Running a Fantasy Walk-In Centre

I started by running Dungeons & Dragons at Scenario Bar in Dalston at the behest of one of the staff who had bought a set for the bar. 5th edition had not been long released and it looked the sort of game that anyone could pick up and play. Of course I would like to set up some games.

After several failed attempts to organise players on Twitter I set up a Meetup group. Over the following months I would host games for randoms. I experienced the full range of human reliability - turning me from idealism to pragmatism. I've gone from trying to gather as many people as possible to play D&D, to simply hosting My Game that I let strangers turn up and add to. My relationship with the bar staff in this matter has shifted fully from events volunteer, to that guy with the hobby. Whilst not as grand, I assure you that the latter is way more fun.

I've been doing open-table games (a game where you are the Games Master and total strangers will turn up to be your players) for over a year now and I've reached a point where I feel the friction in the setup is at its minimum. So it's time to share what I've learned. My current weapon of choice is Dungeon World because of its fantastic low maintenance:

• Barring props, I only need to prepare some vague threats.
• It doesn't feel underwhelming with fewer players. (Though I stick with 2-5 players as one is a bit intense for a casual game and six is basically cat-herding.)
• It takes no time to introduce the rules.
• Diet D&D speaks a language most visitors to my table understand.
• It has no miniatures rules (so I don't have to use proper ones).
• A level 9 player can fight alongside a level 2 player. The hit points don't scale so newbies can play along with alumni and everyone is almost as likely to die.

Sandbox++

My campaign uses an ever-growing map that new players add to or continue to flesh out. The pilot episode started on an island looking for treasure. It was a little underwhelming and silly and so it doesn't surprise me that I saw none of those players ever again. The second session started off with two new players escorting the mute characters from last week off the island before the ship was attacked by a kraken. Our surviving new players then set off to discover the rest of the map. It was a bit like the second episode of Babylon 5 where you wonder where half the cast buggered off to from the pilot, but you kinda feel it was for the best.

With each new visitor that would check out the game, the map evolved. Never having to plan ahead meant people could take time off from the game, allowing new players to drop in to add content. You sort of feel betrayed when people don't turn up to a formal RPG campaign - but with this more casual framework I actually prefer seeing new faces and small games because it keeps pumping new life into the story.

That island the first game happened on and its rather silly lore was never mentioned again. If a character leaves the game they take their arc with them and I don't touch it. If they walk off with the macguffin, let them. That was their story, it can still continue right where it left off because I won't have to give them an errata for their character sheet when they come back. As well as letting people come and add to the game, that first game taught me that it's also okay to forget a few things if they're not going to work out. Otherwise, we'll happily stick around in a city a long lost player invented if it looks like a good one or defeat that Big Bad that's been a nuisance to everyone.

Homebrew

With people appearing and disappearing you'll get some odd twists to the story. Hence I came up with a Move to use in Dungeon World that deals with players missing one or more sessions. It offers them an opportunity to catch up with the group and bring new advantages or complications.

I'm Back

When you explain your absence from the last session, say what happened and roll. If you..

• fought a monster or escaped imprisonment, roll+STR

• did something secret, stole something, or evaded something, roll+DEX

• trained under a mentor or acquired help or resources, roll+CON

• learned ancient knowledge or invented something, roll+INT

• discovered a secret or had a divine encounter, roll+WIS

• made an ally or learned about a culture, roll+CHA

On a 10+ you had a prosperous leave and take +1 forward on what you learned. On 7-9 you attracted trouble during your absence and the consequences may catch up with you.

The Dungeon World rulebook assumes the world will be built from session one and Bonds will be decided at that moment. Bonds are how the game describes the character's histories with one another. We choose Bonds every session - erasing ones for anyone not present and writing new ones for whoever is there. And then we discuss them. This can mean new histories occur - this is cool. The story grows not just branches but roots as well.

