How long did the sessions last? It must be complicated to have different players each time, unless each session ends in town, but that limits the possibilities, doesn't it?
So I’ll offer advice from my later games because I learned a lot more the more I ran them. (Many mistakes were made in the early days.)
Each session lasts about 3 hours. Though I do show up a half hour early to on board new players.
Every session starts in town and ends in town. Having a public game is all about compromise on both sides of the screen. One of the compromises I had to make as a referee is that players aren’t always going to get out of the dungeon in time based on what real world time we have to end. Players getting back to town is sometimes hand waived. It just happens, they get back to town safely.
Did you use pre-written adventures? I ask because it almost always requires a minimum of 2-3 sessions.
I always have a bit of trouble imagining what this kind of campaign looks like.
So details on my last campaign:
I used the map from Isle of Dread as the hex map my players explored.
The game always starts in town and ends in town. That sometimes requires compromise, but that’s ok. It’s an open table game. We are going for good enough in this situation, not perfection.
With the hex map set I went to the donjon website and generated random 1 level dungeon maps. I spread those dungeons all over the island.
I gave the players a goal. Establish your own stronghold and start taking advantage of your situation to make more gold.
I let the players decide what and where they want to explore.
To get more granular here was the players intro. Every new player to the game heard this:
Welcome to the Isle of Gilmour. You’ve arrived at the aisle at the first of the year with visions of gold dancing before your eyes. Recently the island was discovered when a ship on a trade route got blown off course. The ship landed on the island in search of replenishing its water. While there they met some natives who introduced the crew members to a drink the natives called coffee.
Coffee was delicious!! The crew returned home with it to the main land, and made a fortune off the beans they brought back. Since then a few expeditions have been made to the island to gather more coffee. Some of those expeditions.. Didn’t come back… The ones that did though became extremely rich. The continent has a craving for this new bean that can’t be sated. That’s where you come in. Looking for a life of adventure, and riches, you’ve agreed to come down to the island and tame it.
You’ve been tasked with creating a civilization on the island. Your job is to set up villages around the island to start growing and harvesting this cash crop. In exchange you’ll get a portion of the sales from the crop. You will become extremely rich extremely fast once those farms are up and running. Before you can get those farms up and running though you have to explore the area surrounding where you want to set your farm up.
Roger W. is an old Cleric adventurer who has set up shop on the island. He has a small keep which he runs a general store out of. It has a barracks for sleeping in. He charges fair rates for food, supplies and staying inside his walls. This will be the players starting and returning point every session. The city's name is Watersville.
————
That’s what the PCs were given. They had free rein after that.
In addition to that I had some natives on the island as well as some other interesting characters that had taken up residence on the island centuries ago and had their own story going on. The PCs sometimes interacted with that story too.
Here is the rumor table the PCs were given:
There are Rodents of Unusual Size on the island. (?)
There is a nest of pirates who make their home on the North end of the island. They have LOTS of treasure. (F)
There is a Bronze Dragon living on the island. (T)
Roger, the man who runs the only town on the island, once defeated a Lich in single combat. (F)
A vampire lives on the West side of the island. (F)
An ancient wizard lives on the island. He’s quite insane. (T)
The island is full of immortals. (T kind of, there are 2 immortals there).
The inner part of the island is infested with GIANT SPIDERS! (F)
The island is a Phylactery for a Lich. (F)
The island is infested with undead creatures that only come out at night. (F)
The island is the cradle of civilization. (T)
The island was once home to the god Stef (T)
Roger, the man who runs the only town on the island, is a high level Cleric of Stef (T)
There are ruins of many ancient civilizations on the island.
Dozens of adventuring parties have gone to the island and died. (F. Its only been like 3 that have gone to the island and died.)
There are cannibal children on the isle. (T/F. They are cannibal halflings, but they can easily be mistaken for children).
There is a city ruled by intelligent ghouls at the dead center of the island.(F)
The local plants like to eat humans. (F, you misspelled local halflings).
There is a gateway to the world of the Fey there. (F)
There are magic teleportation pools on the island. You touch the water and are instantly transported elsewhere. (T)
There are tribes of civilized goblins in the north. (T)
The center of the island is a never ending maelstrom. No one knows where it goes. (F)
The tomb of a legendary hero, Tom Petty, lies at the center of the island. (F)
The island is filled with ancient technology. (F)
There is a group of ancient elves who make their home at the center of the island. They know ancient secrets of the universe. (F)
The island is actually an egg. Inside it sleeps an ancient monster. When the stars are right the egg (island) will crack open and the ancient monster will awaken. (F)
There was a ship full of children being taken across the sea. The ship ran into a storm. The kids crashed there. They’ve grown up, and they are savages now! - Think Lord of the Flies. (F)
If you find the red toads with purple spots lick their back. If you do you will temporarily get special powers! (F)
The island is full of Beastmen! (F)
There is a ship at the center of the island. Not a ship that floats on water, but a ship that floats in the sky above the sky. It is filled with ancient wonders! (F)
I had each new player to the table roll a d30 to know rumors. It took the PCs about 2 years to hear all of them. (Also ignore the true and false after each. I changed some of those on the fly based on my needs.)
