Every couple of months I end up seeing an article floating around about someone constructing a self-proclaimed...

Honestly just having everyone on a laptop is superior. Still better than paper or dry-erase battle maps though.

Seems like it would draw players into interacting with the media rather than one another, and having full color art and visualizations would sap some of the magic of imagining things for yourself.

>Not using a 3d projector for your electronic table.
Get on my level, plebs.

Not him, but in practice no more than paper and miniatures does. If you're worried about full color art sapping the magic or whatever, there's also nothing stopping you from creating more "generic" assets.

For instance, I don't like looking for character or monster art. I'm currently running a sci-fi campaign, and I've created what amounts to a basic tileset for maps with colored "pips" for players and NPCs--the goal was kind of to evoke a mini-map or the motion tracker from Aliens. And there's no full color portraits or anything.

Boom. It's the same kind of abstract, purist, no-frills visuals with the added bonus of me being able to save, swap between, and create maps digitally and (for me at least) much more easily. Plus, creating and editing miniatures ("tokens", in virtual tabletop parlance) is a breeze. I use MapTool, which means I can store stats or notes directly on NPCs instead of in separate notes, and if I really want to get into it there's a wealth of other GM tools available (creating Macros to automate attacks or other abilities, for instance) that make my life way easier.

Then again I'm also the kind of guy who creates cloud-based sharable character sheets and keeps all of my GM notes in cloud-based notes services, so maybe I'm more digital than some.

Getting back to the OP, the real problem I see with the table is that it doesn't go far enough for my taste. I'd much rather have each player on their own laptop (with their own suite of macros, their own private notes and characters sheets, etc) than have them sharing a communal screen in the middle of a table.

Still, if you want a game where the GM gets to play with all of his high-tech toys but the players still bring miniatures and paper character sheets, I can see why that table might be useful. It'd let me do all of my map-making the way I want to, and the players can just slap their tokens down on top of it when a fight starts. Still probably better than pen and paper (for me).

>Honestly just having everyone on a laptop is superior.
I would hate this so much. Do you really play with this?

No. But then again I never use models or maps better than scribbles anyway. I'm sure combat focused groups would appreciate it, but its not for me.

the "ULTIMATE" table is this, big enough for everyone to sit as, sturdy, no card table wobbling, has enough room for everyones papers, and has gosh dark drink holders like the one in OP so people arent forever spilling their drinks on my paper and dice

Bit of plexiglass over the top and seal it with some bathroom silicone, sorted. Might look a wee bit tatty if you don't know how to apply the silicone smoothly but aside from that seems pretty foolproof

So it was you!

Yeah man. Pizza and beer goes in the middle of the table, laptops go around the outside. The footprint of a laptop compared to a sheaf of papers or a folder isn't that different, really. Plus you don't need space to put the battle map or roll dice because that's done digitally. It's super convenient.