New Gaming Table Top

Okay the Alpha version of the new table top is done and in place. As mentioned previously this is a piece of Lexan from Lowe’s cut down to fit inside the inset on the gaming table I built. (which by the way has rope lights embedded in the edge of the inset for that uber geek pimp look).

In the picture here the top safety film is still in place so it’s a little hazier and less translucent that it will be in actual game play. With three small children used to playing on the gaming table with my miniatures, dice, their miniatures etc. I left it on so the first actual game usage would be relatively scuff, fingerprint, and scratch free. After that it’s all bets are off as usual around here.

I drew a grid on the ‘underside’ of the lexan using metallic sharpie. I tossed around the thought of using a dremel tool in a little homemade jig and a routing bit to scribe lines in the lexan to make them permanent and probably a little better looking but the plastic isn’t that thick to start with and I could easily see it just fracturing along those scribe lines when I lift it up to put things underneath it leaving me with a bunch of broken pieces.

So one asstastic amount of grid lines later I’ve got the tabletop on the table and it doesn’t look too bad. Given the size and the fact I was doing this on the floor not all the lines are perfect and the ink flow from the metallic sharpies wasn’t all that standardized so. And one of the pens had a very hard time writing on it. But over all I think it came out very much okay.

As you can see it’s possibly in theory to put things under it and have them still be readable through the map. Also in theory I could create maps in a mapping program like Dundjinni, Campaign Cartographer or even just Photoshop or Illustrator or GiMP, print those out and slide them under the grid to have color maps. Nifty eh?

I still need to ‘stonify’ the gray matte paper underneath, but I need to do some testing to figure out what I can use that won’t eventually or immediately stain or discolor the lexan that’s going on top of it.