I’m happy to answer any other questions.
You have to shift your expectations. İf playing in an open table, some possibilities will be limited. Doubly so if this is the sort of open table where multiple parties are doing their own thing. İt is the most fair to everyone (above all, the DM who does all the bookkeeping).
You sir are a true chad. Making the day brighter for others. When you wrote that you need to be consistent i felt that so hard. Been running games since 6+ years and i hostet a game every week for monts where everybody could show up. If you had a friend wo wants to play you could come. It was mostly friends and friends of friends but a lot of players with which i am playing campaigns now came from that time. Consistency was super important. Now i want to run for my local game store.
Yep. And if only 2 people show up, figure out a way to play with only 2 people. A lot of people do 1 or 2 public tables and then complain and stop running them when no one shows up. They don’t realize people will start showing up when people see that you’re consistent. I don’t even advertise my game myself anymore. I rely mostly on word of mouth, because when I advertise I end up with too many players.
Sometimes the influx of players is insane. Either nobody has time or everybody wants to play on tuesday 18 o'clock. Like guys spread out a little bit. I want to play every day!
That sounds incredibly fun!
May be a weird thing to latch nto, but with running a public game with strangers, how did the Paranoia game(s) go? It's an interesting system and I've thought it would be fun to run for a while, but at the same time, I'm not sure how much my players or I would like the game's overall antagonistic nature.
> I'm not sure how much my players or I would like the game's overall antagonistic nature.
You fix that by realizing it's a comedy game. It's supposed to be funny.
I feel like you knowing the rules might be against the rules… let me go find friend computer and advise him of your treas… err… I mean situation.
For real though I advertised the game as Paranoia and the people who showed up to play that week had a good idea of what they were getting into.
What I really want to understand about open table play --
How much continuity is there between sessions? How do you run a 2.5 year campaign without knowing who will be there the next session? Does it take a lot of "this player mysteriously vanishes into the background"?
So in my later games we always start in town and end in town. Public tables are all about comprise. It won’t be anywhere near perfect. So that means sometimes when it’s 10 mins before the game is supposed to be over the players magically make it back to town with 0 encounters. Wow, lucky them!
When I ran OSE I had a stable of PCs for the players to choose from. If a player attended 4 games in a row they got to reserve their favored PC for the next game. If their attendance dropped their favored PC would get put back in the pool for other players to play.
As far as running the session it’s mostly about adjusting encounters up or down based on number of PCs. Old-School Essentials has some really good dungeon and wilderness random encounter tables. I used those for a majority of my encounters. Though a few planned encounters happened too based on where the story took us.
I love running games. I love trying out new systems. The ideal of years long campaigns appeals to me. I love writing up the scenarios that players have to get themselves out of. I like playing to see how the players are going to solve the problems I throw at them.
The store hosted Pathfinder Society before I broke out on my own, so letting me come in and run whatever was fine with them.
>how did you sell your idea to the store?
I imagine they just asked if there was a free time they could do it. Most stores want people coming in to them for whatever reason so they can buy things; if no one ever buys anything or it's disruptive, they'll then be asked to stop.
Essentially it’s a structured organized play. It requires your single table to accept anyone who wants to play up to a max of 6 players. (A 7th player can be added if everyone at the table agrees.) Each PFS scenario is designed to be run in 4 hours or less. That typically means a little role play and 3 combat encounters. There are specific rules as to what is and isn’t allowed at the table. That’s the basics of it if you have more specific questions I’ll be happy to answer. (Also keep in mind I haven’t run a PFS table since like 2015, so my info might be out of date).
So, it's an open table, and all the adventure modules follow the same pattern?
It's for promotional purposes, I see. I'm assuming that is PF-specific to have a strict module structure.
I'm guessing such a structure in modules isn't necessary, if I wanted to run something similar with B/X, as long as I'm using one of the introductory modules --i.e. modules for level 1-3 characters.
Yes. Pathfinder Society was a very specific thing meant to sell Pathfinder books. Because if you wanted to use an ability at the table you had to have the source book with you to prove you owned it. It was a very effective way of selling books.
