A year of open table gaming

Some stat's from the regular friday night open table games I have been running.

Original set up goals
- be the welcome wagon for friday night open table D&D - catch the newbies by always having a T1 table.
- bring books I had kickstarted to table

Set up a 'campaign background' thread on the forum. I decided to use Brancalonia as a start because it seemed fun and I wanted to give the setting a test run. I made it a bit more of a universal socket to whatever weird characters people might turn up with by crossing it over to my menagerie world setting.

The 'intro' goes - "5000 years ago the elves invaded, conquered everything around here. In this world elves teach things they think show promise how to be elves. About 1000 years ago the elves left, and behind remained lots of 'on-the-way-to-elf' groups that stabilised as rabbitlings, badgerlings, all sorts. Half this world is about 1m tall. You all used to work for a wizard, it was good times, then the wizard got into politics and you are pretty sure they're dead now. You woke up one morning to find wanted posters with your names on them and crimes you may or may not have committed. You all fled south, winding up here, at the Golden Cockerel, the southern node of the wizards old network. Rougher runs the place, begrudgingly taking you in. The wine and the stew have been getting more watery every day for the past week and now, after a night drinking, you have all just woken up feeling nothing but hydrated and hungry."

Filling the tables

Basic stats -
27 games from August 2023 to August 2024
Average session length, 4h 40m
Total hours played - 126
5.3 players per table on average (smallest group 4, biggest 9)
Total of 202 players DM'ed for (butts on seats, some repeat folk)
72 different people threw dice at those games

A whole bunch of 'its my first time' players hopefully left with a positive view. Columns are games, rows are players in the below - people in the top half played with me more than once, people in the bottom are mostly the first timers and folk who came once.

We saw the now familiar strong curve - one player has been at 16 games, two more at 10-11, 15 have come to 5-8 sessions, then 47 attended once.

For more on how the logistics work see Open Table Procedures - Euro Edition

Sourcing Adventures

The specific games run mostly came out of the Brancalonia books from the kickstarters; the bringing of which to table was a core driver for the whole exercise.

1 Rugantino
2 Treasure of the Bigat
3 See Acquaviva and Die!
4 Big Trouble in Borgoratto
5 Bride of the Bigat
6 The Good, The Bag and the Marionette
7 Penumbria Jeez Festival
8 Forest of the Howling Boars
9 Red Carnival
10 The Divine Sow (pt 1)
11 The Divine Sow (pt 2)
12 Fistful of Hops
13 The Spinsterite Nunnery
14 Battle of the Be(ast)damns
15 Pesto Alla Lungarvese
16 Pickled Rich - The Gangover
17 The Ancient Urn
18 Stirring the Hornets Nest at Het Thamsya (OSR)
19 Petchin Heist/Hot Cross Buns
20 Black Rose Rising
21 Tomb of the Screaming Skull (Oldskull generator)
22 Sharks & Maidens (OftheHills generator)
23 Necropolis of the Enchanted Depths (Shadowdark generator)
24 Ironoak Run (Borderlands Journey Generator generator)
25 Apocalypse Annex (OSR)
26 Temple of the Iron Quill (Scarlet Heroes generator)
27 Cat Castle Masquerade (Donjon generator)

All told these were 8 games out of Jinx's Almanac, 6 out of the Macaronicon, 5 out of the Brancalonia core book, 6 from my 'adventure generator' tests plus a zine (Het Thamsya) and a Dungeon23 snippet (Apocalypse Archive).

I am going to run it out to 30 with Radiant Citadel adventures and then from end of September, try something else. The goal of actually getting books I had bought to table has been achieved - for the Brancalonia set - time to try and bring some more stuff to bear. If I am finding myself scrabbling to find stuff to feed into it, time to call it done and move on.

Lessons learned:
* It has definitely sharpened up my DM'ing - through it has made me good at running this particular thing, within this genre and at this power level. I would like to stretch myself a bit by making things more West Marchy for whatever I do next.
* I have needed to reach back to my old Viking DM hat to deal with some of the newcomers who have rocked up - vast majority have been lovely, constructive players - some have been a little rough around the edges but got with the program of the whole table having fun with a little nudge - some need to be told no, firmly. Indicates a need for a clear code of conduct for the wider group.
* Conservation of NPCs and returning to places and people has gotten fun since about half way through - the drop-in/drop-out setup has worked well with this because the setup is that people are members of a rogues brotherhood and folk know to find them at their base/lair regardless of who is actually present on a given day.
* I have developed a much stronger sense of how to prep a written adventure for table, what works for me and how to adapt on the fly. That plus a better grip on how long things take - particularly combat - has improved my time management a lot.
* Running 5e with gritty realism helps a lot - people can still bring ludicrous builds and combos but it makes all the super-heroic powers of a 5e character feel a bit more scarce and precious and pushes people to look for other solutions rather than just bludgeon things with their abilities.
* I am taking the decent 'repeat custom' as an indication I am running a fun table and feedback is usually good as people are wrapping up.
* The purpose of the table as the 'wecome wagon' for anyone who turns up for D&D the first time is well met I think. To me it is a lot more hijinks and raucous that what 'classis srs dnd' should be but that seems to vibe well with Brancalonia and the general expectations of the folk who sit to table these days.