What does your game table look like?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Mmurphy

Don't do a room, it's too small. Convert the garage into a gaming room (your cars can stay outside were they belong). I have heating and air-conditioning (since I live in Northern Nevada it ranges from 10 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit year round). The only wish I have was when I had the house built I wish I would have put insulation in the garage walls and roof. I have since put insulation in the roof but walls are much harder.

If you had thought of it when building the house, you would have just built a proper game room from the start, and still HAVE a garage...

[Chemlak]

Originally Posted by Exmortis

MY head nearly exploded a wife who "WANTS" a gaming room, does this Joe realize how rare and precious you really are?

Since they both work for LWD, I'm going to hazard a guess that the answer lies somewhere along the "HEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL YYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" spectrum.

[liz]

Originally Posted by Chemlak

Since they both work for LWD, I'm going to hazard a guess that the answer lies somewhere along the "HEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL YYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" spectrum.

^ This pretty much sums it up.

[Mmurphy]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

If you had thought of it when building the house, you would have just built a proper game room from the start, and still HAVE a garage...

No, the house was built to pre-existing models, no floor plan changes allowed. Certain options could be done:

AC (which should not be an option in Northern Nevada but.....)
Extra power plugs
Color of carpet
upgraded kitchen appliances

Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

[Parody]

Originally Posted by Mmurphy

Don't do a room, it's too small.

Our gaming room is the biggest room in the house. It's not quite as big as the garage, but it has all sorts of other advantages. Like being inside. :)

Originally Posted by Mmurphy

Convert the garage into a gaming room (your cars can stay outside were they belong).

Not for me, thanks. I never want to go back to brushing a foot of snow and scraping a bunch of ice off my car on those winter mornings.

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by Parody

Our gaming room is the biggest room in the house. It's not quite as big as the garage, but it has all sorts of other advantages. Like being inside. :)

WARNING APPOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR LONG POST RESPONSE
In another forum that I am a writer & moderator for this similar topic was also discussed. And for the record, I KNOW our room is not a norm.. but even with that it can show those concidering doing a game room the ideas (As Liz pointed out) but also the costs involved. You might be surprised at that. We started off by axing our cable bill (if like most in the country ours exceeded $120 a month just for the BASIC stuff). purchased an antenna and invested in Netflix for a $110 savings amonth(that's $1,300 in a year folks... for TV).
Next we did 99% of the work ourselves (meaning Wife, and other players)


While roominess is helpful, organization is key... ours ended up being 20 x 12, not huge, but functional... Some of the things that help are the rolling Storage and the Shelf & Drawer Storage... the footprint for both is small but the storage is great.

The rolling storage give players a place for drinks, off table books etc. And is short enough that it rolls under table for storage when not in use, yet has 1 large drawer & 4 Small drawers for Binders, dice, etc. We added the cup holders (ebay $1) Total cost for 4 was $188

The Mini Storage and Shelving

is behind the DM station. it runs the width of the room (20') but is only 18" deep.

If you are patient and creative you can cost effectively do a great gaming room.
The rough overall $ cost for ours:
Construction
20' wall- Lumber, sliding French doors, sheetrock, wiring, soundboard, texture, paint ($750)

Furnishings
Old Dining room Table & chairs($125 Goodwill)
Recover / Finish Chairs ($50 material, $30 Polyurethane finish, $20 upholstery nails)
4 Rolling player Storage ($190)
4 Mini Storage Towers ($300)
38"x82" tempered glass top (Free other than cleaning it, was old sliding door)
Molding around glass ($5, was cutoffs from molding department at homedepot that they couldn't sell full lengths) & used left over paint from shelves
Cork board (free used molding, paint and cork floor scraps from flooring supply company throwaway)

Equipment
2 JVC Blackdiamond Flat screen LCD TVS embedded in table ($960)
1 46" Insignia TV behind DM for Player view stuff ($300 Walmart clearance because it had no base)
1 small form factor PC CPU with 32G Ram Dual HDMI ($400)and 4 USB/HDMI converters. ($160)
2 LG 25"ultrawide Monitors ($360 Amazon)
1 Dell S2240 multitouch 21.5" monitor ($250 Amazon)
1 logtech wireless keyboard ($69 newegg)
1 Logtech touchpad ($50) for table
1 Netgear Gigabit 16port Splitter ($69 BestBuy Returned)
12 Cat6 cables ($20 ebay)
6 Fujisu T2220 Tablet PCs ($600)
8 copies of Hero lab ($90) have more but this is just for this room setup
1 copy of Realm works ($50)
2 copy of Battlegrounds Mapprogram ($80 didn't work so abandoned)
1 copy 10 licenses of D20pro ($90) for table mapping