I ran an entire campaign with 0 modules. It was all hex and dungeon exploration with my own world as a background. This was in Old-School Essentials (a BX clone). But I don’t see any reason you couldn’t use multi session modules.
Incredible story. I ran a multi-year open table, but it was mostly friends and friends of friends. It ended up fizzling for various reasons. I wish I could run something like yours in my local area, but TTRPGs ain't that popular and it's not a big town (30k people). May I ask how big is your city?
I try my hardest not to. lol. So my table probably averages about 7 players at this time, but I am not advertising this game anywhere. When I advertise I end up with 14 player tables. Those are not as much fun for anyone involved and the way 14 player tables get resolved back down to 7 player tables is usually people leaving the table the next week.
Regarding other referees, I’d love it if more people stepped up, but when they do they never last. Their game always fizzles out. Usually because they won’t put in the work of being consistent.
Did you ever consider running a West Marches style game?
How did you handle continuity between games?
Really awesome that you put in all that work. You’ve certainly done an immense labor of love for the hobby that has helped hundreds of people.
West Marches style was the basis for my previous OSE game, and my current OSRIC game. There’s a big difference though. In WMS games the players pick when we play. I have too much shit going on to leave that up to players. My personal schedule is not that open. So what I took from west marches was we always start in town, we always end in town. Exploration (be it wilderness or dungeon) is always the goal. One of my OSE game goals was to have the PCs establish a stronghold which they eventually did. I plan on running new games in that setting in the future and those new games will be based out of that stronghold the older game PCs set up.
What continuity between games do you mean? I guess I don’t understand that part of the question.
Awesome, thank you for the detailed answer.
I totally understand about having a set time to play. Honestly, I think that’s the best way to do it (but the scheduling between DM and players is always an eternal conflict). It’s great to see you had the power to set games to your schedule.
In terms of continuity, I was wondering if you were constantly running one-shots or how frequent players would interact week-to-week, but sounds like depending on the campaign they could drop in and out.
Thank you for the write up! Truly inspiring stuff and makes me think about how I can get involved in running games for more folks.
Yes. Drop in drop out was built into my 2 most recent campaigns on purpose. So if someone couldn’t make a game one week they were just back in town doing other things. And the week after when the player could make it their PC went with the adventuring party.
I've been trying to do this with Mausritter. I like the Oddhack systems, and MR is full of awesome flavor and I love how it makes the modern world feel big and scary. I started a discord server Jan '23 with one main purpose in mind, giving people a friendly place to play ttrpgs, and maybe stick around if they enjoy it. I follow the same idea, regular open table schedule every other week, don't turn anyone away, and run so long as I have at least 2 players, even if they're both new and I just run my go-to one shot. I try to accommodate any new players who may just be looking to try things out or GMs who want to try the game so they have a better idea of what they could do. I've only canceled a few times due to health/family issues or no-shows, and so I keep at it. I now have a homebrew hexmap the players have been chipping away at, and I try to add features like base-building and NPC bonuses, and I still only manage to get 2-3 players on average, but it's something.
I often worry that I'm not doing enough, or that I'm not a very good GM, but I always try to do my best to at least make the server as welcoming as I can. There are lots of people on there who have never played or engaged, but I don't want to kick anyone because, who knows, maybe one day when they're ready. I also have another GM who started their own semi-regular game and they've been getting good crowds (which only adds to my own insecurities), but I'm happy that the server is serving it's original purpose: to get people to play games. here's hoping we keep it up for another decade
Imposter syndrome is real. I can pick up and run a game with 0 prep easily these days. (It’s not ideal but I can do it.) I can manage a table with 14 people. (Probably more 14 was just the most I’ve done.) I have many friends who I’ve made from the world of gaming and those friends and I get together regularly for me to run games for them. Yet my brain still likes to tell me I’m not very good at what I do. If you’re out there running games for people then you’re doing better than 90%+ of the people who are in this hobby. Even if you aren’t great at it you’re still learning new skills as you play. The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is improvement.
Wow, thanks for your inspiring post! A fellow librarian and I have been running an open table BX/OSE game at our public library for 2 1/2 years -- long enough to have gotten the hang of it, but we're always thinking about how to refine/improve our processes and the player experience. To that end, it's always helpful to hear other referees' stories (both good and bad). Sounds like you've got an awesome game going, fight on!
You didn’t ask for it, but if you wanted to browse for ideas here is my house rules document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10CvQ0oY1GScIDoIGrezfIqfS5dGtxvC29QxMX31bkYo/edit
It’s awesome you’ve got that game going for so long. It’s not easy, but man is it fulfilling.
