but more like working with caulk than icing,
so it busted my piping bag and got pretty messy." Jenna recruited
their husband and one of the players to decorate the set before
play began, and they "tried their best to hide my
mess".
The finishing touches included gingerbread trees from an Ikea
gingerbread kit, Necco wafers on the bottom of regular, plastic
miniatures, and gummy bears that represented captured children
(and, Jenna tells Reddit, were eaten by the players after being
rescued).
Dungeons and Dragons gingerbread map
Despite the trials they faced, Jenna would absolutely take a
second stab at gingerbread dungeons. The response alone seems to
have been worth it. "My players loved it! It added a lot of joy
to our annual D&D Christmas party", she says. "And the
nine-year-old son of two of our players had just started playing
D&D in summer camp, and they brought him along. He was over the
moon and very excited that he got to eat it after the game." "It
was just very playful and whimsical - and smelled
amazing."
"Next year, I plan to grab some pre-baked gingerbread kits and
Ikea gingerbread trees and kitbash a battle board on a foil
wrapped foam base", Jenna tells Wargamer. This means they "can
focus on decorating and eliminate templating, rolling and hand
cutting the gingerbread". "I might try to bake just a few
turreted curved custom pieces for towers", she adds. "We will see
how ambitious I feel."
The dungeons of Christmas yet to come might feature pop rock
mines, candy Lego caltrops, and chocolate treasure chests, Jenna
says. "I am thinking a full table battle board, with two forts, a
gingerbread tree forest and maybe an isomalt frozen lake." "One
fort will be decorated with peppermints and the other with
colorful candies like gumdrops so they are visually distinct."
Jenna also has dreams of creating more Christmas-themed one
shots, from 'capture the candy cane' competitions to encounters
with a candy eyeball Beholder.
Whatever the future holds, we sure hope it's tasty.
Want to talk more about TTRPGs? We're all ears in the Wargamer Discord.
Mollie Russell Mollie Russell is Wargamer's resident D&D and
guides specialist. She has a degree in Creative Writing and
English Literature, and you can also find her writing at Pocket
Tactics and in various poetry magazines. She's covered some of
the biggest and weirdest releases for Wargamer - including the
DnD movie, Frosthaven, and Baldur's Gate 3. Mollie is constantly
playing Dungeons and Dragons, but she's still on her quest to try
every tabletop RPG she can get her hands on. An avid fan of MTG
drafts and horror board games, she will take any opportunity to
info-dump about why Blood on the Clocktower is the best social
deduction game. (She/Her)
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