![]() ![]() Part of that cost can be personal: Lots of people talk about how they can’t play RPGs any more because they just don’t have the time to commit to them. (Just like a baseball team that practices together regularly is going to be more skilled in their collective play than a pick-up team that plays for a single afternoon.)īut that mode of play also comes at a cost. I’ve also got a D&D campaign that’s been running as a dedicated table since 2007 and, once again, the commitment of time and focus unlocks creative options that simply would not be possible otherwise. Last year, for example, I ran the Eternal Lies campaign for Trail of Cthulhu: We played for 95 hours split across 22 sessions, and that amount of time allowed us to explore a deep and interesting scenario while creating well-rounded characters who changed and grew over time. Dropping out or missing frequent sessions is usually considered bad form, since losing a player (and, therefore, their character) can be incredibly disruptive to the tightly woven continuity of the modern campaign.Īnd that level of commitment can result in truly amazing things. When you agree to join a campaign like this, you’re making a minimum commitment of 80 hours or more spread out over months or years of your life. And it’s the way that most people play RPGs today: They have a regular group of 5 or 6 people who plan to all get together on a regular or semi-regular basis for 10 or 20 or more 4-8 hour sessions. When it comes to roleplaying games, the equivalent to the amateur baseball league is what I’ve come to call a dedicated table. But lots of people will find they like throwing the ball around, and some of those people will eventually find themselves agreeing to spend 300 hours every year participating in amateur baseball leagues. Some people, of course, will never pick that ball up again. There’s no commitment, so people will be more open to trying it (and inviting others to do it with them). And if you get bored, you can put the ball down and you do something else. Most people start playing baseball when somebody says, “Hey, wanna play catch?” And playing catch is easy. ![]() Of course, that’s not how people start playing baseball. If that was the only way people could start playing baseball, it’s pretty easy to see that you wouldn’t have a lot of baseball players. You’d have to be really, really curious about baseball in order to take that guy up on his offer, right? And if you actually made that commitment, then the quality of that baseball team would probably be really important and you’d need to be really convinced that someone was going to make a great baseball player before you’d invite them to join you, right? Plus, it’s such a huge commitment of your time that it would be incredibly difficult for you to commit to two different baseball teams, so at a certain point you’d just play baseball with the guys on your team and you’d stop inviting other people to play with you because there would be no room for them. “Well, we practice 3 hours every Wednesday evening and we’ll have a game every Saturday afternoon for the next 7 months.” Imagine that you had never heard of baseball before and someone said, “Hey, wanna join a baseball team?” Some of the material here will be familiar to those who have read the previous essay, but I think you’ll find the new insights of the Open Table Manifesto worth your time. So I’d like to take the opportunity to share some of the lessons I’ve learned. Now, however, I’ve spent the last five years reaping the benefits of various open tables (and also seeing some open tables crash and burn). At the time this was a relatively new discovery for me, and Opening Your Game Table was a pretty casual exultation of the possibilities I saw in an open table. ![]() It talked about how we can play our favorite games more, share them with more people, and create more of the memorable experiences we love by changing the way we approach roleplaying games. Back in 2011 I wrote an essay titled Opening Your Game Table. ![]()
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