Nuredin wrote: We could go on to explore the ergonomics of a good gaming environment...

Ahh, where to begin... I suppose I'll begin with where and go from there. My group has six players and we meet in my living room. It came to pass that we would meet at my place because I have the biggest couch by far. It's one of those L shaped ones and it seats 5 without any sardine like side effects. There iz a coffee table, which we all roll on, in the bend of the L. So, I suppose we do meet around a table, although I've never really thought of it until now. We also have a chair on the other side of the table from the L. We call this chair "the captain's chair" as it iz where the GM sits. (We rotate GM's in our game.)

It's taken some time for this layout to evolve. We find that the players sitting in a horseshoe like shape around the GM really assists game play. This way the GM iz easily seen and heard by all and he can likewise see and hear. It also gives the GM plenty of extra room to spread out. Having the table in the middle works great for us because we can then put fun stuff like maps there for all to see, and we like rolling in plain sight. Not to imply I play with a bunch of cheater-monkeys but rolling on the table iz like putting a lock on your door: it keeps an honest man honest. We also often put whomever iz cooking on the end of the couch closest to the kitchen as they will be in and out of the kitchen for a few hours.

One funny story about ergonomics... Once, not that long ago, we were a group of seven. (That iz in itself another story.) So where do we put our additional player? No room on the couch and my living room will just not accomidate another chair. Well, we have one of those fireplaces with bricks in front of it like a stoop. Not a bad height to sit at really, but a might bit hard on the ass for our long sessions. It was decided, as a group, that we would use it as negative reinforcment: whoever was latest (last one there) would have to sit on the bricks. Rather funny really.

Mike Holmes wrote:

Not really sure where to start. The only question that occurs to me is the one of what sort of space is used. The obvious one is, "Do you play around a table?" If so, why? If not, do you play in a circle (this seems common)? In what space? Why?

What about these physical configurations make them good, bad, etc?

Music may be useful in certain scenes for setting mood, but I think music for the sake of music is a distraction (another voice to talk over). When a group thinks its necessary to provide background noise, this indicates (to me anyway) the game itself does not hold the players' interests fully.

As far as physical configuration I'd like to add a point about the GM's screen. It can be a useful tool, but I feel its normal position in front of the GM seperates the GM from the players, and encourages the GM to hide behind it and talking into the table. I prefer the screen (if any screen at all) to be off to the side of the GM...which means you need a suitable surface next to the GM (to return to the topic of the thread).

We play at my dining room table. I think that sitting around the table helps to focus everyone on the game. You're close together and can easily see and talk to everyone. There's lots of room to roll dice. When necessary, I can put down a white board to draw a quick map. In the past, I've run games in the living room of different apartments I lived in but I like the dining room table better. There always seemed to be too much space between me and the players in the living room.

I don't use music when playing because I find it a distraction, but I do like to have music playing during character creation to help set the mood. For a Dread game I ran recently, on player brought over a CD to show me the kind of music his character would listen to so that played while the players finished picking out spells and skills. And I had a lot of fun picking out music to listen to while creating characters for a game that had the PCs investigating weirdness on a commune in 1970.

Consider trying to play an RPG if you sat classroom style [...]

I also prefer table gaming. Table gaming to me sets a clear break that "social time" (which occurs lounging around in the living room) is over and "game time" has begun. The time for idle chit chat and remarking on the latest episode of Farscape is over.

I also find that playing in a relaxed lounge type setting seems to lead to relaxed focus on the mechanics of the game. Now I'm not a big fan of rules heavy stuff by anymeans, but IMO, if you're playing a game with rules you ought to be playing by the rules. Living room gaming has always led to more of a "winging it" environment. The same group of gamers playing the same game in the same campaign seem more willing to play faster and looser with the rules if their sprawled out on a couch than if they're sitting around a gaming table. Perhaps its because they get too comfortable to want to have to move to fish out the rule book, but that's generally been my experience.

I also don't generally like music at the table. I find it generally proves more distracting than mood setting. Perhaps if there was a dedicated non gaming DJ to make sure the right music was playing at the right time and reached its hieght at appropriate places it would be different.

Cool responses, so far.

