"Home games in the UK" Topic

One question I have is how many UK gamers regularly hold games in their houses, that is with two to six or so players? This is the majority form of American Gaming and I wonder how different it is "over there."

not very often , due to space issues- only one room is big enough to set up the normal 6x4 table in comfort, and doing so would obscure wifeys telly worshiping. So I can only really arrange games at home for times when I know shes out or away.
We can just about squeeze a table into the conservatory but its a pain, and not much fun in cold weather, so is generally avoided. Its easier to play at the local clob, or if we want a big game with loads of people we can usually book the local guide hut for the day, my wife is divisonal commander or something for the Girl Guides so I can usually get the key!

Pretty much every week at my place – games vary from miniatures to RPG but 2 to 8 is normal.

But then I built a games room so no family interference :)
link

Also attend local clubs up to twice a week – not so much at the moment due to RL issues but generally.

Different circles – club mates tend not to attend home games and vice versa

When the Long Haired General is away (Cabin Crew)the 12 x 6 table goes up and up to 8 players descend although quite often just a couple of us. Sometimes it stays up as we spend our time in the snug.

Quite often the bigger games are friends from a distance and not club chaps,

Tally Ho!

When 'er indoors is away my son and I often take over the living room and have a game.

Other times? No. No space.

That is a nice set up, Zippee. The bottom of my garden is used for storing/working on decrepit old motors….

All the time, our gang of players all have a shed in the garden devoted to gaming. Being a massive snob, I won't go to typical town clubs as they attract all the gaming cliche characters I can't stand, rules lawyers, people who think they're at a higher strategic level than Napoleon, black t-shirt wearers and geeks in general.

Every week. Usually 5 bods, occasionally more for a long (afternoon/evening) game. Beer and a convivial atmosphere, plus a good game……….. what could be better?

The advantage of having a wargames room in the attic. Games can also be left out, to run over a couple of weeks.

Never, no room. Luckily belong to a club which has permanent rooms at a community centre.

All of my gaming is at my home with friends over or at a friends with a reasonably large gathering

Yeah me too but usually no more than four people.

With these comments of "no room", what is the "normal" layout of an average home and the dimensions of the rooms?

I built a large shed at the bottom of my garden with my mate Chris, (Christot) big enough for a 10foot, by 18 foot table, primarily for our very large 28mm Napoleonic collections, Hardly ever gaming in my house, apart from some very drunken Space Hulk games on the dining table!
Now I'm in the USA, my new house has a massive Basement, with Bar area, and Bathroom. Now, We have serious negotiations to begin, as my new wife is a dancer, and would like a studio!

John

what is the "normal" layout of an average home and the dimensions of the rooms?

There is no normal layout. British homes date from all periods from the 16th century to the present. The earlier they are the smaller the rooms tend to be. Even a house built in the 20th century would not have a room big enough for a 6x4 with much space around it. Some houses have two rooms knocked into one, but then the space is long and narrow so again poses restraints on table size and in any case is usually used as a communal space.

Not a hope in my 1857 railway cottage (architect: I K Brunel)…

Well, not while OC Domestic has her way, anyway… :(

I do have games here but not as often as I should. I play at a few other mates' homes and 3 have a dedicated attic for gaming so have more room than I do. My game table (1.6x1.2m with fold-up extension in place) is also my workbench and the room is an office and storage space too – that soon reduces a big room so that I can only comfortable fit 4 of us in the space.

Attics are probably more common over here than cellars or basements but, even then, not all would take a 6x4 ft table plus the space needed for storage of figures, terrain etc.

One of the main reasons I work in smaller scales is so that I can get decent size battles on my smaller table and have space to store armies without having to commandeer another room.

I am lucky to have a friend with a house big enough to get an 8x5 table in. Even luckier is that he has now converted an outbuilding, so we can get in a 10x5 table and he can restore the current wargaming room to use as a guest bedroom. 4 to 6 of us meet most weeks to play everything from Saga to Wings of Glory.