I had trouble thinking of magic items on the fly so I started printing out ready-mades. It cut short the mystery so I added another a new mechanic of having them marked Unidentified - with instructions on how to open them and reveal what effects the items actually had. I'm not below inventing magic items on the spot, but it's nice to have some inspiration on hand and cards-for-items help people keep track of loot. Cards for any mechanic are generally well received, if I had enough love for Dixit to own a copy I'd happily include an improv-based Deck of Many Things.

This is not a rule that I've added to the game but a method the rulebook does not describe: I always have four Fronts written up at a time. Fronts are basically lists of threats. (Thank you Vincent of Apocalypse World fame for dropping the silly name and just calling them Threats in AW2e). Large groups of players will chew over a threat slowly, and sometimes it's not needed as the party have already become a threat to themselves. I've had some fantastic games with only two players but they race through my ideas, coming to swift agreement between themselves on what to do. I still mostly improvise, but I fill out my printed Fronts sheet before a game to give me the action I need when the next story beat needs to land. There's space for four, and I feel pretty good about never going through the whole page by the end of the session. Keeping stuff in reserve lets me put it on the horizon, like they say in Apocalypse World, announce future badness.

Props

Good Lord I am well prepared with props. It's the art degree. Less prep, more props is my best advice. They overcome language barriers and cut down on table chatter.

I pack a folder containing a clipboard, folder-pockets, a full set of core playbooks, reference sheets, and blank paper. Plus all the notes the game generates. Players take their playbooks home; we can always make new ones quickly and I don't need the extra responsibility.

I also pack an iPad and a hefty pencil case holding a variety of stationery and the rest of my props:

Pens, pencils, eraser, sharpener, paperclips - always. I don't know why I RPGed so long without paperclips. Seriously people, spare paperclips for everyone, bind those wandering notes together. Sticky-notes are a must too. Good for rules reminders, henchmen stats, and temporary items. Blu-tack, putty, or whatever they call it in your country - where sticky notes fail I recommend some of this in reserve.

Cheap dice! Most players are well behaved, but give some of them your favourite designer dice and not only will they fondle them in a disturbing manner - they may also wander off with them. Not with cheap dice however. You won't be sad to lose them, and players won't be happy to steal them.

I'm not really for or against miniatures. Sometimes though, a player's character will have a feat that relies on where they are in the room. I like to just sketch that out, I have these little guys I can use to create a tiny scene. The advantage of mini-meeples is the ability to have maps that dwarf the micro-mazes of their larger, more detailed cousins. We don't have to count tiles in Dungeon World, we just jump to the part where see how the player with the thief tries their backstab.

Dungeon World asks you to track temporary +1 and -1 bonuses. I've settled on these nice coins which were designed for the RPG Fate. They're much nicer to pass around the table and are obvious enough to allow people to forget about them until the next dice roll.

Business cards for name-tents. This is a method for tracking initiative that I saw on a D&D stream. It also helps everyone remember each other's names (and gender). It's given me a stack of old name-tents that serve as a cast list for all of the heroes that passed through and defined the world.

Noteboard is great. I got referred to it by someone on an RPG Slack channel and one insta-buy later I have a whiteboard I can adjust to any table size. Diagrams ahoy. Blank paper is nice, but sometimes you just want to figure out what side of the house everyone is breaking into. Throw away notes like that are a pain in your long campaign. This thing is also better than those ubiquitous bulky green Pathfinder battle-mats (note the one I've linked to - it's never been in stock when I've looked for it, just the horrid dark green ones). And it's portable. It sacrifices some durability for that but so long as we try to play nice with it, it will serve very well.

A cast list is important. Writing down major NPCs as you create them gives you, "oh hey, it's that guy", moments that you can draw upon in the future. It ties the world together - there may be key figures important to certain areas, you don't want to forget their names!

For my iPad I've built a web-app that caches offline and serves as an SRD and random generator. I mostly use it for helping us name things. But it also helps to check out a player's weird selection of feats at the touch of a button. It keeps their playbooks on their side of the table. I've used similar apps for D&D like Lion's Den which can now be legally installed with the 5th edition SRD. This is a much better alternative to having books at the table.

