Thoughts on Open Tables & Megadungeons

As we enter the sixth and final month of my open table game of Arden Vul, I think its time to put some of the many lessons I've gained to paper. The experience has been illuminating, to say the least, but as my first foray into this style of gaming there is so much I would do differently if I could start again (which I will, in due time, just not with Arden Vul).

The game I ran was designed to follow the implicit philosophy of the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide, made infamous in OSR circles by the "BrOSR" movement. While I'm not enamored of them or their work, they do raise an important point: the original game implicitly assumes something akin to an open table megadungeon campaign with 1 day passing in game for every day that passes out of game. In the background of the megadungeon campaign is a simulated world in which characters are expected to live full and meaningful lives, with rules and guidelines being provided in AD&D for everything from harlotry to class mobility. This was my goal - a fully fleshed out starting town, a massive megadungeon, a detailed and always-on simulation played just as much through play-by-post as at the table, and a (mostly) by the book adherence to First Edition AD&D as written (okay, OSRIC as written).

The first and most important lesson I learned is to make sure the adventure/setting/megadungeon you're running is suitable for an open table. Arden Vul was most definitely not a good choice. The dungeon's interconnectivity, a fantastic selling point and beautifully executed feature, works against the concept of an open table because it assumes the hints found by players in session one will be remembered by them in session fifty. If the same players aren't at sessions one and fifty, clues will pile up without anyone able to put them together. 

Secondly, run an easily accessible system. First Edition AD&D was, again, not this. It is my favorite edition - a combination of the focus on world-simulation (despite the DMG's own insistence it isn't doing that) and the singular creative vision bleeding through every page makes it, for me, a jewel of a game. But for an open table in the 21st century where anyone, no matter how far removed from gaming culture or history, might show up unannounced and want to play, it isn't ideal. It's not bad for this purpose and it's a damn sight better than 5e or Pahtfinder, but compared to Basic D&D or Shadowdark it makes the experience of learning by playing an often unwieldy process. A good example is explaining to a cleric how their bonus spells work - not a particularly intuitive mechanic, which few players will have a reference for, and which I myself misinterpreted for several months. 

Thirdly, provide your players with some sense of direction. This both alleviates their decision paralysis (when you can go anywhere in a 2,200 room dungeon, it's hard to go anywhere specific) and makes it easier for the DM to prep ahead of time. Providing a list of options and trying to make sure the players who are signed up pick something before game day was what I tried to do, though this typically only worked the night before the game. That is less than helpful. 

Fourth, systematize downtime activities. The beauty of having an open world with 1-to-1 timekeeping is that players can do so much; the difficulty is that they might not know what to do, or how. Again, decision paralysis - or even worse, indifference - is a very real threat. There need to be specific downtime activities that take a certain amount of time and grant certain mechanical benefits/penalties. This list doesn't need to be exclusive but it should be fleshed out enough ahead of time that players have some reason and method for engaging with the wider world. Having a system for how downtime activites can be accomplished will also make it much easier to adjudicate as a DM.

Fifthly, don't be afraid to give your players some limits. At the start of the campaign I prided myself on fully embodying the impartial moderator, who restricts none of the players' decisions and merely referees the consequences. Now, I wish I had been more comfortable saying things like "no, your character can't pretend to be a different class," or "no, you can't hide this loot from the party." 

Really, these points can all probably be boiled down to two main ideas: run something that works well for an open table, and beware of truly total freedom detracting from the game experience. An open table can easily begin to buckle under its own weight and without proper care to ensure it remains fun, it will without a doubt start to become a drag.