Best Gaming room and Game table setups!

[sniffles]

I have several friends/GMs with similar gaming room setups. Two of them recently purchased split-level homes and both installed a gaming room in the lower level. One is using a big piece of masonite framed onto a smaller table to give it more surface space, but I don't think this is entirely satisfactory since the masonite tends to bend if you rest your elbows on it where it extends beyond the top of the table. His wife won't let him buy a mini-fridge because she says then she'd never see him again.

The other person has the better setup (althought the first guy has more comfortable chairs ). He has an 8-foot table. The room is surrounded entirely with shelving to hold his miniature collection and game aids. He also has purchased a lot of spare foam inserts for Games Workshop miniature cases and has mounted them on the walls on vinyl-coated wire racks. He has a wet-erase Chessex grid mat on the table at all times. There's also a large wipe-board on the wall behind the GM's chair. The room does have a slight loss of traffic space, but he can keep it set up 24-7. Conveniently, there's a bathroom right across the hall. Unfortunately there's no room for a mini-fridge - we all bring our own snacks, and have to store them in the main fridge upstairs.

I also play at a friend's home where we play in the living room. There's no table to put a battle mat on, and usually at least one player ends up sitting on the floor because there's not enough room for chairs. I do not find sitting on the couch conducive to good roleplaying. There's nowhere to put my stuff, nowhere to write unless I do it on my binder, nowhere to roll my dice except on the coffee table. I usually get very sleepy during those games because the light is poor, and I get a backache from leaning over to roll dice.

I'd say the best things to have in an ideal gaming room are good lighting, good storage, comfortable chairs, and easy access to the bathroom and kitchen. I think a fully finished basement with a kitchenette would be the perfect location.

 

[Darmanicus]

I'll be rearranging my house soon and plan to turn the downstairs family room into a gaming room and figured this would be the best place to get advice on what the best setup might be. I really want to make a room that has both a good gaming atmosphere and is setup the best possible way for ease and enjoyment of gaming. Some of my specific musings concern...

What's the perfect gaming table?
- A whiteboard surface with etched grid? Easy to get to for moving minis/counters but can be awkward to write on.
- Gridsheet under plexiglass? Same as above, but character sheets and notes can be tucked under glass to protect from drinks, etc.
- Normal table with whiteboard/grid on the wall? Easier to write on but how to stick minis/counters to it.

Should I use a table at all?
- A table can keep players focused but can be uncomfortable for long sessions.
- Sitting on recliners and sofas is more comfy but may be too comfy. Lack of focus, need character sheet and dice rolling surfaces, no easily accessible map for ease of combat.

Gameroom snacks?
- Start a group snack fund or fend for yourselves?

These are just what I can come up with after being awake all night. Please hurl as many comments and suggestions as your carpal tunnel can stand!

What would YOU like to have in the perfect gaming room??

Invite me along, I generally bring enough beers for everyone!

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I too have had bad experiences with using a couch for seating. It was too low and the players just reclined and pretty much zoned out. It was much better beforehand with chairs. Not to mention the inevitable problem of the couch devouring pencils, dice, and whatever else it can get its grubby cushions on!

 

[philreed]

But I have to say about my worst place to play in, many years ago in my teens we couldn't find any parent willing to let us into a room for the night to have a game... and thus we ended up in a 10'x10' leaking shed in a thunderstorm with barelwy enough room for the 5 of us to stand let alone play.... funnily enough it turned out to be a pretty good game, but we still didn't use that venue again......

I remember those days. We used to play in a boat that was in a garage.

 

[Warehouse23]

I was thinking about experimenting with a semicircular gaming table. Players sit along the curved half, and the DM sits along the straight half--sort of like at a blackjack table. I'm the kind of player who likes the stand up when the battle gets intense to be able to peer across the battle mat and try to get a good strategic view of the combat (high Int characters-- what can I say). I've always been nervous that DMs think I am trying to peer over their screen when I do that (although nothing could be further from the case). I think a semicircle would help negate that problem. It would also make players feel more equal-- there's something about a rectangular or circular set up that means a DM can't pay equal attention to all the players.