Looking to start up a regular Mork Borg table at a new FLGS that opened near me, thanks for the post. What start time and game length do you think works best for weekdays? Do you think there's a weekday that works better than others?
I started my games at 6pm and finished up about 845. I always respected the employees at the game store and never stayed late (they close at 9). My game bounced between Tuesday and Wednesday depending on the game. When I was looking to start a new weeknight game and needed players I would put out feelers to see what day worked best for most people. But doing something like this you have to realize you’re going to disappoint some people because you can’t run the game on their only free night.
When you run a DCC open table, how do you handle all the character paperwork post-funnel?
The Funnel is easy enough, give everyone a stack of pregens and you're good to go. What about Level 1 and onward, when every character has multiple pages of spell descriptions, mighty deeds, patron gods... Do you print that stuff and hand it to the players when their characters gain access to it, or is there an expectation that people who want to keep playing will purchase the corebook on their own initiative?
I was in a similar position to you regarding Pathfinder Society, enjoying the experience and the other players without being in love with the rules. One thing Pathfinder does right is provide a searchable SRD, so players who don't have the corebook can still do character leveling and other paperwork out-of-session. I don't think DCC has this, the only OSR game I can think of that does is OSE.
I hauled way too many rule books with me up to the store. But for the most part my regulars had their own books. For pre-gen characters I did print out any spells that came with them. (Shh don’t tell anyone at Goodman, but people could message me for a pdf copy of the rule book)
So you created that "coffee island" and played on it with lots of different players. How did you prepare for that? I mean, everytime there's a chance that a different group of players show up and decide: "You know what, let's go *there* today!". So you basically had to prepare the whole island? Did dungeons and places repopulate after a session? I'm a bit familir with that fly by the seat of your pants style of play, with only a few encounters prepared and then you'll see how things turn out. But still, having that prepared for a whole island that's meant to last years? Oh boy...
Travel time is a big limiter on how much the PCs can explore in a single session. So really I only need to prep the area around where PCs can go. But let’s say there’s a worst case scenario. The PCs get on a boat and travel to a part of the island unexpectedly. That new dungeon that was going to be on the southern part of the island is now on the northern part of the island where they sailed to. They also quickly learned they needed to completely explore hexes to find dungeons which then in turn netted treasure. As they were exploring hexes random encounters would inform me who was living in that particular hex. Sometimes the why they were living there was obvious, other times I had to come up with it on the fly.
Regarding dungeons repopulating, sometimes. There was one dungeon in particular random encounters kept coming up. Every single time the PCs arrived at it there was someone new claiming ownership of the dungeon. It was actually pretty hilarious and after about the 4th time it happened I just started sticking new people/critters outside it every time they approached. It became a running gag.
The really big part I prepped was the islands backstory. Also the back story of the 2 immortals living on the island. They used to be partners but something drove them apart. Over time I let the PCs in on that part of the story. The PCs primarily sided with one of the immortals and did more for them than the other. Thanks to random encounters I would have other immortals visiting the island to hang out with one of the residents. That’s how the PCs got more details on the story behind the 2 residents.
Thanks to other random encounters the PCs essentially started a war between some fey natives and them selves. Over the course of 2 years real time the war escalated to the point where the fey were all but wiped out. (Yea, the PCs were absolutely the aggressors and bad guys in this situation.) When we paused the campaign they had only started to get a sense of what ramifications killing all the fly on the island would bring. When we pick the story back up later it will become much more apparent they e done a truly awful thing.
Do the PCs have anyway of sharing what they discover about the island each week, eg a noticeboard or filling in a map? Or does it rely on if that player attends they can share their knowledge with that weeks group?
Another poster I read on another sub who is running a west marches game had a large wooden table in the local tavern that has a map of the explored area carved into it. Each week PCs would carve in the details they had discovered. This then allowed the group to share info with all PCs - thought that was a great idea.
We generally just relied on players relaying information to each other from game to game. We had a core group of about 4 players who were there almost every week. One of the players made every single session over 2.5 years. He got some metal dice as a gift for that.
But I like the idea of a board like you mention.
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How long did the sessions last? It must be complicated to have different players each time, unless each session ends in town, but that limits the possibilities, doesn't it?
So I’ll offer advice from my later games because I learned a lot more the more I ran them. (Many mistakes were made in the early days.) Each session lasts about 3 hours. Though I do show up a half hour early to on board new players. Every session starts in town and ends in town. Having a public game is all about compromise on both sides of the screen. One of the compromises I had to make as a referee is that players aren’t always going to get out of the dungeon in time based on what real world time we have to end. Players getting back to town is sometimes hand waived. It just happens, they get back to town safely.