I don't use a screen, I can easily cover my notes on the clipboard. Otherwise I'm unable to draw in front of the players or pass tokens and data around. It's also a bit more personal without a barrier there. The GM doesn't roll dice in Dungeon World so there's nothing else to hide.

---

Should you wish to take on the odd hobby of telling stories with randoms, now you have a guide. As much as I would suggest applying this to other games, you do have to accept that the experience you're offering is fast food. You lose a little depth when you can sunder the world every week - it's a lot of fun! But that's the price you pay.

I certainly look forward to the next traditional campaign I'll get into. However, I hope to keep running my Dungeon World stall for a long as I can. It's a very entertaining diversion and one that's given me a hell of an education in Games Mastering.

The Dogmatic Dolls' Tea Party

I think a lot of the problems one can have playing traditional table top RPGs come down to an issue of ownership. Am I playing with my toys?

Our attitudes to characters are very much like those to action figures or dolls that we intend to play with. The Games Master snatches them out of our hands every now and then to play with them. It's easy for the GM to do so because despite the tax return in front of us, or even a diorama, our doll is made of words. And we let them because in all the ways to tell our stories we will eventually turn to the referee for a ruling - there goes our doll. But how does it feel seeing someone else playing with your toy? Are they playing with it right?

My character wouldn't do that.

I'm too polite to say this myself. It's what brats that don't want to play with the group say, isn't it? But I've certainly felt it, and it was often in response the most well meaning of GMs. Ones that had prepared quite a bit. I'm guilty of this too, I'll deliver a ruling and get distracted to focus on a new player. I deny agency because of the dice or of whim, and then I don't give it back.

I recently started putting a note inside the GM screen stating, ask the players. Reminding me to give players back their toys so that they can play with them. When a player talks about their character I know they've got their action figure and they're play-walking it across the table. I brought the most toys to the game, there really is no need for me to hang on to theirs.

Unfinished Sympathies

I started this treatise as a means of dumping my exorbitant prep on the web. My gambit would be to finish a campaign and then package the lot so I could wax lyrical on its lessons. Perhaps if the DM's Guild had existed when I'd started I would have made more professional efforts.

However, the great enemy of all tabletop roleplaying defeated many of my campaigns: Scheduling. Keeping one day free a week takes it's toll. Lives change and suddenly Thursday is not so good for Korok the Barbarian anymore.

I'm currently producing more piecemeal prep as Dungeon World requires. I run sandbox campaigns and take it one episode at a time. I'm also twiddling with tools for use at the table - this is what happens when you watch people struggle to play D&D from the hardback tomes. So it seems I will never return and complete those ivory towers I created, but I may as well show you folks around the corpses that Lord Schedule slew. The files are all in Markdown format, you can use something like Dillinger, Mou or MarkdownPad to edit and print their contents. I'd convert them to PDF but it's a hassle to sort out the page breaks. I also apologise for the lack of maps, I drew them on the fly and still do.

Nex - D&D

Basically Rifts. I'd had fun with portals in one campaign and concocted this odd bounty hunter outfit that was in need of murder hobos to go on missions. A fist full of one-shots. The idea was that it would be inclusive, anyone could join in and we could also visit their world. We never did visit anyone's world. These missions are quite railroady.

Faerun - D&D

Sort of sandbox. I dropped the players off at Fireshear at the top of the map, then gave them a mission to escort someone to the bottom of the map. I chose to prep all the stuff that could occur in the area and tried to wing the rest of it. Which I was ill prepared to do at the time. I hadn't the random tables to hand that I rely on now and I didn't ask enough questions. Yet these little treks across classic D&D territory were quite fun and it was interesting using the Sword Coast as a bible - if exhausting to research.

