Hell yeah, this modular lava terrain for RPGs and miniatures games is hot stuff

A new set of gaming terrain up on Kickstarter is making pools of lava and fiery pits of Hell look genuinely too hot to handle.

Hellscape is the latest collection of scenery pieces and terrain tiles from Dwarven Forge, which has been turning out impressive environments for dungeon-crawlers, RPGs and miniatures games since 1996.

The tiles are made out of the studio’s Dwarvenite – which does sound like something you might find in a fantasy cavern – and have all been sculpted by hand by the team, led by founder Stefan Pokorny.

Hellscape’s real showstopper is its pools and cascading flows of lava, which are made from a translucent yellow version of the material. When illuminated from below, this makes the molten rock glow in a way that might have you second-guessing whether you should touch them.

The studio has come up with its own lighting panels to do exactly that, with flickering LED fires built into the terrain adding an extra layer of realism to the hellish landscape.

The Hellscape collection is half brand new scenery and half pieces from Dwarven Forge’s older Caverns Deep set updated to include the glowing lava.

As you might expect from that impressive list of features, the Hellscape set doesn’t come cheap. If you want the whistles and bells, the first set including the illuminated panels rings in at an eye-watering $785 (£618). Hey, at least you get a tote bag, right?

There is the option to pick your own selection of tiles and pieces, including a more budget-friendly offering of unpainted bits, but you can still expect to sink quite a bit of dosh if you’re after the terrain’s lightshow. 

Plenty of people have already done so, with the Hellscape Kickstarter campaign sailing past its £79,000 target to raise over £500,000 at the time of writing. The campaign will run until July 2nd, with the terrain itself expected to arrive with backers next April.