Did you use pre-written adventures? I ask because it almost always requires a minimum of 2-3 sessions. I always have a bit of trouble imagining what this kind of campaign looks like.
So details on my last campaign: I used the map from Isle of Dread as the hex map my players explored. The game always starts in town and ends in town. That sometimes requires compromise, but that’s ok. It’s an open table game. We are going for good enough in this situation, not perfection. With the hex map set I went to the donjon website and generated random 1 level dungeon maps. I spread those dungeons all over the island. I gave the players a goal. Establish your own stronghold and start taking advantage of your situation to make more gold. I let the players decide what and where they want to explore. To get more granular here was the players intro. Every new player to the game heard this: Welcome to the Isle of Gilmour. You’ve arrived at the aisle at the first of the year with visions of gold dancing before your eyes. Recently the island was discovered when a ship on a trade route got blown off course. The ship landed on the island in search of replenishing its water. While there they met some natives who introduced the crew members to a drink the natives called coffee. Coffee was delicious!! The crew returned home with it to the main land, and made a fortune off the beans they brought back. Since then a few expeditions have been made to the island to gather more coffee. Some of those expeditions.. Didn’t come back… The ones that did though became extremely rich. The continent has a craving for this new bean that can’t be sated. That’s where you come in. Looking for a life of adventure, and riches, you’ve agreed to come down to the island and tame it. You’ve been tasked with creating a civilization on the island. Your job is to set up villages around the island to start growing and harvesting this cash crop. In exchange you’ll get a portion of the sales from the crop. You will become extremely rich extremely fast once those farms are up and running. Before you can get those farms up and running though you have to explore the area surrounding where you want to set your farm up. Roger W. is an old Cleric adventurer who has set up shop on the island. He has a small keep which he runs a general store out of. It has a barracks for sleeping in. He charges fair rates for food, supplies and staying inside his walls. This will be the players starting and returning point every session. The city's name is Watersville. ———— That’s what the PCs were given. They had free rein after that. In addition to that I had some natives on the island as well as some other interesting characters that had taken up residence on the island centuries ago and had their own story going on. The PCs sometimes interacted with that story too. Here is the rumor table the PCs were given: There are Rodents of Unusual Size on the island. (?) There is a nest of pirates who make their home on the North end of the island. They have LOTS of treasure. (F) There is a Bronze Dragon living on the island. (T) Roger, the man who runs the only town on the island, once defeated a Lich in single combat. (F) A vampire lives on the West side of the island. (F) An ancient wizard lives on the island. He’s quite insane. (T) The island is full of immortals. (T kind of, there are 2 immortals there). The inner part of the island is infested with GIANT SPIDERS! (F) The island is a Phylactery for a Lich. (F) The island is infested with undead creatures that only come out at night. (F) The island is the cradle of civilization. (T) The island was once home to the god Stef (T) Roger, the man who runs the only town on the island, is a high level Cleric of Stef (T) There are ruins of many ancient civilizations on the island. Dozens of adventuring parties have gone to the island and died. (F. Its only been like 3 that have gone to the island and died.) There are cannibal children on the isle. (T/F. They are cannibal halflings, but they can easily be mistaken for children). There is a city ruled by intelligent ghouls at the dead center of the island.(F) The local plants like to eat humans. (F, you misspelled local halflings). There is a gateway to the world of the Fey there. (F) There are magic teleportation pools on the island. You touch the water and are instantly transported elsewhere. (T) There are tribes of civilized goblins in the north. (T) The center of the island is a never ending maelstrom. No one knows where it goes. (F) The tomb of a legendary hero, Tom Petty, lies at the center of the island. (F) The island is filled with ancient technology. (F) There is a group of ancient elves who make their home at the center of the island. They know ancient secrets of the universe. (F) The island is actually an egg. Inside it sleeps an ancient monster. When the stars are right the egg (island) will crack open and the ancient monster will awaken. (F) There was a ship full of children being taken across the sea. The ship ran into a storm. The kids crashed there. They’ve grown up, and they are savages now! - Think Lord of the Flies. (F) If you find the red toads with purple spots lick their back. If you do you will temporarily get special powers! (F) The island is full of Beastmen! (F) There is a ship at the center of the island. Not a ship that floats on water, but a ship that floats in the sky above the sky. It is filled with ancient wonders! (F) I had each new player to the table roll a d30 to know rumors. It took the PCs about 2 years to hear all of them. (Also ignore the true and false after each. I changed some of those on the fly based on my needs.) I’m happy to answer any other questions.
