Building Your Own Gaming Table?

[Flynn]

Good Afternoon, All:

I'm interested in possibly building my own gaming table. I've looked at the "Ultimate Gaming Table" website ( http://www.ultimategamingtable.org/ ) and it has some good ideas. I'm still looking for some ideas, though, while this project is in the design stage.

Have any of you built your own gaming table? (If so, and you want to show off pics, I'd appreciate it.)

What are the qualities you feel would be good for a gaming table?

Do you have any budget-minded suggestions for this little project?

I've heard of doing a double-tiered version, with a smaller table to set on top of the main table. The smaller table is 8-12 inches abve the main table, and is roughly the size of a gaming mat, so there's room under it for books and sodas, that kind of thing, and nothing blocks the view of the maps and minis. Does anyone have experience with something like this that they'd like to share?

Very Curious,
Flynn

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

The Universe and I (read: The Universe and a friend of ours) built our gaming table this past fall. It is bar-height with a plexiglass-covered mondo-mat. It is glorious beyond words.

I'd guess that we spent, all told, about $300-$400 on the table, chairs (stools), plexiglass, and mondo-mat.

Because I did very little actual construction, I'll encourage The Universe to drop by and ramble... and I'll find some pictures to post!

 

[Flynn]

This would be excellent! I'd love to see what you guys came up with.

Thanks,
Flynn

 

[Castellan]

Our solution was a bit simpler: we used a folding table, but then bought a piece of 4'x8' plywood and attached super-cheap shower wall laminate (looks like tile with "fake" grout lines). Why? Because it's very white-board like. We then placed the board on top of the table and roll office chairs up to it that we bought at a local second-hand shop.

We still use a mondo mat for gaming, but it's awesome to be able to use a wet-erase marker on the table around my space. I use it less as a player, but as DM, I'm tracking monster hit points, spell effects, and even my initiative tracker on the tabletop. It's all throw-away info, anyway, so I just wipe it up when there's too much, or the game session ends.

Since the tabletop is available to everyone, we've really taken advantage of it. Not too expensive to make and we've been using it for about 5 years.

 

[Flynn]

I have to admit that your plan sounds better than these approaches, in terms of work load, if nothing else:

http://www.drunkdwarves.com/pages/artttgttcultimatetable.html
http://www.drunkdwarves.com/pages/artttgttctabletops.html

http://ask.metafilter.com/74963/Help-me-build-a-gaming-table

Still, it sounds like the folding table might not be very sturdy. What size folding table due you use?

With Regards,
Flynn

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

Do you have a Costco/BJs/Sam's Club membership? These places have some STURDY "folding" tables.

 

[Festivus]

Let me start by saying that I have built the Ultimate Gaming Table, so my words come from experience and lessons learned.

First are foremost, think about what you have for space. The 4' x 8' table is massive, but it also requires a large area to use fully (like a two car garage). My old house it worked as long as you didn't use the pull out drawers. No biggie, plenty of room on top. My new house it won't fit at all, so it's now my craft table in the garage. Be sure to measure and make sure before you expend the funds that you can actually fit the table, drawers, chairs and people. Remember that folks need to get around the table as well.

Second, they use an interesting leg system consisting of grooved joints for the support of the table. In hindsight I would rather have purchased four legs at the hardware store and run a stringer around the table for support. Not only would it have been less expensive, it would have been easier to assemble.

Third, check your furniture stores for closeout tables and damaged returns. I saw a table at Ikea for $50 that would have worked great as a support base for a new game table. Then just bolt your game table to the old legs and stringer... done

Fourth, buy smaller plexiglass for the cover. I went with a single 4'x8' sheet of plexi, it was expensive, it's dificult to manage, and I have cracked it once already. Buy the smaller sheets, you will be happy. Two smaller ones are way easier to handle than one big one.

Fifth, buy a mondomat for the tabletop. Drawing the gridlines took forever. Save yourself the time and effort of painting, sanding, painting again, sanding again, and then drawing 144 lines... trust me it is really difficult.

In my new place I just bought a 40"x60" sheet of thick plexiglass (it's like 1/4") and some felt discs, and play on top of our nice dining room table with a flip mat. It works pretty well, though not nearly the space of my old game table.

 

[dcampbez]

There are some cool gaming tables here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/gamingspaces

from Treasure Tables. Mine has it's pictures under dcampbez.... it's the result of several discards designs, the first of which was a 4x8 board screwed to the top of an old pool table, topped with whiteboard taped on.... the pool table legs make up the legs of the DMs area.

Dave

 

[Freak of Nurture]

I made a Greyhawk table about 10 years ago. Used an 8 foot folding table and put the big GH maps in the center with the Marklands maps of Furyondy and Nyrond on the sides. On one side I put the GH timeline and holy symbols. Also made a border of the backs of the GH Wars boardgame cards (alternating black and white GH city coat of arms). Then I put masking tape around the outside and poured liquid polyurethane on it about a half inch thick and let it dry for several days. Nothing special but it's tough, looks pretty good and has a lot of handy info for my players while the action happens on the mondo mat.

 

[FoxWander]

We went with a two-tiered design. We built an octagon shaped table top (designed to be put on top of a standard folding card table) with cut outs for drink holders and dice cups. On top of this goes a smaller table for the game mat.

The bottom table top is wide enough that each flat side is 2 feet wide, making the whole thing about 4 ft 10 in wide from side to side. Each person has plenty of space to game. The smaller table is high enough to open/close books underneath it. At each of the 8 corners are two holes- 1 with a cup holder and 1 for a dice cup. I've attached a pdf of the word doc I did the initial design work on.

It works great as a game table. The DM uses one of our bar height chairs so he's up higher which makes it alot easier to draw on the battle mat. The battle mat is kind of high for the players but not too high- if that makes any sense. Sitting in one of the office chairs around the table puts the map table at about chest height- low enough to easily look over, see the map and move your mini around but high enough to look at and keep books underneath it.

We don't have any pictures but I'll try and get some to post.