D&D 5E What's Your Table Look Like?

[pogre]

Lots and lots of Hirst Arts, Dwarven Forge, and miniatures I have painted.

 

[aco175]

It is stock that we pull out minis at the same time you bring out your character sheet. Nearly every fight involves a grid. A lot of times there is the old maps from 4e dungeons and we use a lot of 3e tiles. I still think that The King's Road is the most dangerous place in my games.

 

[Draegn]

Very long, it seats twenty. At my end I have a blackboard where I draw my maps, at the other end the boys lay out a field grey military blanket and set up their little metal toy men and model terrain. I run chief architect software on my laptop for floor plans of buildings and have art files for the NPC's appearances.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

We don't play at home anymore since the last time we summoned Cat-thulu.

 

[not-so-newguy]

We don't play at home anymore since the last time we summoned Cat-thulu.

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I like the “roll for initiative” look that cat-thulu has

 

[drl2]

I've been making a lot of terrain and printing a lot of minis, but what ends up on my table varies according to a lot of factors. Do I know ahead of time more or less where the players plan to go, so I can set up an important area or two ahead of time? Can a scene be thrown together quickly on the table without breaking the flow of the gaming session, or is there a logical break time that will allow a window for me to put together something more complicated?

• Non-combat and combat-very-unlikely situations are pretty much always TotM, as are very simple combats where range & movement speed aren't going to matter much
• Chessex mat with crude sketches if I need something quick or don't have terrain for the environment. Sometimes I'll plop some scatter pieces, furniture, chests, etc onto that for a little texture.
• For outdoor encounters, even some random ones, I have a big 4'x4' board lined with a sheet of the textured green sorta-grassy-looking paper the model train folks use, onto which I'll spread out some trees, hills, bushes, maybe some tents and a menhir or twelve - again, depending on setup time factors and whether I think the encounter warrants it
• If the characters are dungeon-delving, I'll try to use tiles to define a few of the key encounter areas, while using the chessex mat for the less interesting areas where combat might occur. I'll also sometimes sketch a basic map of where the party has explored already onto some corner of the mat, or more likely I'll have printed a copy of the map and will cover it with pieces of black construction paper I can lift away to reveal each new area as they get to it.
• ... And then there are the times when I go nuts with tabletop prep

(Gah! Can't access my site from work to link to photos stored there! Will add them later, but they're all over the DIY category and some of the campaign updates at (Re)Turning (to) the Tables - Tabletop RPG Geekery Revisited )

 

[The Green Hermit]

*Two 6' folding tables placed side by side.
*Giant flip mat in the center.
-- Social interactions and travel montages are theater of the mind, but all combat is on the mat.
-- A few minis (I just bought a bunch of the paper ones) but mostly pieces from other games to represent characters/monsters.
*Everybody has a binder and dice out.
*Spell slot organizers.
*Dungeon Master screen so I can hide notes and monster hit points.

 

[drl2]

The promised photos:

Recently went a little crazy on a build for the Wild Sheep Chase:

When I knew there'd be a fight in a tavern:

In my Mighty Protectors campaign, when aliens take over a cargo ship and build a creepy biotech power plant inside:

Dragon's tower at Thundertree: