D&D group builds custom digital tabletop with 4K touchscreen

We know that more people are playing Dungeons & Dragons online than ever before. But the same digital tools that let you play with friends remotely can also improve in-person games as well. One group of handy gamers took that concept to the next level, building a digital gaming table with a 4K touchscreen built right in.

A Dungeon Master (DM) on Tumblr user who goes by the handle Caethial published pictures of his build today on Reddit. The post has already rocketed up the front page of the internet, garnering more than 10,000 upvotes as of this writing. The table uses off-the-shelf lumber, including some two-by-fours for the base, and it’s all held together with drywall screws and a few metal brackets. Caethial says it cost him around $120.

It’s the tech at the center of it all that is knocking people’s socks off: A 40” Samsung smart TV sits in the center for players, while the DM drives everything from his end of the table with a Dell Precision 5720 27” 4K touchscreen workstation.

If you’re making a shopping list at home, please understand that’s a $2,500 machine.

The software powering this table is Fantasy Grounds, a virtual tabletop that’s been available on Steam since 2015. We’ve used Fantasy Grounds here at Polygon in the past and can vouch for it as a mature, robust platform. It now includes officially licensed campaign modules straight from Wizard of the Coast.

While the touchscreen is nice to have, Fantasy Grounds works just as well with a mouse and keyboard. Caethial shows the table working with a simple laptop. You can see the entire build, step-by-step, on Tumblr.