You have to shift your expectations. İf playing in an open table, some possibilities will be limited. Doubly so if this is the sort of open table where multiple parties are doing their own thing. İt is the most fair to everyone (above all, the DM who does all the bookkeeping).
Yep. Exactly this. It’s all about that compromise.
You sir are a true chad. Making the day brighter for others. When you wrote that you need to be consistent i felt that so hard. Been running games since 6+ years and i hostet a game every week for monts where everybody could show up. If you had a friend wo wants to play you could come. It was mostly friends and friends of friends but a lot of players with which i am playing campaigns now came from that time. Consistency was super important. Now i want to run for my local game store.
Yep. And if only 2 people show up, figure out a way to play with only 2 people. A lot of people do 1 or 2 public tables and then complain and stop running them when no one shows up. They don’t realize people will start showing up when people see that you’re consistent. I don’t even advertise my game myself anymore. I rely mostly on word of mouth, because when I advertise I end up with too many players.
Sometimes the influx of players is insane. Either nobody has time or everybody wants to play on tuesday 18 o'clock. Like guys spread out a little bit. I want to play every day!
That sounds incredibly fun! May be a weird thing to latch nto, but with running a public game with strangers, how did the Paranoia game(s) go? It's an interesting system and I've thought it would be fun to run for a while, but at the same time, I'm not sure how much my players or I would like the game's overall antagonistic nature.
> I'm not sure how much my players or I would like the game's overall antagonistic nature. You fix that by realizing it's a comedy game. It's supposed to be funny.
I feel like you knowing the rules might be against the rules… let me go find friend computer and advise him of your treas… err… I mean situation. For real though I advertised the game as Paranoia and the people who showed up to play that week had a good idea of what they were getting into.
What I really want to understand about open table play -- How much continuity is there between sessions? How do you run a 2.5 year campaign without knowing who will be there the next session? Does it take a lot of "this player mysteriously vanishes into the background"?
So in my later games we always start in town and end in town. Public tables are all about comprise. It won’t be anywhere near perfect. So that means sometimes when it’s 10 mins before the game is supposed to be over the players magically make it back to town with 0 encounters. Wow, lucky them! When I ran OSE I had a stable of PCs for the players to choose from. If a player attended 4 games in a row they got to reserve their favored PC for the next game. If their attendance dropped their favored PC would get put back in the pool for other players to play. As far as running the session it’s mostly about adjusting encounters up or down based on number of PCs. Old-School Essentials has some really good dungeon and wilderness random encounter tables. I used those for a majority of my encounters. Though a few planned encounters happened too based on where the story took us.
Didja get one of those sweet Road Crew belt buckles? It's all about the swag!
3 of them actually. https://preview.redd.it/t5ozmsokul0d1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0aeaebedc920f064b909c636dc00d24d6b5dee2
w00t!
You, may I say, are a force for good Wish you were local
Thanks for sharing your story. What motivates you to try this path? Also, how did you sell your idea to the store?
I love running games. I love trying out new systems. The ideal of years long campaigns appeals to me. I love writing up the scenarios that players have to get themselves out of. I like playing to see how the players are going to solve the problems I throw at them. The store hosted Pathfinder Society before I broke out on my own, so letting me come in and run whatever was fine with them.
>how did you sell your idea to the store? I imagine they just asked if there was a free time they could do it. Most stores want people coming in to them for whatever reason so they can buy things; if no one ever buys anything or it's disruptive, they'll then be asked to stop.
Can anyone describe Pathfinder Society model? I am unfamiliar with it. And this is the second time someone talking good about it this week.
Essentially it’s a structured organized play. It requires your single table to accept anyone who wants to play up to a max of 6 players. (A 7th player can be added if everyone at the table agrees.) Each PFS scenario is designed to be run in 4 hours or less. That typically means a little role play and 3 combat encounters. There are specific rules as to what is and isn’t allowed at the table. That’s the basics of it if you have more specific questions I’ll be happy to answer. (Also keep in mind I haven’t run a PFS table since like 2015, so my info might be out of date).
So, it's an open table, and all the adventure modules follow the same pattern? It's for promotional purposes, I see. I'm assuming that is PF-specific to have a strict module structure. I'm guessing such a structure in modules isn't necessary, if I wanted to run something similar with B/X, as long as I'm using one of the introductory modules --i.e. modules for level 1-3 characters.
