girlgeek

I’ve always lusted for enough expendable cash to a)buy a projector and mount it over my gaming table pointed downwards, b) purchase a large flat screen of some variety to use as the game mapping surface or c) build some sort of maximized projector that would allow me to project from inside/under my glass top coffee table, allowing us to use wet erase on the top and not have the shadow effect from projecting downwards.  I was talking to one of my photographer  friends the other day, and this last option seems to actually be the easiest to achieve — build a powerful light system, use transparencies to print the maps, get a concave lens to magnify the image appropriately, slip a piece of glass that’s frosted on one side over the coffee table glass and voila!  Instant RPGers dream.  Or at least DM’s dream.   Of course, reality takes its toll.  My coffee table, since it has drawers underneath, then the empty space, and then glass, only has approximately 6-8 inches for all this light/transparency/lens stuff to happen in.  At that distance it simply won’t be possible, if the light takes up at least 3 of those inches, to get the lens in the right place to magnify enough.  Then there’s the problem of accurate sizing — at what point will one square really equal one inch?  Which leads me back to some sort of flat screen slipped under the glass, which I know I can’t afford.  Someday….

Has anyone else done any serious mapping of this variety?  I’ve seen some setups online where folks have mounted the projector above the table, but it just seems like there would be some serious shadow issues.  Maybe someday I’ll be able to build the perfect table.  It’ll be table height, with slide out drawers like the the ultimate gaming tableg/, but with a glass center frosted on one side (so that you could still use wet erase markers on the top).  I’d mark the inch squares in sharpie, then set up a center column with the projector system in it underneath.  It’d be nice to have a real projector so I could hook my mac to it and just use Photoshop layers for stuff, but I’d settle for the poor man’s projector I’ve described above.  The column around it would really be so no one could kick it by accident.  Oh yes…so nice…

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