3D Printable Castles for Tabletop Games

When we think of fantasy role-playing games or tabletop games, one of the first things to come to mind is castles. In this article, we’re going to have a look at a few of the different styles of 3D printable castles you can find at Printable Scenery that you can print and build at home for your own games.

SystemHEX and OpenLOCK are the two main modular castle styles, and both have their pros and cons, which we’ll cover. There are also a few other ranges of castle styles we’ll have a look at that don’t fit those systems, but are more free-form.

SystemHEX Castles

SystemHEX castles are incredibly modular, using a hexagonal footprint to tessellate walls and buildings into incredibly diverse castle layouts. They use a male/female system for connecting walls, where buildings have adaptors for either being built standalone or connecting to the wall system.

The buildings stack, so your towers can be as tall as you’d like. The buildings also have modular windows and doors, and corbels that can be swapped out for different pieces. This makes building castles simple and quick with SystemHEX, leaving more time for rolling dice.

The pieces themselves are large and can take a while to print out and paint a full castle, but the result is definitely worth it. The scale of the castles you can build is impressive, and your players will definitely appreciate all the nooks and crannies in the sprawling kingdoms you can build. Combine these large modular castle building pieces with smaller scatter terrain, like cottages and markets, and your castle will really come to life. Check out a few of the builds we’ve done with models from the Throne & Ash campaign:

Here’s a guide on getting started with SystemHEX, as well as this useful resource for building your castles.

OpenLOCK Castles

OpenLOCK is another modular building system we developed to build dungeons, buildings, and, of course, castles. It uses small clips to connect two tiles to create endless possibilities. The tiles are usually 2×2″ or some fraction of that size so that the builds are always lined up and easy to connect. The modularity of the OpenLOCK tiles means it’s always easy to swap parts out, too.

Castles built using OpenLOCK are often comprised of interior halls, corridors, and rooms with stairs leading up to higher battlements or down to basement dungeons. The focus with OpenLOCK castles is more on the interior spaces, being able to make those rooms as large as you like and filled with scatter pieces for players to interact with.

Here are a few builds using the Rampage Castle pack of models:

Because the OpenLOCK castles are delivered as a collection of tiles that are printed and painted separately, the assembly of the castles can be a bit time-consuming, but very satisfying to line it all up and clip together. There is Terrain Tinker, though, which can help streamline the design process of making OpenLOCK castles, and can even export your castles out in single pieces ready for print.

Here’s an overview of OpenLOCK and how it works.

Other Castles

OpenLOCK and SystemHEX aren’t the only ways to build 3D printable castles, though. Our King & Country Range features towers, walls, and forts that connect simply by pressing up against each other, making it incredibly free-form in how you build your castle. You aren’t limited by hexagonal angles or square tiles, so you can create some very organic and realistic castles.

Our Dwarves, Elves, and Demons campaign also featured a range of thematic walls, towers, and forts that could be assembled in the same way. Walls joined by simply pressing up against each other and to buildings, making castle assembly quick and easy.

In our Warlock range, you’ll find some unique battlements, gates, and buildings to create a steampunk university castle. These may be the largest castle walls we’ve ever done.

Our first-ever campaign, Winterdale, featured medieval buildings and a simple castle system, which also just used walls and towers pressed together to create sprawling kingdoms.

We’re sure we’ll add more castles to our catalog of fantasy models in the future, but for now, those are the main options. We hope these have inspired you to try building your 3D printable castles at home.