Living in the Dungeon Dump

[geneweigel]

Ever feel like you're the only asshole in the world who has a majority of a basement cordoned off for games?

I used to be a normal person... well as normal as you can imagine having an entire bedroom in every apartment that I ever had completely dedicated to D&D. Sometimes it would be euphemized as the "computer room".

The last decade or so its been my own basement and its starting to drive me nuts. This basement can be a spacious apartment thats worth thousands a month.

The games that have been played down there in this "super dungeon land" haven't even been that great.

I think my ideal "dungeon" would be at ground level with a barbecue next the the DM's chair. Wait... "Great Gygax's Ghost! The DM screen is on fire!"

I'm not saying I'm packing it up, I'm saying I want something more outdoorsy or at least with a fucking window...

Whats anybody else's experience with their "dungeon" space?

[TRP]

We play in our dining room. The new house has a built in bookcase in that room, and the bottom shelves are hidden behind doors. Only the books needed for game night are stored there, and the rest (mostly source-type material) are kept upstairs in the computer room.

Dungeons are for characters.

OTOH, I envy areas where basements are feasible, and would probably do what I could to make one a comfortable gaming area.

[jallison86]

OTOH, I envy areas where basements are feasible, and would probably do what I could to make one a comfortable gaming area.

Concur. Basements are rare in SoCal so we play on a dining room table or the like. This is fine, but there is definitely a "take it all out / put it all away" component to every gaming gathering.

- Jeff

[T. Foster]

As a kid in my mom's house we had an unfinished room in our basement that was pretty much given over to my game stuff via "shelves" made of cinder blocks and plywood, but the room itself was so cold and spartan that we never played there (and I learned the hard way that it was a terrible place to even store stuff since the basement leaked and even the stuff that didn't get water-damaged directly tended to get mildewy). Since moving out of there I've always lived in apartments small enough that an extra room for game stuff hasn't ever been an option. I've currently got two small shelves of game stuff on my computer-desk (one with digest-sized OD&D and Classic Traveller books and boxes, another with assorted Avalon Hill bookcase games (and other boardgames of similar size) and everything else is crammed into various closets with the stuff that's frequently-referenced (like the AD&D hardbacks and modules, assorted Chaosium stuff, and whatever I've acquired most recently) within easy reach in milk-crate "shelves" and all the other crap piled up in boxes (most of which haven't been opened since last time I moved ~5 years ago). Every game I've played in at someone's house since moving to CA has been at a dining room table or equivalent -- no man-caves, dungeons, or other converted garages in sight (despite wheggi's big talk a couple years ago... ).

[Stik]

My apartment has a huge kitchen. Our regular kitchen table is 5' long. On game days, though, I add a 6' folding table to it. Room for five along each side and one on each end of the table, and there are five windows and a windowed door in my kitchen. So much for the cold, dark dungeon.
At the same time, though, there's something to be said for playing in a dark, dusty cellar. The ambience has some value.

[geneweigel]

I think the ambience to set the mood would be a tower top overlooking an ornately contoured field with a deep forest in the back. A basement is still a basement piled with shit. We actually had a full bore adult Halloween party down there last year. All the bookshelves were taped over and I had two TVs linked playing VHS tapes of old obscure horror movies.

[AxeMental]

We did play some CoC in some sub-sub basement bare bones rec room (below some dorm) back in college during Christmas break, so the place was a ghost town. It had a pretty scary vibe going (there was I think 4 or 5 of us), probably the most memorable CoC game I ever played, under that life draining florescent tube lighting.

[Bard]

We usually play in my house, in the living room/library/anything goes room. Sometimes people leave their character sheets/dice etc on the table just to find them at the exact same spot the next game night...

But the most fun "gameroom" I played in, was my friend's attic. His father was a little angry at us for something, so we went to the attic to play, It was in the summer, and it was really really hot there... Someone told us, that in really hot weather we should drink hot tea, and we won't feel the temperature that much. Surprisingly it worked... This was the summer break when we played AD&D every day...

[LanWarder]

Hell I just want to be abe to sit at a table and play without my wife being a tyranical beast and throwing a fit...

Bt my basement is dedicated to the one thing every man cave should be...Baltimore Ravens Football

[Flambeaux]

I lived in a basement for a while as a teenager, but I've never gamed in a basement. When I lived in Philly (the only town I've lived in that had basements) we always played at school or at the dining table at a friend's house.

I've played in a mall food court, a library, a corporate conference room, on a bus in Italy, on planes over the Atlantic Ocean, in a woodland glade, and a bunch of other weird places.

But I've never played in a basement and the most frequent location is around someone's dinner table.

I doubt I'll ever have a man cave. No extra room in our house.

[geneweigel]

I think its perceived as a man cave (the basement dungeon) but truthfully it isn't. Whats missing? BINGO! Sports! Thats the best part about the isolation no cable/satellite down there. How many games did I lose to console multiplayer games and televised sporting events? A million? No kids, no wife or her friends, no relatives, smoke all you want for as long as you want, drink and make funny voices.

I used to have to schedule her to go out for the evening. What the hell am I waiting for? I gotta get a game on! Ah, if it was only so simple...