It seems to me that the circle layout (and it's close cousin the horseshoe with important participant at head) are common for two reasons.

One, it's actually traditional. I'm not sure if people told stories around campfires because it was the only time people gathered in such a configuration, making it viable, or if it's because of the hypnotic nature of fire. Probably some of both. But the result is that storytelling is done in circles.

Additionally, it's the way you must be to play most other board games. Including wargames. As RPGs descend from wargames (including miniatures use), there is a requirement to be around a central surface for play. This continues to be true to an extent. The surface does not seem to need to be central, but you need somethig to write on, and some place to roll dice, etc, for most RPGs.

So the circle is common, particularly around a table. Hence table-top as a monicker. Some people refer to it as Face-to-Face (FTF), but that's mostly as opposed to playing online. The real question then is, are there other, perhaps better, ways to conficcgure play? What would be optimal for a roleplaying suite?

Tangent:
It occurs to me that part of the image problem that people may have with RPGs is precisely the circular thing. Lesse, sit in a circle around fetishistic objects (like minis) and speak in a ritualized manner about stuff like casting spells. Does this sound like a coven to anyone else? I have to admit that when I saw Mazes and Monsters for the first time that I was appalled by the portrayal of play, but thinking about it now, perhaps that is, for all intents and purposes what people see when they see play occur. Yeesh, no wonder people think RPGs are weird.
End Tangent.

Anyhow, a lot of this seems pretty obvious so far. Like the need for enough seating (I liked your thing about negative reinforcement with the "dunce chair" approach to tardiness, Ziriel). Funny you mention the couch. Personally I feel uncomforable on a couch with other people, unless there is a way lot of room between everyone. Probably has to do with my size (285lbs). So, personally, I'd advocate individual seats for each player. Though I'm sure that different people will have varying tastes as far as this is concerned; especially other cultures that have different social spaces than American's do.

What I'm getting at is that this is all fairly straightforward (of course private and therefore less distracting is better). But that's because we're describing the norm. My question would be, is there a better way we haven't thought about? Something about how we traditionally do things thats wrong, or could be improved? I think it's interesting that it's all taken for granted for the most part.

Mike

Hello all,

My eccentric gaming experiences have mostly taken place in living room type spaces. Partly because in the past we would play for long hours, for which you really need to be comfortable, and partly because, in the main, there was little use of books, dice, sheets etc. My current gaming group sits in the living room, and when we need it, we pull out a folder that holds all of our gaming materials. Or make a surface if we need to roll dice. The pad we use to record events is the primary tool used.

Mike, are we talking "what are we missing because we are thinking of the norm as mainstream?"

Pros for the traditional circle-round-the-table model that's been talked about so far are many: everyone can see one another, it makes it easier to write/use props etc., there's somewhere to hold the pizza. As Mike said, it's how most games are played--board or card etc., so it's familiar to most. You'd think that non-gamers would be most comfortable with this sort of arrangement, since it is so much like other more known games.

As far as other models, the first thing that came to mind was the psychiatric model: patient on the couch, doctor sitting behind with pad in hand. (Makes me think of the gm-player relationship somehow.) If a group was going for a deeply immersive in-character experience, then lying down and getting into meditative or trance space would be helpful.

I guess, a question I see here is, what effects that would help play are not being supported by the usual way of things?

Would different types of games benefit from different physical settings or arrangements? What's that game, asshole and president where the seating arrangement changes based on who's winning. Inspectres has something that makes players who are doing a confessional moment stand out. There could be a spotlight chair for players whose character is currently being protagonized in a game the supports narrativist decisions. Or competition for seating in a gamist one. What else?

And then there's LARPing. That's what the Mazes and Monsters type scare gets at more than table-top gaming, I'd say.

--Emily Care

You'd think that non-gamers would be most comfortable with this sort of arrangement, since it is so much like other more known games.

Oh!

I forgot one:

I sometimes play freeform RPGs or LARPs in bed. They're my favorite. :)

Although, in an effort to help suggest new frontiers of gaming environment, I will now suggest playing a game from a bed (or multiple beds) and/or camping/in sleeping bags. This would probably only serve as a kind of atmosphere to the main game (bed games could have a Salon motif, sleeping bags have a clear camping/ghost stories/bear outside the tent motif going on).

