The Datafortress 2020 Gaming Room
Version II
New house, new gaming room. Once again an ordinary garage has
been transformed into a Temple of Geek.
To View the old gaming room at the old house, go to:
The
Original Gaming Room
This is the view of the room from the inside doorway, because the
garage sits so much lower than the rest of the house, and the ceiling
in here is so high, it kinda gives the impression of looking down into
a dungeon, which is kinda cool... The comics are on the shelves behind
the bleu curtains on the right.
Immediately to the right of the
inside door is the refridgerator, microwave, and coffemaker. The
bookshelf is full of board games, except that pesky descent which is
too darn big.
Sitting on top of the fridge is
the Godzilla shrine. The bottle of Glenlivet was finished the
night these pics were taken in celebration of the room being finished.
All my comic book themed
drinkware I have picked up over the years. The Wonder Woman mug
is my favorite, found that at a garage sale for a quarter.
Against the garage door are
bookshelves full of novels, both modern and classic. The shelves
with the tiefighter sitting on top holds reference, non-fiction,
historical. and instructional books.
Laden almost exactly like it was
at the old house, this shelf holds Graphic Novels, Trade paperbacks,
and prestige format books. I have gotten a few more trades since
the old house pics were taken.
At the other end of the blue
couch sits an identical bookshelf. The top 2 shelves are full of
other peoples game books, while the third holds my (and my brothers)
dungeons and dragons books. I have next to zero interest in
purchasing 4e, but I did recent;y pick up a copy of Basic. It was
worth it just to get a new set of mud die.
On the other side of that shelf
in the corner sits my toy shelves. Top 2 shelves are
Macross/Robotech, then Marvel and DC.
Beside that shld sits an
identical shelf, filled with Art books, cards, and a stereo, as well as
a few assorted tools and storage bits and toys. Yes thats an
original Battle Of The Planets lunch box.
These green shelves are just
unbelievably awesome. I don't know who makes them or where to buy
them, I actually found them on the side of the road coming home from
work one morning. This shelf is full of all my Cyberpunk 2020
books, including the awesome new German Version I won on a contest on
Karsten Voigts Cyberpunk.de blog/archive.
The computer station, my old
computer desk didn't make the move, it fell apart when we tried to lift
it up. The second green shelf is full of all my other gaming
books.
A few more shots to bvring the
room full circle
And of course our Custom Gaming
table. You can get all the details, as well as much better pics
at the Original Gaming Room Page
Unlike the old gaming room, I
was actually able to retaing the ability to open and close the garage
door. My neighbors must think I am fucked up in the head or
hosting a disco, but fresh air, and the ability to cool off a bit has
been a lifesaver since their are no useable windows for an AC unit.
I spoil my players, in addition
to hand painting the pips on their dice with glow in the dark paint, I
picked them up these little pencil boxes (one for each cubby), pencils
chosen because they glow under the blacklight, big and small notepads,
drinking cups, and pucklights, as well as creating their individualized
custom character sheets.
view from the GM position, man I
have said it before, but I love my idea for holders for my custom GM
Screen.
Even under normal light, the
table gives off a glow with the blacklights on.
Non-blacklight mood lighting
Ok, I have to apologize for the
blacklight pictures. New camera I haven't figured out yet, I
can't get it set right to take good pictures in the blacklight.
I gave a light brushing of glow
in the dark paint, really just enough to highlight them, to some of my
metal cyberpunk mini's. The really brightly glowing mini's you
see are glow in the dark zombie plastic mini's from the Zombies board
game. You can't see it as well in the pics as you can in real
life, but the "battlemap" on the talb e was drawn with flourescent
markers from Crayola.
A little better look at the
painted mini's. I used to different kinds of glow. On half of
them I used plain green glow in the dark paint from hobby lobby, same
as I used on the dice. On the other half I used some glow in the
dark Fabric spray (washable) I picked up at walmart (halloween
stock). I sparyed the spray into a plastic bag, the brushed it on
briskly with a toothbrush so it just got into the cracks and grooves to
create a highlight effect. That set turned out much better, and
doesn't even have a green tint in normal light.
I hope you enjoyed seeing what
we have done, and maybe gotten some ideas to make your own gaming
environment more fun. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions.
UPDATE: As time has
gone by, some changes have taken place.
Above the garage I hung a few more prop decorations, on one side is
swords, mostly to keep them out of reach of my friends who tend to
swing them around. On the other side are my old toy guns from the
80's. It was a simpler time when any kid could buy a gun that
looked real, and if they were stupid enough to point it at a cop then
Darwins law took effect.. The only ones that don't look exactly
as the did when I bought them are the disc shot, and the Laser Tag
rifle. The two large grenade launcher things on the right side
were given to me by a friend at a replica prop making forum I hang out
on. The shotgun, m-16 looking gun, the mini and micro uzi's, the
weird hk looking thing, the mac10, and most of the handguns are actualy
waterguns. Man the 80's were a cool time to be a kid who loved
playing soldier. The silver six shooter in the bottom left hand
corner is a Nichols Stallion 2, I inherited it from my dad. I am
told it is worth money, but to me its just a lepsake of my dads I got
at my grandfathers funeral.
As you can see, I have replaced
the Kabuki posters with a "gun rack" display of my hand painted nerf
blasters and airsoft guns. As well as various maps of night
city. Also you can see that both the graphic novel collection,
and the gaming book collection, have grown somewhat. The gaming
shelf (left) has no been repurposed, and now exclusively holds other
peoples gaming books, for members of my group who don't want to lug
their crap back and forth. It is made up almost entirely of one
players books however. The really large map is from the German
Cyberpunk 2020 latest edition, and its even more beautiful close
up. When I won the contest for a free copy, the sent me a color
printout of the map, I scanned it and blew it up. As you can see
it's huge. Also, got a new couch.
Each player cubby at my table gets the following. An avery binder
that allows them to slide in the custom drawings I do of their active
characters, custom sheets of said characters, a green plastic uv
reactive folder, a green uv reactive plastic clipboard, a large
notebook, a small notebook, custom dice with the pips/numbers painted
with glow in the dark paint, a puck light, 5 small mechanical pencils
(the green and pink are uv reactive), a blue pencil box, a custom nerf
gun, and a custom dice box whose doubles as a dice tray.
The lid of each dice box has an individual design to prevent arguments,
and is painted with a UV reactive paint, as seen here under black
light. Man those clipboards gow like crazy.
As I said, the player bubbies also each got their own unique nerf guns,
partly just to act as props, but also to keep them from grabbing the
bigger more expensive nerf guns off the wall when spontaneaous nerf
wars break out at the table.
The last new addition is my GM tools. In the ashtray are several
plastic 9mm shells that were originally for an airsoft uzi, but we use
them as counters for Luck points and what not. The ruler is just
a clear plastic ruler that originally was given out in a corporate gift
bag, but I removed the company logo and put the DF 2020 logo and mascot
in it instead. And then you have my personal dice tray.
The dice tray open, with my dice storage. The two silver
containers with see through lids are for my cyberpunk dice, as is the
beat up metal cylinder. Again, the lid of my dice box serves as a
dice try.
And of course they gow too....
Deric Bernier