Any experience with non-standard tables?

 

[Silver Moon]

We have a dining room that is 12x27 feet in size which is perfect for a Gameroom. With all the leaves in the dining table expands to 4x11 feet in size and we then put on top of it a 4x8 foot dry erase board permanently marked with 1-inch squares. We use this room to game in from March to November.

In December that becomes our Christmas room instead, with the tree and presents (with the leaves and sides down the table closes to a mere 4x3 foot size). The kids then continue to use the room as a playroom for all of the new Christmas games and toys and we usually don't convert it back into game-room format until after the February school vacation.

So for the three winter months we game in the family room instead, where we keep the fireplace running all weekends and usually have a pot of soup or stew simmering by game time. That is also the "comfy-chair room" with two couches, a loveseat and some nice chairs to sit in. I put a smaller 3x4 foot dry erase board (also with permanent 1-inch squares) on top of a coffee table for those winter games.

We've hosted gaming weekend here before and between these two rooms and the table in the kitchenette can have three games simultaneously running without a problem.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I'd say the best things to have in an ideal gaming room are good lighting, good storage, comfortable chairs, and easy access to the bathroom and kitchen. I think a fully finished basement with a kitchenette would be the perfect location.

While I agree that all of these things are critical for the ideal gaming situation, another item that's always an issue if there will be non-gamers around is that the gaming area be out of the flow of traffic. I would love if my group could always play in the dining room, and though it's small, we could all sqeeze in. The problem is that there is too much non-gamer traffic through the dining room, so we often end up forgoing the table and cramming ourselves into our small den, just to have some quietude.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Any experience with non-standard tables?

Not a non-standard table, but a non-standard use of a regular 3' x 8' table. At one of the early Chicago Gamedays, Piratecat ran a Feng Shui game and set up along the long side of the table rather than at the end like most DM's set up.

The nice thing about this is that all the players were roughly equal distance from the DM. There wasn't any issue of talking down the length of the table, for example. In a regular D&D game, it would make it easy to pass notes or to draw on the battlemat.

The drawback is that it would seem to take up a little more table space than a "normal" set up.

 

[weezoh]

I vote for a table every time I just need writing space etc. . .

here are pictures of our gaming room

the table is 2 ping pong tables that are older than me, painted with an almond color to give a good background under the vellum grid.

went to home depot and got the plexiglass, overall I think the cost was around $100

 

[Talic]

We built a non-standard gaming table. It is halfround too. The players take the edge of the circle, as you said. and the DM has a mini station that pulls out from under the table along the long side. The advantage to this setup is that it better focuses all of the players attention on the DM, not across the table at the antics of another player.

The table has an upper tier which has a piece of plexi over a grid laid flush with the table top. Makes it very easy for all to see and reach the board. A lower tier on the outer edge is about 15 inches deep for each player to have room for books, character sheets, dice rolls, etc. and helps keep things organized and away from the map.

The workmanship and materials is kida on the poor side, but it was a fairly cheap build, and it works well. There are several simple improvements we plan to make when we have time, such as adding dice pits which can double as beverage holders, a narrow basket or slot at each station for books, and a tack board for each station.

If I loaded these images correctly, you can see the thing under construction as I seem to have lost the completed photos. But at least you get the idea.
-The first image is the DM station. about 24x36 inches of space. The walls stick up about 2 inches higher than the top tier of the main talble and are hinged to fold down for easy storage under the main table.
-Second image shows the players table configuration. Not truely half-round as there are 5 stations with their angled faces toward the center.
-Entire thing was built on about $100 using two 4x8 sheets of melamine(very durable, no finish required, but a tough cut), a 24x36 sheet of plexiglass, bunch of bolts and brackets, and a dozen or so 2x4s (for legs, support, etc.)