Interrogation Room - Build Guide (Take 1)

In the course of the Operation KURGAN campaign, the player(s) will eventually need to extract a prisoner from hostile custody. Who the prisoner is would be a bit of a spoiler and, in fact, it represents a critical moment in the plot and the end of the second act. But, critical to the mission, is the presence, in the centre of the playing space, of a 12"x12" interrogation room. The heroes must make their way to the room, access the room, deal with the interrogators within, extract the prisoner and make their way to their exit point.

Now, of course, you can just mark out the interrogation room with electrical or masking tape. But where's the fun in that when you can make your own!

The guid below, though, isn't simply for an interrogation room. Making a 12"x12" box is no challenge for my patrons, after all! Rather, I have kept in mind two things:

First, if you're going to make terrain, you're going to want it to be multi-purpose. And, second, if you're going to make homemade terrain, it needs to be something that can be relatively easily stored between uses.

So, here we go.

Materials

5mm foam core sheet (A4 should be sufficient)

Thin cardboard (again, A4 should be sufficient) [optional, but encouraged]

Hobby knife with a new blade (always, when doing projects like this)

Cutting mat

PVA glue

Any fancy extra bits you have lying around for detailing etc

Step 1 - Basic walls

Cut four strips from your foamcore, each 12" long and tall enough to suit your tastes. I went for 1.75", but you could easily go for 2" or even a little higher if you wanted, but if you stick with 1.75" you'll get all four strips out of one sheet of A4 foamcore.

Step Two - Bevel the Ends

This is a little tricky and your metal ruler will be essential to guide your hand. You want to bevel each end inwards so that, when you put each end of your four walls together, you get a natural box with an outside measure of 12" per side. If you don't get perfect 45-degree angles, though, don't panic. That's where the cardboard will come in, later.

Try to keep the bits you cut off as so:

You're going to use these to reinforce the inside joint of each corner eventually. However, before we get to this:

Step 3 - Cut Out the Doors

Cut a 1" gap in the exact centre of each length. Actually, it doesn't have to be the exact centre and you're welcome to play around with different lengths, but using the exact centre will make it easier to set up your 12"x12" interrogation room as the corners can go in any order. It should look like this:

Don't throw the little bit in the middle away, either! That's going to be your removable door, eventually.

Step4 - Initial Assembly

You can do some detailing before this step if you want to, but I found it easier to assemble first so I could see where I would need to use the detail to cover my mistakes! If you're infallible (as most of my patrons are, of course, having such impeccable judgement) you won't need to do this.

You initial assembly should look like this!

Step 5 - Detailing

If you saved the triangular pieces you cut off when beveling the ends of the strips, you now have a selection to choose from to reinforce the corners. I then cut a short strip of carboard to glue over the top of that to futher reinforce the corner:

And because, unlike you all, I'm very imperfect and didn't cut very good corners, I also cut some strips of carboard to cover over the gaps on the exterior of the walls, which you can see at the top of the picture above and more clearly here:

You can also see in this picture some of the additional detail I added to the exterior of the walls to provide some interest and also to strengthen them, structurally.

Where I had some larger gaps or damage to cover up, I add som extra exterior details, such as this card-swipe device below:

To keep the doors confidently upright, I added a little bit of card underneath them. Note that it extends to the front and back of the door, but not side to side, so the door can slide in and out from between its walls.

Finally, I still have some laser-cut card detailing packs from Iliada Game Studio that I've kept for my personal use and this seemed the perfect time to put them to work, so I added some detail to the exterior of each door:

Step 6 - Assembly

And here's the assembled 12"x12" Interrogation Room:

But wait! That's not all, because you can also assemble the walls into two 7"x5" rooms, with a door in each corner:

Or, of course as two 5"x5" rooms, with the doors positioned wherever you like but without a gap behind them:

But I'm not finished yet! Because with the simple addition of some of the leftover cardboard, we get a two-storey building!

NEXT - Painting!

Obviously, painting still to follow, in part 2, in which you'll see how any remaining errors and gaps can be covered up with paint, posters and graffiti.

I don't often do hobby content, because I'm very bad at recording my steps in a way that makes sense, but I'm really pleased with this one, which I think is a cheap, simple and accessible guide to making a really easy collection of flexible terrain.

Let me know if you'd like to see more of this sort of thing.