Typical bedroom in the US is roughly 10x10 feet. Dining room is about 12x14 feet. Most houses have a living room that is about the same size as the dining room. These sizes have held true most places I've lived in the US as well as in apartments (though those usually don't have dining rooms)

Contrary to major B I would actually say there is a normal house, or at least an average british house- I suspect most are either 19th century/ early twentieth century terraced, or mid to late twentieth century semi detatched. 3 rooms on each floor not including bathroom/conservatory/hallways etc. the newer builds are less likely to have a useful loft. basements are pretty rare. Semis will be wider, terraced houses will go back further and have higher ceilings to give an illusion of space, but the overall floor space will probably be around the same size, (about 70-80 meters squared on average apparently) though new builds from the last 20-30 years will be smaller. No two rooms will be the same size and shape, in order to accomodate staircases and the like, which often means the shape is inconvenient for hobby purposes, see the huge amount of ink expended on the subject of model railways for small and strange locations in order to maximise the potential of the space available!

Layout is usually living room and entrance hallway at the front, with dinning room and kitchen behind, the living room being the larger, and the kitchen the smaller room. Above there will be three bedrooms and a bathroom. The bathroom and smallest bedroom will not actually be big enough to swing a cat in, unless you really dont like the cat. The bedroom is usually useless as a bedroom unless the occupant is no more than 3 feet tall. In the bathroom a person with short arms will easily be able to touch all 4 walls at once, and probably won't have to lift their arms to do so. The other two will be big enough for a proper kingsize, with enough space to actually stand next to it.

This describes every one of the 6 houses I have lived in, all of the dozens Ive stayed in briefly that weren't actually hotels, and some of the hotels Ive stayed in, and the house I now own.

Most weeks. Between two and four of us. Permanent 8x5 table in converted garage. South west London.

8' x 4' table in a spare bedroom and no mission control. Perfect, well not quite,as with foxweasel I avoid clubs for the same reasons he does. Unfortunately, I haven't met any other gamers socially in my neck of the woods. So all my game are solo ones.

Rarely, I much prefer joining my mates at the club to play!

My son and I manage at least one game a week, often with one or two others coming over to join us.

Kev

I have had about 1 game/year in my living room (13' x 10') on a 6'x5' table. I live in the sticks & folks aren't too keen coming over (despite there being a pub/curry house 5 mins walk away), generally due to wives not wanting their husbands being away for the weekend!
I normally go over to a married pal's (60 miles away)who has a dedicated gaming room (smaller than my living room), but that's only big enough for 6 of us to RPG.
For a bigger wargame we use his boardroom at work on a weekend.

Mike Target has been in my house!

I have a 5 x 3 dining room table that gets used on average twice a month. Normal games are Pulp Alley & Frostgrave which require a 3 x 3 table and occasionally a game of Nuts which utilises the full 5 x 3. Skirmish gaming pretty much rules the roost!

The downside is that everything is currently stored across 3 bedrooms, which means everything has to be lugged up & downstairs.

Fortunately the Mrs has been tidying the garden up and identified a spot for a 8 X 8 cabin dedicated to gaming!

Homes are often quite small in the Uk. They even call a room of 2 x 2.5 m a bedroo!
I call it it at best a ship cabin or a store room.

And for me 6x 4 is not " normal" i will soon aim for having ( next year?) two parallel tables of 4+ x 1.6 m.
Flanks and rear.change the ways.

I haven't played a figures game at home since the 1980s, much easier to go to the club.

I do playtest stuff in the dining room though, set up table layouts etc.

Maybe if/when I'm retired I'll play more stuff at home with the other oldies:)

Every week for the past fifteen years. However, that's down to the fact that one of the group is a confirmed batchelor. So there's no wife, children or partner of either gender to require rightful consideration!

Better yet he's about to move into a bigger place so needless to say we make sure we don't have serious gaming disagreements with him! :o)

I converted my double garage to wargames use (fitting a false ceiling) nearly a year ago. I can fit tables up to 10' x 5'. Heating is provided by a calor gas heater. I run about two games a month, one on Sundays for the workers, one on Thursdas for the retired.

Yep on the 10x5 with about 4-6 players.

Never actually played a wargame in my own house. It's far more convenient to rent a room at a local school/club/ social center or pub.