Mike Holmes wrote:
Actually, I think that's part of the problem. The incongruous thing is coming together around a table, and there's no board on the table, or cards being played. What kind of game is that? In fact, it's no kind of game at all.

Mike Holmes wrote:
I don't care about mainstream. I'm only concerned with what enhances play, really (the above is a tangent for another thread, perhaps).

Oh, sure, hasn't everyone designed perfect gaming tables on paper, at one time or another? With, you know, little dice-catching troughs around the edges?

Actually, there's one outrageous play aid that I fully intend to build and try out, once the price of LCD projectors comes down a bit more (or my income comes up). A projector and mirror arrangement to project vertically downward onto the tabletop, with custom software I'm building in Macromedia Director running it. Used with minis, it should be able to project terrain, structure walls, limited and moving light sources in dark locations, special ambient lighting (e.g. underwater), blast radii and other areas of effect, weather, mood lighting for the villains, ranging circles, even little "work light" areas in front of the players.

Of course, blinding glare might be a problem. In which case, I'll have to wait until I can get a flat screen big enough to put legs on it and use it as the tabletop.

- Walt

Well there's the Ultimate Gaming Table that makes me feel... special... everytime I see it.

http://www.agyris.net/portal/game_table.asp?Flash=false

Of course it is very expensive to build...but damn it's so cool.

I want to game outside someday. Of course only certain games would work outside.

Other ideas, semi-larp where you change seating depending on where your character is. Like a car, set up the chairs like a car, and sit them down where they would be sitting.

-Joshua

This is a cool topic.

I don't care if the group is at a table, but I don't like not having my own handy flat surface to put the charsheet on or to roll dice or whatever.

The thing I like about a table is that it gathers everyone around a central point, facing one another. What I don't like is the flexibility. I like to stand up sometimes as player and/or GM, waving my arms all nutty like, and a bona fide table can sometimes make that awkward. And if no table, then definitely positioned so that everyone is ready to interact.

And always gotta have good seating. Doesn't it seem like at every game there are choice seats? Or the one crappy chair that inspires you to arrive a little early so you can avoid it? To confess, my gaming area has metal folding chairs, but I'm slowly upgrading to the padded ones. Clinton has this freaky plastic chair that just has it in for me. No one else has a problem with it, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to sit in it without pain.

It'd be cool to do more of these. Hmm...

I've played in a few different environments:

-Big table with GM at the head -- not bad, but I feet really cramped at tables, especially if I'm using a GM screen

-Lying on the floor (I had no furniture) -- on reflection this is was ideal, I could stretch out and get as much space as possible. Obviously haven't done this one in a while.

-Hanging out in a living room -- it sucks if I'm trying to keep order lots of paperwork or notes (try D&D3e with all 3 books open at once and all you've got is a chair). Its great if its just me and my head. Obviously only good for really "lite" (vanilla?) games like the Pool.
-Combination living room/table -- a friends running his Spycraft game by having his own folding table, while the remainder of us use his coffee table to roll. This works really well actually.

I'd also like to point out a habit that I've never seen anyone else do -- I pace when I GM. I physically get up and walk around the room. I find this works well for me.

Also, food wise, I drink constantly. It doesn't matter what -- soda, beer, water, juice. I drink like a fish when I game.

Hope that helps out,

Steve Dustin

Hey Steve,

Steve Dustin wrote: I'd also like to point out a habit that I've never seen anyone else do -- I pace when I GM. I physically get up and walk around the room. I find this works well for me.

This is a very cool topic, because I'm currently changing my gaming environment.

I have been gaming in my living room. We gather around a small coffee table (luckily, Sorcerer doesn't need a lot of space) and most people sit on a couch. I pace, sit on a chair, sit on the floor, GM from the kitchen, and basically move all around the place. I find that the informal arrangement leads to a lot of out of game chit-chat, but not an obtrusive amount. I enjoy the steady flow of gaming for thirty minutes, chatting for five, and then gaming again for another half-hour. I have a super well-behaved group, though, and this might not work for other people. I did see above that Ralph said that a couch setting might lend itself to less use of the rules. Honestly, I think he's right - that happens with our group.

