About ... your table

We play at a kitchen table about five feet long. Overhead light, plus plenty of light in the kitchen. We also have this... I have no idea what the name for it is. It's on rollers, it's about two feet tall, with two parts of the surface that adjust and tilt and can independently slide up and down. It's like some mutant lectern thing we use to hold the GM's books on the tolted side, and he uses the flat side to roll dice on.

We play around a war gaming table that is around 6 ft by 8 ft. Works very well.

Currently there are usually two options.

In one we game at a rather large table in the living room surrounded by comfortable seetings and in the other we have the same, just without the table, there is only a really small table (like 1'x2') where only 2-3 people can reasonably roll dice on (mostly limited by the seating space around the "table"), while the others are relying on books to have a flat surface, if needed. There are plenty books around, so finding one is not an issue.

Bye
Thanee

Three miniature card tables, arranged to form one larger table, as below.

We pop a 36 x 48 battlemat over that, and people bave room for books, mini's etc. traditional living room lighting, and the DM spot is sweeet: The DM sits between two half-height breakfast-nook type bars in the room, and has tons of space to put notes and minis.

I have three setups

1) a big table (3' by 10' ellipse) in the kitchen / dining room with space for 10 players (although we had need for 8 seats and the non-DM end is cluttered with the stereo and foodstuff)
2) comfy chairs and sofas in the living room (dice rolling on books)
3) (only for small groups in the summer) four chairs and a very small table on the balcony

Since the sun is shining directly into the kitchen/dining room and the flat ist situated directly under the roof it gets really hot in there... at the moment setup number 2 is preferred, but we will go back to the big table when the new campaign will start.

In my appartement, we use an old "enlargeable" kitchen table. It is quite worn down after over 30 years of use (cold coke and beer left their marks...), but still good for RPG. It is made of pine wood, about 2x1 meters in size. It is a bit small for a five-headed group, but the DM has a small extra table for the books. The seatings are an old sofa made of leather and some simple wooden chairs.

The light comes from two candles (last session, one candle holder broke just after the candle burnt down during a battle between the party and a bunch of powerful undead...hmm, a bad omen?), a lamp for the DM and a small halogen lamp behind the sofa. Behind the DM's place is the HiFi stuff, so he has control over proper background music.

Having just moved in to our newly built house I have the luxury of making a game area the way I want it.
I have made a quarter of my large basement (27x60 total) the gaming area. One side has bookshelves along the wall for my gear, two sides are made by a very large couch/recliner set (pit) and the fourth side is open.

For lighting, right now I have a flourescent shop light but will change that to a chandelier thing that uses candles or one of those lights which go over a pool table.

I am currently building a table. I am using a 3/4 plywood sheet (4x8) which will be covered in felt. On top of this about 6-8 inches will be a raised platform (2x4) for my battlemat. I will probably light the underside of the platform with low voltage lights. I may add drawers to the underneath of the main table for pencils, paper, dice, etc..

I normally don't use music or a laptop but I have put in a stereo already by the bookshelves and have run cat5 if I feel the need to do so.

Just need a small fridge in the basement and I am all set.

You are in the middle of a dining room on the second story on the east side of the townhouse. In the middle of the room, there is a 4' diameter round cherrywood table, covered by an ugly tablecloth (to protect it from over-aggressively rolled dice -- Search DC 10). To the east, there are windows. To the northeast, there is a ~3' door exiting to a balcony. To the northwest, the passageway continues to the kitchen with the nearby bathroom that you passed on your way in. On the west wall, there is a mirror in a red wood frame. Beneath the mirror is an ornate chest carved with asian-styled dragons (full of tomes of wonderous lore that's not allowed in this campaign -- Search DC 1). The south wall is painted green (with a finished "ragging-off" effect -- Profession (Painter) DC 10) and has an expensive-looking painting hanging on it ("Queen Mab in the Ruins" -- Bardic Knowledge DC 20). A half dozen chairs are arranged roughly equidistant around the table, each with a black cushion, some of which are covered in animal hair (from a housecat -- Knowledge (Nature) DC 5; -5 to the check if he's insisted on getting pets and cuddles from you on your way in).

Cheers,
::Kaze

Perhaps as I've gotten older, it had become more important to me to give each player enough space to spread out and enough light so we can each see. Then again, maybe I've been this way my entire gaming career!
Anyway, we play in my basement using two large tables put together which gives us a 60"x72" gaming surface. The battlemat goes in the middle and a large piece of 1/4" plexiglass covers the entire table surface. We can easily put 7 people around the table, and I've got small tables and bookshelves nearby for each player to put his books when they're not being used. Overhead lights plus a couple of lamps.

Well, there's three places we game, and I'll go to the trouble of describing two and a half of them...

1.) Places other than my house. This is too broad a category to describe, and besides, we almost always do it over here now.

2.) The 'Moon House'. This is a small 10x12 elevated structure that my dad built for my mom a while ago; it's still not finished, so the plywood floors have to be covered in rugs. Inside, we have one of those generic 2.5'x6' folding tables with the generic 'wood colored' top. It can fit a total of about five of us, rather uncomfortably. This is where we game when my parents don't want people bothering them in the house.

3.) The 'Dining Room'. This is the large front room of my house, with a very high ceiling, recessed lights, and easy access to the kitchen and living room. In the middle of the room is our giant, round, wooden dining table. The last family meal there was years ago, and it's been relegated to storage of junk up until a little while ago when I cleaned it off to use as a gaming platform. It's some unidentifiable hardwood, with that strange, waxy coating that hardwood gets if left to its own devices. It's about 4.5 feet across (1.4 meters), and has room for about six or seven people. If the need ever arises, we can give it the center piece that turns it into an oval, and seat about two or three more people. Unfortunately, the carpet around the table is in good need of a cleaning, so it's less than optimal.