Houses here just aren't big enough to accommodate a large table and a gang of ruffians. Christmas is a bad enough squeeze with the family all here, and there's normally nowhere to park in the street.

I do have a garage but as I like to be different to everyone else I actually use it to keep an old car in.

All the time.
I have a games room big enough for an 8' x 6' table and up to 6 players.

Luckily I have a 10' by 6' table all the time in the spare room. It keeps me off my wife's tele so all are happy.

As others though I am 95% solo.

I've always had the impression that the main difference of gaming at home (seemingly confirmed via By John 54) is that houses in the US have long been built with basements and most UK ones since the 1900s haven't.

That and the fact the US has plenty of land and the UK hasn't, has also tended toward larger homes even were the subterranean life isn't on offer.

Dear Trajanus

Depends. Lots of houses here aren't on basements but on slabs or footings. My own house is a "raised ranch" which has a "more or less basement" underneath a normal 2 bedroom family home. The basement is on a ground level slab and has my game room and the hobby room, the former of irregular shape of about 25 by 15, the latter, 25 ft by 12 ft. The garage is on an add on to the main slab and is 13 by 36. Above the garage about 15 years ago I added a new living room which is 13 by 34 with a cathedral ceiling with all glass, floor to ceiling on one and a half sides, and glass from top of 26" book shelves to ceiling on the remaining sides. Looks out into the woods. Here I put up my 6 x 20 foot table if I need it and have most games.

I designed my house in Maine to be an enlarged version of my "Wargamers House" article I had in the HMGS newsletter about 20 years ago. This is 32 ft by 48 ft. Again, large garage, large hobby room and wider living room with glass on three sides, top of bookshelf to ceiling , and again looking out into the woods. I'll have the games in several places. The garage and basement is above ground on a concrete foundation dug into the ground, but the level is above ground so there will be no water problem in the basement. (Had enough of that in one of my former rentals.)

However a lot of homes in the US are small and some quite dinky. Depends on what you want, and there are regional differences.

All of this is very good and nice, but part of the question should have been what gamers prefer. Some gamers prefer to game at a store even if they have palatial homes. Some gamers (like me) don't like that and would rather go through the rigamarole and expense of serving dinner and refreshments and playing at home rather than at a store. Some gamers like to go to a store and don't want to go to other players houses to play games. There is no rhyme or reason to it, and is largely just individual idiosyncracies. I like to put on big battles and do vast, impressive tables. Can't do that at a store, and I'm not interested in skirmish games which are the more portable. The game store always has a club or closing time which means set up can't be done before hand, or take down the day after. The final factor is that all the clubs and store clubs I have gone to seem overrun with "vamps" and it becomes an ordeal to play with them.

One of the strangest things I have found in America is the "squirelyness" of individual gamers. I've seen it where there were two gamers playing EXACTLY the same game with EXACTLY THE SAME RULES, and they live half an hour from each other, but they won't go to each others house. They'll instead drive two and a half ours to other peoples for a game. When you ask one of them about the other you get some goofy answer like "Oh he has Japanese stuff, and I like Western Desert" or "He likes Dorito's and I'm a potato chip kind of guy myself." It can't be because they can't stand each other. They will both go to a game night at a store or a club that's half an hour away.

Like I said, squirelly, -- go figure.

Store Gaming is virtually non existent in the UK, well outside of Games Workshop and their "in house" self promotion anyway.

There are a few but as generic games stores have all but vanished in most areas that's not really surprising.

Even a house built in the 20th century would not have a room big enough for a 6x4 with much space around it.

I disagree. My last three houses have had dining rooms with enough space for a 6' by 4' table. In my current gaming group there are 6 players and we regularly play games at each others houses. Five of us host games. Four can put on one game on a 6 by 4 table (3 in dining rooms, one in a loft room), and the other one has his garage set up as a games room with 2 6 by 4 tables.

We've got a wargame room with a 12 x 6 foot table and from time to time have friends round for a game – anything more than 6 players is a bit cramped since there's not much room around the long edges of the table and one end of it is up against the wall.