Coolest. Gaming Set-up. Evar.

Breakdaddy said:

I cant argue with your time value statement, but I can say that I have made entire campaigns with the NWN toolkit and it doesnt take hours to do maps, ever.

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Well, a quck glance at nwn.bioware.com didn't turn up the toolkit for free. That means more money. And I expect one cannot come up with lovely maps in 2 minutes the first time you take it out of the box. Mastery of the tool takes time and effort. I wouldn't be surprised if many of us would never get that kind of speed with the thing, since not everybody is lightning with a computer graphics tool.

Boredflak said:

Don't forget that for a "standard" party of four, you have five people sitting at the table. That's $50/hour (at $10/each). Now we're talking 16 hours of game-time savings to "come up a win". That's about three game sessions for us.

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Watch your accounting. You should only count time that the system saves. Unless you waste five hours each session seting up your maps, it'll take more sessions to make it worthwhile.

I don't spend even spend an hour each session setting up battlemaps. At the frequency we play, it could easily take a year for it to pay for itself. Even more, because generally the time I spend setting up maps isn't fully wasted by my players - I often have the maps drawn beforehand, so I only waste my own time. So now we're talkign multiple years before we hit break-even...

Time saved is nice, sure, but I'm thinking comparisons... This setup costs about as much as 15+ really solid gaming books. That's a lot of content I could be using. Or, with that money, I could provide really good food for each session for an entire year. Or buy CDs for background music, or... You get the point.

So, I return - to those who know they really like minis in the first place, this is probably really nice. Quite possibly worth it, then. If I were independantly wealthy, I'd go for it, sure. But for a normal pocket, it is a heck of an expenditure for a maybe. The "go for it even if you don't use minis" line just doesn't strike me as wise.

ironregime said:

Hey, Thanks for sharing the pics. Quick question:

Do you have to darken the room to be able to see the details in the projection? If so, does this hinder anything else, like reading, writing, etc.?

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Yeah, we turn down the lights a little, especially in the afternoon. There are two halogen torch lamps and two more endtables in the living room where we game plus a ceiling lamp in the adjoining dining room. When we have the projector on, we reduce that to one Torch and one end table lamp and leave the dining room light on.

It is still very comfortable to read in, but it's a tad dimmer than you would probably choose to game in normally.

That is all a function of the projector you are using of course. If you had a truly kick-ass projector like the Dell 2300MP ($1349, new) which pumps out 2400 ANSI lumens in XVGA with a contrast ratio which leaves your jaw hanging open, your projector would be bright enough that you could turn all the lights on in the room and add a few candles besides.

Just to clarify though, we don't play in light as dim as the pics hint at. We dimmed the lights deliberately to make sure we got a clear picture. The image is *very* bright to the human eye but that is not properly conveyed in pictures.

Also - the image is projected from the top down and is so bright that "arm shadows" hinted at by some posters simply aren't noticeable during actual use. It's like saying a paper map is obscured by an arm shadow. What you really mean to say is that it's obscured by the arm you can't see through. I know that intuitively you would expect these shadows to interfere - but I am telling you - it simply is not something which we notice at all during play. We sit around on couches about the table which is at coffee table height. When we look down at the map image, the fact you can't see through someone's arm is not at all startling . If you got your eye level down parallel to the table I suppose you could see the shadow then - but it's just not something you notice normally.

Wulf Ratbane said:

You are the most amazing DM I have ever seen.

I mean... really... You let your guys drink hi-balls at the table!

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What, doesn't everyone?!?!

As for the setup.... awesome! And good to see it is up here in Toronto... if you guys ever have an open house to let people check it out, let me know!

The possibilities are endless as to the map uses, not just NWN and Dunjini but anything you can project could be used in this manner with some small editing and slapping a grid on it. Imagine a Hex grid thrown on real Nebula pictures from the Hubble Telescope for a Traveller game..... *drool*

-W.

Schleeeek! Nice set-up, guys! Color me envious...
Time to start saving up, I s'pose

That is an amazing...awsome...just really cool setup. I want one. But, it really doesn't solve any of the problems I have with using minatures.

Nice setup for a travel capable. This is something I've been working towards myself. Right now I have a huge train layout table I got for 10 bucks that can seat 10 around it pretty easily if need be. I installed a surround sound system (5.1) around the table. Hooking that up to a sound blaster in my computer allows me to *move* the sounds around the table as I like for sound effect and music. Combine that with wireless networking and a mounted swingarm moniter mounted for a built-in computer or laptop, there is not much I *can't* do at the table.

The projector I am going to rig up to the ceiling to do what this is showing (projecting maps onto the table itself) and have a swivel built in to point it at the wall behind the DM seat. I plan on making cut scenes and animations for some special points in my games, which then can be shown on the screen behind me for the group to experience. For instance, I can make a Star Wars opening crawl for my d20SW game starts. With full surround and the re-mastered DVD audio tracks, the effect is stunning.

Some of the better things you can only do if you have a room dedicated for use as a gaming area. I'm a lucky man who has a wife who games (she actually rounded up here own group from her co-workers! We have to "schedule" uses of the game room now. heh. Horrible problem to have, huh? ) AND we have no children, which makes it easier.

So far the price is the sticking point. My gaming buddies are not very wealthy, so getting more than 10 bucks a week is not really an option. I'm going to try to save up, or run some kind of fund raiser to help out, I think. Might be a fun option for the group... build comradery and the like.

Speaking of which, many DVD players now can show Jpegs and the like from digital cameras or burned CDs. You can get a boxed DVD surround set for less than 200, which covers sound and audio. Plug that into your projector and run a disk with the files burned to it. As long as you make a handy index on paper to refer to, moving between pre-made maps is pretty easy. Those same DVDs can usually take Component (RGB) video connectors, so the quality should be quite high.

If there is interest, I have a nice and very inexpensive way to make speaker mounts that I can share with people. 25 bucks for a mount is just too much to pay when the system would cost less than the 5 mounts you need!

Well that's about the coolest thing ever... any chance of posting some more pictures? I like the idea of using Neverwinter nights... awsome...

Slomoot said:

any chance of posting some more pictures?

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I have a bunch of pictures on the page Steel_Wind asked me to set up when he read my letter to Dungeon:

http://www.d20srd.org/extras/mapProjection.htm

I've seen other pix on other threads also. Steel_Wind probably has a list of URLs...

Shadowdancer said:

Or a TV series: "Gamer Playroom Makeover."

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I can see it now....

"Pimp my Dice"

Now Robert is lovin' that phat gaming table goodness, but We're not done yet.. BAM we're adding a projecting battlemap to the mix here.... Check out the ANSI Lumens on that baby!

-W.

"I'm speechless. Speechless! I have no speech."

Johnathan