This week, we have a room with a large table reserved at a local gaming club. I'm interested to see how that works. I played there Monday, and noticed that we did stay very focused on the game, and paid close attention to the rules.

Hmm. Normally I'm a living room gamer. The coffee table holds books and dice, and folks usually use a clipboard or (more likely) a random hardcover book to write on.

We actually took this to an unusual level over the summer. I have a designated room in my house that is the "quiet room". This room is decorated in a sparse, Japanese-esque style, which I happen to like. I have a print of Hokusai's "The Great Wave" on the wall, a single lantern-like light in the corner, a single futon couch, and two low tables displaying books of poetry and art (both Western and Japanese). The theory is that this room can serve as a quiet escape from the outside world. It's not just a living room. So, it was all these features that made it an ideal place to play Nobilis. The setting made all the difference.

I also understand Steve's desire to pace. I usually reserve this for my annual horror games, though, for precisely the same reasons that Steve discussed. I find that it encourages my players to be scared if I pull out all the stops.

Later, I plan on posting about music and lighting, as I am a past master of such devices. (He said modestly.) Seriously, I have used these techniques a lot, but I think that I've also learned when to avoid them. However, I'm currently out of time. More later.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Well there's the Ultimate Gaming Table that makes me feel... special... everytime I see it.

Mike Holmes wrote:

Well there's the Ultimate Gaming Table that makes me feel... special... everytime I see it.

Ohmigod! I am such a geek. I gotta get me one of these!

One thing that I really hate is when GMs try to do mood lighting

Nothing beats a basic 12 x 8 sand table for rampaging miniatures goodness.

When I do get to finally build my own house there will some large floor space tiled in 4inch hex tiles whose colorations match the water depth colors from the Wooden Ships and Iron Men maps...

I pace, sit on a chair, sit on the floor, GM from the kitchen, and basically move all around the place.

You, Clinton, are a nutcase. And Steve Dustin too. Wackos. Fang. Cripes.

Paul

Paul,

It doesn't help that in my Sorcerer and Sword game, all the characters talk like professional wrestlers. I end up pacing around and pointing, saying things like "You have made your decision, and now you must face the eternal torment of Kunagi!" in a booming voice.

Yeah, it's kind of nutty.

Sounds like what you need is a ring, Clinton.

And I've played with Paul "Master of Gesticulations" Czege. He may not pace, but at times I was sure he was going to flop onto the table in an apopleptic fit. Whackos indeed.

I love sandtables, Ralph, and I play on one a couple of times a year (slightly smaller than the dimensions you give). But would you actually suggest it for RPGs? Or just for miniature battles. I have to admit that I hadn't thought of trying to get the table for an RPG. Hmmm...

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:
I love sandtables, Ralph, and I play on one a couple of times a year (slightly smaller than the dimensions you give). But would you actually suggest it for RPGs? Or just for miniature battles. I have to admit that I hadn't thought of trying to get the table for an RPG. Hmmm...

Mike

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: Paul,

It doesn't help that in my Sorcerer and Sword game, all the characters talk like professional wrestlers. I end up pacing around and pointing, saying things like "You have made your decision, and now you must face the eternal torment of Kunagi!" in a booming voice.

Yeah, it's kind of nutty.

Well there's the Ultimate Gaming Table that makes me feel... special... everytime I see it.

Ohmigod! I am such a geek. I gotta get me one of these!

We usually play at the local university club, around a table. Two or three tables in fact. Why? I dunno, because we always have.

The GM sits on one side and the players on the other. We usually have two tables make an “L” shape so the GM has access to extra space to his/her left or right. I think we do this through fearful tradition – it makes clear the boundary between the person “in charge” and everyone else. Recently when we ran our Sorcerer game this situation broke down somewhat.

We had plenty of props and other colour and people began to get up and move around the table waving their favourite prop. As players got more confident in framing scenes they would play musical chairs and gravitate toward the people who were participating in constructing a given scene.

