Custom Gaming Table with Foundry VTT

So I am a little bit of a D&D nerd... okay maybe slightly more than a little bit, and I have also always had a huge fascination with maps, especially fantasy maps. When reading The Lord of the Rings, or the Chronicles of Shannara, The Belgaraid, Wheel of Time, etc. I have always been attracted to the maps and would refer to them constantly to follow along in the story.

Well D&D is no different, I have to have maps, and it is a big part of my immersion. I started out using a dry erase board, even some 3D printed terrain, also I would print out large maps by taping together a bunch of 8.5 by 11 pages, but then I started using digital maps using a TV screen laid flat as a game board, and Foundry VTT was the perfect utility to make this work.

Foundry VTT is a virtual table top. It can allow players to connect remotely and view a shared gaming screen/map with tokens to represent the different characters and monsters. We generally play in person but it works just as well with a DM being able to control the main player screen from a laptop. Foundry also has dynamic lighting and sound. Objects like walls and trees can block view and cast shadows that the players will then have to move their tokens around to see behind, or to see what is beyond the next hall way. Different areas of the map can also provide various sound effects like the sound of running water getting louder as you move closer to a river. There is a 'fog of war' that only reveals areas of the map after you have been there.

An entire D&D campaign can be loaded into and managed through Foundry VTT to make it easy to switch between maps, display portraits or other game info, and store journals, stats, and it can even link to Dndbeyond.

All this is built into an actual table top with pull out side drawers to store dice and minis, and power plugs and USB charging ports built into the legs. The table was custom made by Adam, a fellow player and co-DM using plywood and an old TV.