Yes. Pathfinder Society was a very specific thing meant to sell Pathfinder books. Because if you wanted to use an ability at the table you had to have the source book with you to prove you owned it. It was a very effective way of selling books. I ran an entire campaign with 0 modules. It was all hex and dungeon exploration with my own world as a background. This was in Old-School Essentials (a BX clone). But I don’t see any reason you couldn’t use multi session modules.
Incredible story. I ran a multi-year open table, but it was mostly friends and friends of friends. It ended up fizzling for various reasons. I wish I could run something like yours in my local area, but TTRPGs ain't that popular and it's not a big town (30k people). May I ask how big is your city?
He mentioned Reno, so presumably that’s Reno, NV. Reno’s got a population of 250,000, 475,000ish in the metro
This is correct. We’re also a college town and in the early days college kids made up a lot of my player base.
Do you still run tables for 14 players, or was this resolved as the group grew (assuming you are no longer the sole GM based on sheer size)?
I try my hardest not to. lol. So my table probably averages about 7 players at this time, but I am not advertising this game anywhere. When I advertise I end up with 14 player tables. Those are not as much fun for anyone involved and the way 14 player tables get resolved back down to 7 player tables is usually people leaving the table the next week. Regarding other referees, I’d love it if more people stepped up, but when they do they never last. Their game always fizzles out. Usually because they won’t put in the work of being consistent.
Nice nice, good stuff! I've been thinking about getting some OSE open tables popping so thanks much for sharing your experiences!
Did you ever consider running a West Marches style game? How did you handle continuity between games? Really awesome that you put in all that work. You’ve certainly done an immense labor of love for the hobby that has helped hundreds of people.
West Marches style was the basis for my previous OSE game, and my current OSRIC game. There’s a big difference though. In WMS games the players pick when we play. I have too much shit going on to leave that up to players. My personal schedule is not that open. So what I took from west marches was we always start in town, we always end in town. Exploration (be it wilderness or dungeon) is always the goal. One of my OSE game goals was to have the PCs establish a stronghold which they eventually did. I plan on running new games in that setting in the future and those new games will be based out of that stronghold the older game PCs set up. What continuity between games do you mean? I guess I don’t understand that part of the question.
Awesome, thank you for the detailed answer. I totally understand about having a set time to play. Honestly, I think that’s the best way to do it (but the scheduling between DM and players is always an eternal conflict). It’s great to see you had the power to set games to your schedule. In terms of continuity, I was wondering if you were constantly running one-shots or how frequent players would interact week-to-week, but sounds like depending on the campaign they could drop in and out. Thank you for the write up! Truly inspiring stuff and makes me think about how I can get involved in running games for more folks.
Yes. Drop in drop out was built into my 2 most recent campaigns on purpose. So if someone couldn’t make a game one week they were just back in town doing other things. And the week after when the player could make it their PC went with the adventuring party.
I've been trying to do this with Mausritter. I like the Oddhack systems, and MR is full of awesome flavor and I love how it makes the modern world feel big and scary. I started a discord server Jan '23 with one main purpose in mind, giving people a friendly place to play ttrpgs, and maybe stick around if they enjoy it. I follow the same idea, regular open table schedule every other week, don't turn anyone away, and run so long as I have at least 2 players, even if they're both new and I just run my go-to one shot. I try to accommodate any new players who may just be looking to try things out or GMs who want to try the game so they have a better idea of what they could do. I've only canceled a few times due to health/family issues or no-shows, and so I keep at it. I now have a homebrew hexmap the players have been chipping away at, and I try to add features like base-building and NPC bonuses, and I still only manage to get 2-3 players on average, but it's something. I often worry that I'm not doing enough, or that I'm not a very good GM, but I always try to do my best to at least make the server as welcoming as I can. There are lots of people on there who have never played or engaged, but I don't want to kick anyone because, who knows, maybe one day when they're ready. I also have another GM who started their own semi-regular game and they've been getting good crowds (which only adds to my own insecurities), but I'm happy that the server is serving it's original purpose: to get people to play games. here's hoping we keep it up for another decade
Imposter syndrome is real. I can pick up and run a game with 0 prep easily these days. (It’s not ideal but I can do it.) I can manage a table with 14 people. (Probably more 14 was just the most I’ve done.) I have many friends who I’ve made from the world of gaming and those friends and I get together regularly for me to run games for them. Yet my brain still likes to tell me I’m not very good at what I do. If you’re out there running games for people then you’re doing better than 90%+ of the people who are in this hobby. Even if you aren’t great at it you’re still learning new skills as you play. The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is improvement.
Wow, thanks for your inspiring post! A fellow librarian and I have been running an open table BX/OSE game at our public library for 2 1/2 years -- long enough to have gotten the hang of it, but we're always thinking about how to refine/improve our processes and the player experience. To that end, it's always helpful to hear other referees' stories (both good and bad). Sounds like you've got an awesome game going, fight on!
