How do I setup a lan to play games?

LAN parties originated from early single-player Unix games such as Larn, Hack, Rogue, and Hunt the Wumpus that kept scoreboards on a centralized server. At this point the majority of the people playing these games were university students who had access to such systems for schoolwork. Another early incarnation of network gaming was Xanth Software F/X's MIDI Maze. Programmed for the Atari ST, the game allowed up to 16 computers (though any number above 4 caused instability) to be linked together via the ST's MIDI ports and deathmatch games to be played over the makeshift network. With the release of Id Software's Doom in 1993, the gameplay that MIDI Maze pioneered was perfected, allowing four players either to cooperate in the game's singleplayer campaign or to fight each other in a deathmatch game. As a result, network gaming (and consequently LAN parties) grew. The initial explosion for the LAN Party scene occurred with the release of the shareware version of Id Software's Quake in 1996. The release of Quake closely coincided with the release of many low-cost Ethernet NIC and hub packages from companies such as Linksys and Realtek allowing for easy ad-hoc LAN building. An additional factor was ease with which computers were able to be networked domestically with the recently-released Windows 95.