Moles - Mouse Guard

Discovering mole society, terrorist plots, epic battles, and flight! I like epic campaigns. I especially enjoyed researching flora and fauna to have an impact on missions. I think the terrorist plot got away from me a bit, I wanted something to slow the story down but I kept using the same beat instead of spending time with local politics. A lot of this campaign's drama could be scaled down to simpler motives of individuals and feel a lot more like Mouse Guard instead of D&D.

Were I to have the fortune to run Mouse Guard again, I would run it more in a sandbox style. My lists of bullet points were valuable, but often I let my prep get the better of me instead of letting the players tell the story.

So it goes.

Wasted potential? Not quite. My agenda with prep has changed but throughout I still believed in the name of this blog. Bullets, ammunition. All these shots were fired, my aim has improved.

Dungeon World Kool-Aid

So in this post, I didn't get it. I didn't understand why I couldn't win in Dungeon World, or how one should ideally manage the table.

It wasn't until trying some other games that I thought about the dice in terms of telling a story instead of winning. I wanted to run some open table games again and Dungeon World sounded like less hassle than D&D's mountainous paper work. Perhaps I should give it another chance. I would read the rules a little more carefully this time.

One of Dungeon World's principles is be a fan of the characters. What it should say before this, (especially for those coming from D&D) is be a fan of the rules.

Dungeons and Dragons does not currently ask you to be a fan of the rules. Change it up, find the way you want to have fun with it. Pedants may take their questions to Jeremy Crawford, but you are assumed to run a game like Chris Perkins. This is fine. D&D is a deep chest filled with treasure from many kings, take what you can carry.

Dungeon World, somewhat counterintuitively, requires you to pick the whole chest up. Which is weird because actual play is so much more flexible than what D&D is capable of. Players can create rich personalities and histories and there's less reason for the Games Master to turn away their demands. When I first looked at it, I did what any other person would do seeing STR, DEX, ETC, and thought, "oh, like a simple Dungeons and Dragons. That means I can carry less."

Not so. Knowing every move in Dungeon World is essential. It's not just a series of tools, it's a description of all the angles of play. In D&D combat we have a plethora of actions we can apply to a situation, many optional. However, ignoring a basic move in Dungeon World is ignoring a part of a player's character sheet. Just look at the Defend move - never before has dumping points in Constitution added so much to the narrative.

The player bonds are especially understated. These provide points of discontent between characters in the game, describing how much they watch and influence each other's lives. The Aid or Interfere move that uses bonds provides a necessary medium for player versus player conflict. It allows players to get into each other's business and the GM is provided with the right tool to moderate it. You get to explore drama safely.

It took building my own SRD and generator to get the whole picture. I'm painting a somewhat dogmatic picture at this point but when you have mastery of any well designed system it plays out like Bruce Lee recommends below. Your worries are aside and you are free to concentrate on the story without friction from the rules.

The past year has been a long return to roleplaying for me after a decade's break. I can thank mostly D&D despite its pseudo board game-ness being very different to the way I used to play roleplaying games: A freeform, collaborative story. It took re-examining a game I'd dismissed to return to that place I'd left. Paradoxically, the flexibility I sought was not within quantity but quality.

If you try Dungeon World, or even any game, try being a fan of the rules. It can make a big difference to your enjoyment of it.

Mouse Guard

I've a fair bit to say on this. So I'll be covering the system, and also the 2nd Edition boxed set - of which I have a different opinion.

The System:

After a year of playing D&D I reached a point where I wondered if there was another way. It reminded me of when I became disenchanted with martial arts classes. Not because of the arts themselves, but because of the people who usually practised them. Every situation was seen only through one lens; rose tinted by a fine spray of someone else's blood.

Over Christmas the DM of a game I play in suggested I have an enemy brother. I speculated on what I could bring to meeting with this character. All I could think of was perhaps to teleport away after stating my disgust with them and cast a thunder spell to slam the door behind me. Afterwards I would wonder if it was wise to burn my combat resources simply to tell a story. My tools for roleplaying D&D are increasingly nothing but hammers and I'm saddened each time the DM apologises for not giving us enough nails.