So if I exclude gaming materials I have accumulated thru 30 years of playing ( a VULGAR $ number to be certain)

Our total cost for our game room was approximately:
Building Materials = $750
Furnishings = $720
Equipment = $3429
Total = $4899

Now that's a room, table hardware (pcs) and software to support 10 players & 1 DM.
we have had the room almost 4 yrs. We still add little pieces and this cost was not all in one chunk. Even saying that, our cable cost for the same time period would have been $5200.... so true out of pocket expense was $0 over the time period.
Most don't need (or want 3 TVs in their gaming experience) nor do all utilize Herolab on a tablet PC (most still print copies out). But my players enjoy the added detail the table gives to mapping and having herolab electronically allows for players to update hp, spells, items as they go.... Hopefully one day, Herolab will be "live" and allow for complete integration between the DM and the players for effects, conditions etc... but I know that is way down the road (if ever).

So, in closing, you can have a great table for what your paying in your cable bill.

Originally Posted by Parody

Not for me, thanks. I never want to go back to brushing a foot of snow and scraping a bunch of ice off my car on those winter mornings.

Being from Texas, we do (contrary to popular belief) get snow, but not to the extent of other places to the north... thankfully!!!

Having property in Maine, and working in Yellowknife Alberta, all are welcome to my portion of the "wonderful white stuff".

http://www.alldeaf.com/showthread.php?t=84773

*Edit* Fix Broken Links

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by Parody

SPARK.

Parody, I noticed your attached links (finally... time for new glasses I guess) and your SPARK listing made me think of this...

http://battlegroundsgames.com/forums...ar+wars#p17691

I tried to utilize this software (based out of South America) for a mapping tool, but there are just too many limiting features... the Lead Programmer (heruca) is very helpful, just a one man show... but with your interest, you might look into (and any that like car wars) what he has done with combining his mapping software and Car Wars.
Best Regards
DLG

Sorry to usurp thread Liz....

[liz]

Originally Posted by Dark Lord Galen

Sorry to usurp thread Liz....

USURPER!!!!!!

In other news, your links are broken. I want to see the pictures!

[Parody]

Originally Posted by Dark Lord Galen

I tried to utilize this software (based out of South America) for a mapping tool, but there are just too many limiting features... the Lead Programmer (heruca) is very helpful, just a one man show... but with your interest, you might look into (and any that like car wars) what he has done with combining his mapping software and Car Wars.

Thanks, but I have no interest in virtual tabletops and/or playing online. We play at 1.5x scale using Micro Machines and I have drawn counters and maps at that scale in a desktop publishing program. It costs about $10 at Kinko's...err...Fedex Office to have them print a map on their oversize printer and we're good to go.

I've attached a picture of the event we ran at Gen Con this year. At home I try to minimize multiple table issues with boards, but we didn't bring them to Indy.
Car Wars In Progress.jpg

Next year's going to be interesting, as it's likely a new version of Car Wars will be available (for playtest at least) and we'll see what our group thinks of it. I'm skeptical of what I've seen so far, but I don't think it's fair to judge until we see everything put together. (Just like CW5 never got a fair shot because its design system was never completed.)

[MaxSupernova]

Originally Posted by Parody

Next year's going to be interesting, as it's likely a new version of Car Wars will be available (for playtest at least) and we'll see what our group thinks of it. I'm skeptical of what I've seen so far, but I don't think it's fair to judge until we see everything put together. (Just like CW5 never got a fair shot because its design system was never completed.)

Awesome.

I got my kids into Car Wars this spring. I have a 3'x4' arena map hanging on the back of my office door right now, but despite 4 attempts, no one has ever started a race and then completed an entire lap.

My kids have a tendency to get very excited about doing crazy stunts at high speed and wiping each other out rather than actually racing....

To pull it back to the topic at hand, though, we play everything on our 10' dining room table and I'm not that interested in computerizing anything either. With 7 of us in the house we just don't have the room to make single-purpose spaces.

We'd game even less than we do now if I had to pull out all the computer equipment and set it up every time.