If money were no object

[RangerWickett]

If you had $10,000 that could only be spent on gaming material, what would you want? How would you trick out your game?

What about if you had $100,000? A million?

Obviously nobody's gonna blow a million bucks on your gaming set-up. I'm just curious what people would do if they had to spend the money only on gaming.

At the low end, would you just buy tons of dice, minis, and books? A really fancy overhead projector? A custom game table?

Higher up, do you get a Microsoft Surface so you could have interactive battle maps? Do you hire artists to design the maps, illustrate your NPCs? Compose a soundtrack for the game? Pay people to publish your campaign setting? Fly the whole group to Siberia to set the mood for your Soviet-era Cthulhu horror game?

Me personally, I don't know that spending tons of money would add to my game. I'd just like a quality laptop with some good speakers and a soundtrack budget so I could have background music on cue. I don't use minis or particularly dig battle maps, but I would like to have illustrations of key NPCs, monsters, and such. Maybe commission portraits of the PCs too.

I suppose catered dinners could count as a gaming expense.

What would you do?

 

[Sunseeker]

10k: I would probably get an awesome gaming table, subscribe to some gamer mags, buy like, every book I could imagine, and then use the rest for pizza and drinks on game nights.

100k: I would put a down-payment on a custom home, with a specially designed room for gaming and use some of the money as above.

1M: All of the above and then some, maybe start up my own gamer shop or something as well.

 

[Crothian]

10k would be a good gaming room with plenty of shelves, lots of area and just a good place to game. I'd also spend some on a few select books.

100k would be a kick ass gamign sewtt up like the Service or other high tech option and lots of good gaming material.

1 Million plus would be as above but I'd also commission some modules from writers I like to write scenerios for me. For instance I'd see if Steve Kenson has any interest in revisitng Changeling the dreaming and writing something for me. I'd pay well!!

 

[Jan van Leyden]

10k would go to the bank in order to have enough money when Microsoft Surface - and some cool RPG Apps - hits the shelves.

100K would be a fine some to invest into a small gaming company.

1M? Find a good business partner and start my own company, I'd have no problem contents-wise, but I'm a terrible businessman.

 

[Verdande]

I'd pay some artists to illustrate my various books, companions, and other pieces that I produce. Other than that, who needs buckets of miniatures and dungeon tiles and other boring crap? Imagination is where it's at, baby.

 

[Wicht]

Assuming this is extra gaming budget money...

$10K I would set the money into a bank account as seed money to pay for going to both Origins and Gencon each year.

$100K+ I would use the money to start up my own small gaming company. The more money, the bigger the company startup. Edit: I'd also by an Emissary gaming table for my dining room.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, to start I'd get a gaming setup like this...

I'd follow that with six laptops, a smartboard, and the rest of it on books, dice, and minis.

 

[Chainsaw]

If money were no object, I'd build a real, full sized castle as my "gaming room." Sometimes we'd game in the throne room, other times on walls, in the courtyard, or in the dungeon. It would go a long way toward setting the mood.

Plus, I would get Apocalyptica to play Metallica in the background.

 

[mattcolville]

If you had $10,000 that could only be spent on gaming material, what would you want? How would you trick out your game?

What about if you had $100,000? A million?

Obviously nobody's gonna blow a million bucks on your gaming set-up. I'm just curious what people would do if they had to spend the money only on gaming.

At the low end, would you just buy tons of dice, minis, and books? A really fancy overhead projector? A custom game table?

Higher up, do you get a Microsoft Surface so you could have interactive battle maps? Do you hire artists to design the maps, illustrate your NPCs? Compose a soundtrack for the game? Pay people to publish your campaign setting? Fly the whole group to Siberia to set the mood for your Soviet-era Cthulhu horror game?

Me personally, I don't know that spending tons of money would add to my game. I'd just like a quality laptop with some good speakers and a soundtrack budget so I could have background music on cue. I don't use minis or particularly dig battle maps, but I would like to have illustrations of key NPCs, monsters, and such. Maybe commission portraits of the PCs too.

I suppose catered dinners could count as a gaming expense.

What would you do?

I already run the game off my laptop. D&D4, plus the Combat Manager, plus the DDI makes this so easy it's...it's revelatory. Before this, I'd have said it couldn't be done.

I'd spend the money mostly on really nicely painted lead. Dungeon Tiles, other dungeon dressing.

I think the actual process of pushing minis around a table and drawing on a battlemat is already optimized for play and something like the Surface would be at best a distraction and possible an impediment to play.

 

[mattcolville]

Well, to start I'd get a gaming setup like this...

I've played at tables like this and I no longer think longer is better. I'd probably do a custom table. A friend of mine and I once did some work and sketched out a table diagram that would put the GM in something like a centrally located position and arranged the players so they were equidistant from the play area and could all see the GM.

A long table is terrible for that.