I dabbled in Dungeon World but wasn't won over. The One Ring I really enjoyed, but still had enough issues with it to keep looking. I was told of Tavern Tales, but it's not finished, the reviews of it make no mention of actually playing it, and rolling 3D20 a pop for every action strikes me as a little silly. One last recommendation for a rules light game with a focus on story remained...

The Burning Wheel I'm told is an insanely crunchy roleplaying game by Luke Crane. Its rules apparently generate a deep amount of story, but it is not for the faint of heart. Mouse Guard then is Burning Wheel's little brother. It pitches itself in its text at a young reader in much the same way my dad used to lecture me about anything: with total fucking disregard of what a child is able to parse in one sitting. I sat reading the rules, thinking at first this would be simple to explain, and then every few pages or so a new wrinkle would present itself. By the end of the rulebook I felt like I was looking at the bag my own testicles sit in. This is not a beginner's game. My prep for the first adventure (and I seriously insist you prep your own adventure for your first game of this to get up to speed) was replete with notes on rules to introduce as we played. It is nothing like introducing someone to D&D - which simply consists of getting the player to roll The Roundest Die and pointing out some options for them. When one fully understands the rules for Mouse Guard there are at least eight separate steps to any skill test. Not all are relevant at any time, but you need to know all of them to run this game.

One of those steps makes this game excellent. It makes the hassle worth it.

Mouse Guard's skill tests use D6 dice pools. You roll 4+ on each die for a "success". You will need at least 3 successes for a good result. Let's say you are tracking a snake and you have measly rating of 3 dice for your Hunter skill (this is entirely normal for a starting character). You're going to need more. Other players can each give a single die to help - but they must deliver exposition about that help. What would be a single cast of a D20 in D&D before listening to the DM's rhetoric is now a debate. Everyone at the table is talking about how you are tracking this snake. How one mouse is using their Loremouse skill to describe the behaviour of snakes. How another is using their Pathfinder skill to tell the group about how far from the road they need to go to follow it. These rules exist in some minor way in other RPGs, but never with the same urgency. I know for a fact that the next time I play D&D I'm going to invoke the help rule for a skill test, and the DM is likely going to shut me down because they've never seen someone do that before.

There is of course a downside to this. You're going to need a tray to roll into. It also has a lot of book-keeping, with each roll generating an advancement pip on your character sheet. You actively level up skills as you play. I'm not sure whether this is infuriating or brilliant. The players seemed to enjoy it when it paid off though. Things get a step more tricky with the Conflict system - however, I really like the Conflict system.

It's a strange little card game to resolve combat or an abstraction of any large scale "disagreement". A sort of rock, paper, scissors affair where you define hit points for each party's goals and then have at it with skill tests to chip away at them. My favourite example to propose for Mouse Guard's conflict system is a cake baking competition. Yes, the goal can actually be to bake some really good cakes. No one has to die today - but if these cakes don't rise there will be hell to pay. I look back at D&D and I think, there's no way I could attempt a similar thing. What use is Colossus Slayer and Hunter's Mark when you're whipping a buttercream filling?

Like The One Ring RPG, Mouse Guard also has structured uptime and downtime. It breaks up into a GM turn and a Player turn. The first being the traditional gauntlet we all know and the next being downtime for the players to heal and bolster themselves. The players get more opportunities for character development by sabotaging their own rolls during the GM turn. This is a sort of inverse version of the help rule driven by your character's flaws. The two phases strike me as very appropriate in this game. Mice (if you've ever been unfortunate enough to know them as vermin) dash between hiding holes. Structured downtime makes perfect sense for their nature. It's also nice to never have to field questions about when players get to do some shopping.

So yes, disappointingly crunchy rules for what at first seems to be a kid's game. But you can lower the entry point if you're a savvy GM like me. Then work your way up to a rich, story led experience that never gets bogged down with bouts of Numberwang. If you're brave and you want more than bludgeonalia from your system, it's worth it.