Now it didn’t turn into a crazy swirling LARP or anything, but it did make me wonder whether the formality of the gaming table can inhibit aspects of play.

Alan.

Mostly, standard tables and a couch-coffee table combo. But I'm also into the heavy dramatics, body language and so forth, so I often put the players on the couch and I sit on the floor in front of them. There I some NPC's for whom, when I play them, I absolutely need the players to see every nuance of body language. Also, I'm prone to hurling myself about and falling on the floor and stuff; tables just get in the way. I also pace, although I suspect this bugs the players.

Admittedly, I do much of my GMing these days at conventions, so I'm used to the round table configuration. I'm not too fond of it, though, as it puts the players too far apart, but there is little you can do at a con.

One thing I make a point of at a con when GMing is to always stand. (Well, at least until day three of GenCon .. by then I'm too beat) But standing allows me to walk over to any player I cannot hear or to who I need to point out something specifically. Also, I find that I keep the game's pace up better when I stand. I gather from the posts about pacing that this is not an uncommon phenomenon.

When I game at home, we have a sofa/couple of armchairs configuration in the basement (away from my daughters watching TV). Here I often make the mistake of sitting down in a nice, comfy chair; and the game generally suffers for it. Or, at least, the pace is slower with more distractions (of course, that's also due to being at home).

FWIW, in the basement, the lack of dice rolling space is addressed with two old-fashioned freestanding ashtrays-on-stands that I inherited. As we don't allow smoking in the house, they make great dice-rolling arenas! Keep your eyes open at flea markets, yard sales, etc.!

I'm quite surprised no one has yet mentioned the good, old-fashioned poker table. This has a drink holder or two, and a little square trough that is absolutely dandy for rolling dice. The table surface itself is slightly padded, so it works very well even for the high-order polyhedra, if you need to roll a bunch of 'em, and it's designed not to allow a lot of skimming, which keeps papers in place, too.

My Ultimate Gaming Table design (and damn, that one is just amazing) involved a hole in the center of the table where the GM sat. In a swivel chair, of course. I thought it was neat when I was 16, but probably it would be a drag to constantly be turning around as a GM, and looking at the back of the GM's head as a player.

I tend to prefer the table myself. However, living-room play works pretty well with "tv tables", those folding things for, well, eating and watcing TV (ick). And it saves on space if you're not one of those propertied types with lots of room.

--JB

OOoohhh! The standing ashtray idea is a good one, Michael. I love it.

I have 2 different environments, because I have 2 different groups that have their own special needs. My first group is the living room group. I really like playing with this group. We have a sectional sofa, in two pieces, so I can commandeer one set and the coffee table, and the rest of the players have the run of the living room. We have a couple other tables they can use and some of those huge art books that you can roll dice on very easily. This works perfectly because one of the players is a floor dweller. The players are relaxed and comfortable, and it makes them more intent on the game. This is the group that always throws me for a loop with their ideas, by the way. We can even play some music in the background without it being distracting.

My other group absolutely must be sitting at the dining room table with the DM screen and all the trappings and no distractions whatsoever or it just won't work. They are easily distracted by music and small shiny objects. I have tried to game with them in the living room, at their request, and every time it was a dismal failure. Just last Saturday we tried it again, and it was a nightmare. Ye gods, I can't even talk about it. They are distracted by everything. It's very Pavlovian for them. If you're in the living room it's visiting time, and if you're in the dining room it's gaming time. The two cannot mix, which is quite unfortunate because if they could learn to concentrate on the game in a more relaxed atmosphere I think they would have more fun. Instead I get one that lays on the floor and goes to sleep because the game isn't going her way, and one that keeps getting up and wandering off.

I don't like playing with this group very much, and I have said in the past that I won't anymore, but then they are hubby's friends and he likes playing with them so I keep my mouth shut. If someone else runs the game it's not usually that bad, because at least I have control over my character and when they get distracted or sit there and do nothing I can still play. It's really all about attitude in this case, I guess. My living room group is all about the game and they can turn off their desire to socialize when it's time to play no matter where they are. I guess my dining room group may be getting out of playing or was never all that interested in it in the first place or something. I just don't know. They are frustrating as hell, though, and that's all I can say.

melodie