The players can drop food or drink onto it and it won’t stain, and we draw out the map directly on the grid when necessary. White board markers wipe off easily, provided it’s not left marked for a couple weeks.

It’s flat, the laminating took out the creases and it stores fairly easily (I toss it behind the bookshelf)

Another thing that cleans off whiteboards, if you don’t have proper whiteboard cleaner is deoderant.

I love hearing how people set up their gaming areas.

And if you make an entire table with a 4×8 sheet of whiteboard, then you da’ man!

For those looking to save some money, most hardware stores sell whiteboard (though it might not be labelled as such) at a much lower price than a traditional “finished” whiteboard. On the down side if you just mount it on the wall you’ll up with whiteboard goo on your wall around the board.

Another trick is to cut the whiteboard material into 8.5″x11″ boards, roughly 1 per player. It can act as a defacto clipboard, but more usefully players can use them for temporary notes. We use ours heavily. Several people like to track heavily variable things on them (hit points, active magical effects, etc). The GM uses one for initiative order and monster hit points. When planning something we’ll use them to make tactical plans. We’re currently playing D&D, so we have a fair amount of inventory management; we often use the boards as scratchpads when selling loot. They’re probably be less wasteful than a pile of notepads for games that encourage secret player-GM communication. Sure, you can do most of these things with pencil and paper, but something about the whiteboards is just convienent. Part of it is probably that lines on a whiteboard tend to be thick and multi-colored, good for diagrams visible to the entire group. Doing the same on paper requires markers and a backing board to ensure that the marker doesn’t bleed through. Personally I don’t use them often, but the majority of the group I play with really appreciates them.

On the down side, note that white board markers (“dry erase”) and the markers used by most battle mats (“wet erase”) are not interchangable! We still occasionally joke, “I want to go into that cave over there,” when our GM draws terrain near a dry-erase cave drawn onto his battle mat years ago. My own battle mat has a big blue dot from a similar accident. If this does happen to you the best solution we’ve found is to promptly re-draw over the area with the same marker, then dab off with a paper towel. The marker obviously has solvent capable of taking up the ink. On the down side, this tends to bleach the battlemat in the area, doesn’t work on older marks, and only works okay.

Since there have been past articles on related subjects, a good repsonse to this article it seems, and talk of pictures I suggest that maybe this be the first Wiki-a-Week project. What do you think Martin?

We collude to make this happen– we don’t play at the GM’s place, as I think your article tacitly assumes. Still, most of what you write is important– for focus, clarity, and comfort.

1) A Table and Chairs – I’ve played on my fair share of couches and beds, and I’ve found that if you’re not all sitting at some sort of table, the game session suffers. Most living room and bedroom furniture is designed to encourage relaxation, which is great for unwinding from a long day or watching movies, but is really poor at focusing your group’s attention on the task at hand. A table just large enough for you and your players to sit at comfortably is ideal, but if you can’t swing that then I’d suggest getting everyone at least around some central location.

2) Food – I ask that my gamers eat ahead of time and ban food at the table, simply because it becomes a distraction that takes the focus away from the game and works against the suspension of disbelief your group is working so hard to create in-game. Nothing’s worse than listening to someone to your left chewing their way through a bag of Funions or trying to puzzle your way through cheese and oil stains on a character sheet.

3) Lighting – The lighting you use depends on the game and mood you want to set, but 90% of the time you want some sort of good overhead lighting. If you really want to change things up (this works well for horror games), try playing at night using candlelight. One or two hurricane-style lamps puts out enough light to game by, but also keep players remarkably focused on the game by keeping them in-character. I’ve tried experimenting with other things (blacklights, colored gels & bulbs), but anything other than bright lights or candlelight tends to distract the players from the game. Another word of caution: If people are playing with the candlewax, it’s because they’re bored.

4) Music – Much has been said on this site about background music in games, so I’ll just say that consistancy is better than coming up with the perfect song for every situation. If you can manage to put together a few pregenerated playlists on your MP3 player and switch between them for different scenes (bar, dungeon, nightclub, office, etc.) without breaking the continuity of the game, great. If you can’t, then you shouldn’t sweat over having to stop and switch CD’s. Just pick out a few albums that more-or-less go together, throw them into the CD / MP3 player, and hit the ‘random’ button. If you’re limited to one CD at a time, then just find one good one for the theme of your game and leave it on for the whole game.

I also try and arrange it so it isn’t too hard for me to get out (nothing worse than the GM having to trip over everyone on his way to the loo – in the middle of a tense fight).

Frank

The GM’s Seat: Here you can see my chair. To the left is the TV cart that is my main GM table. The raised wall on three sides keeps the GM screen vertical nicely. The lower shelf has relevant game books (though it’s shocking how often there isn’t enough room for all the books I need) plus a stack of letter trays holding scrap paper, maps, and other stuff. The file box has folders for various notes. The table to the right holds overflow stuff. The drawers behind hold miniatures, counters, and some battle maps. The board sitting on the table is a stove cover that I use as a lap desk.

Here is a better view of the TV cart

This image shows the tray, and my generic counter box. The counter box is one of those 2.5″x3.5″x1.5″ or so double sided tackle boxes. This side holds my “decade” counters – sets of counters numbered 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc. There are 4 colors, blue and green just go 1-10, white goes 1-20, and brown goes 1-50. Each decade of the same color has a different sybol on the back for quick sorting. The other side of the box holds counters useful for the PC party – including PC counters when we aren’t using miniatures.

You can browse to the other pictures and see more of my gaming stuff.

The next set of pictures will include my magnetic initiative tracker board (we’re playing Arcana Evolved now instead of RuneQuest). The furniture has also been upgraded (at the urging of my recently acquired girl friend – she’s nice though, she lets me continue to game, and sometimes even makes me dinner while I’m gaming).

Frank

Mobility – As DM, I stand up and walk around the table fairly often. It really keeps the chatter down when someone’s standing over you. It’s also handy to be fully visible when in character negotiations/roleplay take place.

Another available room – When Thog the Thoughtless charges through the magic mirror, but Cat the Cautious hesitates, it helps to take Thog’s player into another room.