If you want some extra help indoctrinating players, you can use this free character creation app I wrote. It's a web page that takes you swiftly through the multiple choice quiz at the end of the rule book and calculates your stats. It will even suffice for creating your own NPCs.

The Boxed Set:

When you hold it in your hands you think, "this is smaller than I was expecting." A comment repeated by my players when I showed it off to them. I ran my first game using the pdf from RPG Drive Thru - invaluable for the ability to Control+F for clarifications. I made my own conflict cards and supplied a hearty quantity of D6.

Luke's unboxing video shows everything you get for your dearly departed dollars:

Let's go through the value of each item as you unpack the layers:

• 4 player card packs: These are great. There's two packs too many to run a game, but spare parts are always welcome. In each pack are cards for the conflict system, cards describing the bonuses for weapons (rules I left out from our first game, but now much easier to include with these cards) and cards describing conditions - another feature I like about the game (you accrue crippling states instead of losing meaningless hit points). Top marks for these. Only marred by the prohibitive shrink wrap that led to me damaging some of the cards when trying to free them with a butter knife.
• 20 custom dice: Bean counting is a problem with most dice pool games. Slowed down by having to read each value - not here though as the pictograms are super easy to read. These replace my oodles of D6 for regular play.
• GM Screen: *Sigh*. I've yet to see a GM screen with enough relevant information on it for any RPG I've played. Mostly what one needs to know in Mouse Guard are the many steps involved for a skill test. This thing mostly lists weapons rules (covered by the player cards) and factors for skill tests that assumes an absence of basic common sense. It's also made from fairly flimsy card. It will cover your notes, but I've never needed to hide a roll from my players in this system and my notes are on an iPad facing away from the group. Some useful info here and there on it, but it's going to stay in the box.
• Update: Okay, I was a bit unfair - the factors for a Test are actually really useful for keeping the game fair. Mouse Guard brings out the munchkin in you because it wants you to do dramatic things to get those extra points. When you do factors off the top of your head you can lose control of the game - I actually keep the GM screen with my play-kit now. It has a lot of useful information for someone who's now read the rules a few times, but no I don't use it as a "screen".
• Character Sheets: These are double sided. So you can constantly flip them over during play and lean on them to smudge whatever you've written on either side. There's even a bit for drawing your mouse on that you can ruin this way. I spent seven years in art school and I'm surprised David Petersen (the artist who wrote the Mouse Guard comics) sat idle whilst this went to press. In the box they stay. I recommend printing out the single sided pdf version that's available instead.
• GM Sheets: These are really useful. Nice little headings to allow me to jot down all the roleplaying factors for each player. More double sided lunacy but the reverse has little space to write anything precious, mostly being packed with rules reminders. I wish they'd taken the same approach with the character sheets.
• Paperback Rulebook: The organisation of the rulebook is fairly sound. Like I mentioned above, it does suffer from minutiae popping up here and there when you read it thoroughly. Something you can deal with by owning the pdf and a reader with a search function. Paperback is never the best, but it has a nice box to stay in and will certainly help during a power cut. It will probably impress those people I meet who praise text on paper and clearly don't read as many books on public transport as I do.
• New Rules, New Missions: Some extra rules describing how to acquire a mount (the mice ride hares in the 2nd graphic novel), other weapons and some more example missions and pregenerated characters. A pleasant addition to the core rulebook.
• Map of the Territories: Definitely useful. Any mission starting in Lockhaven (Mouse Guard central) will need to refer to this to give the players an overview of their travel plans as well as a look at what a campaign holds in store. Yet again - I have this on iPad so in the box it stays, but a must for anyone operating a campaign without digital aids.

In summary, the dice and the cards are worth the full price alone. They make play so much easier for all involved. Your mileage may vary on the rest, but I'm quite happy with it despite some of my grievances. Definitely worth getting if you plan on running a full campaign of Mouse Guard.