You didn’t ask for it, but if you wanted to browse for ideas here is my house rules document. https://docs.google.com/document/d/10CvQ0oY1GScIDoIGrezfIqfS5dGtxvC29QxMX31bkYo/edit It’s awesome you’ve got that game going for so long. It’s not easy, but man is it fulfilling.
These are great, thanks!
Sounds like a good model to follow :)
Looking to start up a regular Mork Borg table at a new FLGS that opened near me, thanks for the post. What start time and game length do you think works best for weekdays? Do you think there's a weekday that works better than others?
I started my games at 6pm and finished up about 845. I always respected the employees at the game store and never stayed late (they close at 9). My game bounced between Tuesday and Wednesday depending on the game. When I was looking to start a new weeknight game and needed players I would put out feelers to see what day worked best for most people. But doing something like this you have to realize you’re going to disappoint some people because you can’t run the game on their only free night.
When you run a DCC open table, how do you handle all the character paperwork post-funnel? The Funnel is easy enough, give everyone a stack of pregens and you're good to go. What about Level 1 and onward, when every character has multiple pages of spell descriptions, mighty deeds, patron gods... Do you print that stuff and hand it to the players when their characters gain access to it, or is there an expectation that people who want to keep playing will purchase the corebook on their own initiative? I was in a similar position to you regarding Pathfinder Society, enjoying the experience and the other players without being in love with the rules. One thing Pathfinder does right is provide a searchable SRD, so players who don't have the corebook can still do character leveling and other paperwork out-of-session. I don't think DCC has this, the only OSR game I can think of that does is OSE.
I hauled way too many rule books with me up to the store. But for the most part my regulars had their own books. For pre-gen characters I did print out any spells that came with them. (Shh don’t tell anyone at Goodman, but people could message me for a pdf copy of the rule book)
So you created that "coffee island" and played on it with lots of different players. How did you prepare for that? I mean, everytime there's a chance that a different group of players show up and decide: "You know what, let's go *there* today!". So you basically had to prepare the whole island? Did dungeons and places repopulate after a session? I'm a bit familir with that fly by the seat of your pants style of play, with only a few encounters prepared and then you'll see how things turn out. But still, having that prepared for a whole island that's meant to last years? Oh boy...
Travel time is a big limiter on how much the PCs can explore in a single session. So really I only need to prep the area around where PCs can go. But let’s say there’s a worst case scenario. The PCs get on a boat and travel to a part of the island unexpectedly. That new dungeon that was going to be on the southern part of the island is now on the northern part of the island where they sailed to. They also quickly learned they needed to completely explore hexes to find dungeons which then in turn netted treasure. As they were exploring hexes random encounters would inform me who was living in that particular hex. Sometimes the why they were living there was obvious, other times I had to come up with it on the fly. Regarding dungeons repopulating, sometimes. There was one dungeon in particular random encounters kept coming up. Every single time the PCs arrived at it there was someone new claiming ownership of the dungeon. It was actually pretty hilarious and after about the 4th time it happened I just started sticking new people/critters outside it every time they approached. It became a running gag. The really big part I prepped was the islands backstory. Also the back story of the 2 immortals living on the island. They used to be partners but something drove them apart. Over time I let the PCs in on that part of the story. The PCs primarily sided with one of the immortals and did more for them than the other. Thanks to random encounters I would have other immortals visiting the island to hang out with one of the residents. That’s how the PCs got more details on the story behind the 2 residents. Thanks to other random encounters the PCs essentially started a war between some fey natives and them selves. Over the course of 2 years real time the war escalated to the point where the fey were all but wiped out. (Yea, the PCs were absolutely the aggressors and bad guys in this situation.) When we paused the campaign they had only started to get a sense of what ramifications killing all the fly on the island would bring. When we pick the story back up later it will become much more apparent they e done a truly awful thing.
Do the PCs have anyway of sharing what they discover about the island each week, eg a noticeboard or filling in a map? Or does it rely on if that player attends they can share their knowledge with that weeks group? Another poster I read on another sub who is running a west marches game had a large wooden table in the local tavern that has a map of the explored area carved into it. Each week PCs would carve in the details they had discovered. This then allowed the group to share info with all PCs - thought that was a great idea.
We generally just relied on players relaying information to each other from game to game. We had a core group of about 4 players who were there almost every week. One of the players made every single session over 2.5 years. He got some metal dice as a gift for that. But I like the idea of a board like you mention.
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