Setting Up for a Role Playing Game

Setting Up for a Role Playing Game
Hi my name is Barry Osser from North Coast Role Playing in Eureka, California and I’m here today to talk to you about setting up your game playing area for your role playing games and Dungeon and Dragons specifically. When you are stuck with the task of being the one to set up your role playing area, the place that you’re going to play for 4 -6-10, I remember the days, 14 hours, you’re going to want to make sure that you have a couple of things in mind. The first thing is how often are you going to get pestered, if you’re in a high traffic area, let’s say the kitchen table around dinner time or the living room around the time the best shows come on, it’s probably not going to be your ideal area. You want to set up an area where people are not going to be running through all the time, an additional part to that is that you’re also going to make sure that people who come over and join the game, unless they have to have it don’t have their cell phones, their pagers, their text messaging machines and all of those sundry things that are going to beep or blap and tear down the game that you’re playing. In addition to that, you’re going to want to have a nice writing surface, so a nice big steady table. I remember gaming one time on tv trays and I can tell you that’s not a recommended idea, you’re going to want to have a nice smooth surface, a steady surface, something that’s big enough to where you’re rolling the dice, they’re going to stay on the table and people are going to be able to watch what you’re doing. In addition to that, you want to have good strong lighting, I mean this is a game of reading and talking, but reading is a part of it and without that nice lighting, if you’re in a dimly lit area even if it’s dimly lit for mood, you’re going to get some frustration when you can’t read what you wrote the day before because you were really-really tired and you can’t see it that well in the faded light. In addition to that, if you’re going to go over a couple of hours, consider to have access to a bathroom, consider to have access to some kind of drinks, preferably water although a lot of us don’t drink a whole lot of water, that’s a great one to have around the gaming table and then consider to have some kind of basic food, I know the joke around my table is no character sheet is a real character sheet until it has pizza sauce on it, but you can do whatever you like. The idea is to have the area be a comfortable place where you can sit for a long period of time, relax and enjoy the game and not be drawn out of the world by something outside of it. Have fun.