Describe your "gaming area" please

[Arnwyn]

So what is your gaming area like? Pros and cons of your area and do you think the real-life "game environment" can have an impact on how "fun" your games are?

Since you asked:

We play in my basement rec-room. We sit around the covered pool table, which provides ample space for books, dice, and the 2 battle-mats.

The "library" shelves (of both game books and novels) line the back wall behind me (the DM). The other half of the room has the home theatre with the CD-jukebox, filled with soundtracks to provide appropriate music when necessary (accessible by remote).

There are no cons to my area.

(And yes, the environment where you hold the game is very important for everyone's enjoyment. Everyone should be comfortable so they can remain focused, and books should be nearby to minimize downtime when grabbing the appropriate reference material during the session.)

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Sometimes we rotate houses, but for the past few months we have been playing at the DMs house, since he has a spare room that has a ping-pong table set up in it. The table has one short end that butts up against the wall, and we can easily fit the 6 of us around the other 3 sides, and could fit up to 9 if need be, and still have some room to spare. We set 2 battlemats up in the center, and everyone pretty much has enough room for their books, laptop if they have one, etc., and there is still plenty of room for a few plates/bowls of snacks.

If we play at another players house, we have played at everything from dining room tables, living rooms with a coffee table, to a small apartment (sitting wherever there was room-floor, sofa, chairs) with a card table for the battlemat.

 

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

One of our group is a single guy living in a two-bedroom place. He made the second bedroom a game room, all kinds of games. There is a 5ft. diameter round poker table covered with green felt, with wells for poker chips, dice, etc. He installed a huge whiteboard which nearly spans one entire wall of the room, about 8 ft. wide by 4 ft. high, with a bunch of dry erase markers.
There's a hand-built wet bar with a nice top that has poly'd-over collectible beer labels - and a built-in aquarium underneath. He has a restaurant-style soda gun installed and there is a mini fridge under the bar too. After some stoooopid games early on, we have been going very easy on the adult beverages for years. He has a well-stocked humidor in one corner but due to poor airflow and courtesy to nonsmokers we don't burn stogies during play anymore. (However, cigars are virtually mandatory on poker night )
There is a hanging lamp with a low-watt bulb, set low to the table, easy on the eyes and good for card games and miniatures. There is also a floor lamp which is an exact replica of the one in "Christmas Story", a ladies' leg in fishnet stocking - heh.
The only complaint we have with this excellent setup is that it's tight, we could use more square feet.

 

[Storminator]

We bought a new house in August. Shopping for houses went something like this: Nice house, like the neighborhood, no game room. Next! Nice house, good price, no good room for painting minis. Next!

So we have an extra bedroom converted to a "craft room" with two permanent painting stations and a display case, and a finished basement with game table, three bookshelves of game books, two utility shelves of board games, and Forgotten Realms maps on the wall.

I'm pretty happy with it.

PS

 

[Iron Sheep]

We play in our living room, with the players sitting in chairs or on the sofa around a coffee table. We put the battlemat on the coffee table, but we have small side-tables next to the chairs and sofa so that players can put their drinks/munchies/minis/dice/whatever on them. When I'm GMing, I grab a footstool to put my notes on.

It's not perfect, but it works.

In the past I've played in dorm rooms (sitting on the floor), in the living room of a trailer (with up to 11 people playing, no air conditioning, and no central table to put things on), and around many dining room tables.

Corran

 

[Beard in the Sky]

I find that having a table really helps focus the group. This may not be an issue with a one-player group.

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I agree with this wholeheartedly. We used to play in the family room but I found that certain players are then almost unavoidably ten or fifteen feet apart and pretty much can't roleplay with one another. At my house, we play at the kitchen table, though this can get a little unconfortable as Joshua Dyal mentioned. Our current group plays in a friend's dining room, which is cool because he has this table that has drawers in it! Its awesome, everyone has a place built into the table to keep books and whatnot. The only thing that sucks is that the ends of the table don't have the drawers, so the DM gets screwed.

 

[Wombat]

Lessee...

I have a one-bedroom apartment. I keep most of my gamebooks in my bedroom, bringing out the appropriate ones, depending on the game I am running. We run the game at my 4-6 (extendable, usually for games) seat "dining room" table. We also spill over into my living room area, especially when we are chaning cds. On the wall of the dining room we usually have a campaign map on the wall; the table is for dice, game books, and the usual munchies, except for the requisite tea, which is kept in the kitchenette area.

No battleboard, so we are safe there

 

[WayneLigon]

I've usually used the kitchen table. The dining room table is way too nice and after an 'unfortunate incident' there 15+ years ago, I decided it was never going to be used for that purpose again. Mom was most supportive of that decision


The kitchen table has the advantages of (1) having a leaf to insert for gaming night, (2) being on a surface that could care less about spills, (3) being near the fridge and a surface where chips and stuff can be put so they're not cluttering the gaming area, and (4) people can play with the dogs without having the dogs get too disruptive (if we played sitting on the floor, then there would be dogs in people's laps). It's also near a door so the one player that smokes can go outside and still be able to hear somewhat through it.

 

[Desdichado]

You haven't lived until you've played D&D perched in an adjustable barber's chair and used upright hair curlers for ogre minis

Haven't done that, but I've used Little People^TM as an orgre miniature in Blood Bowl before. Does that count for something?

 

[diaglo]

try your local library. in the past we gamed in the private conference rooms at the library. they were free and you just had to sign up for them. i don't know about nowadays tho...that was back in the early 80s