Tell me about your experiences running games at a FLGS

[loverdrive]

Another nice thing to do is to shift all the character personal quest (if you even have them) tracking and progression onto the players -- there's 50+ players in our campaign with 20 of them playing more than once a week, so it's just not feasible for the GMs to keep track of them all.

The way I accomplished it:

1. At the end of a session, player asks the GM about advancing their personal goal (finding her ex-husband to murder him to death; studying ancient rituals; winning the heart of cute twinky elf town mage; etc; etc)
2. GM tells them what they'll need to find (strand of ex-husbands hair; a daemon's name; a pretty flower)
3. Before any of the next sessions, player can ask to incorporate that thing into the game on first come-first serve principle (GM can refuse if it's just not viable, but it's pretty rare IME)

It also serves as a nice incentive for the players to arrive on time, which is always good.

 

[MGibster]

I know a lot of people here have done similar things. What can you tell me about those experiences, including things you wish you knew before you started.

My FLGS holds a game day each quarter, charging $10 for a seat at the game. The player gets to keep $5 of that in store credit and their other $5 goes to the GM as their store credit. I might rack up $20-25 if I run a game, though it's not like the credit is what motivates me. It's noisy. There's plenty of space, but there are 5+ games being run, sometimes people playing Warhammer, and all those people talking adds up, so be prepared to repeat yourself and raise your voice.

Honestly, that's probably the best lesson I e learned from the experience: don't stress about the rules and just keep things moving. I'd say it's improved me as a GM enormously, tbh, and my players definitely enjoy and appreciate the flexibility.

I'll echo this. Games I've run in the last two years includes Fallout, Call of Cthulhu, and Deadlands. Most of the players have very limited experience with whatever game I'm running, and I explain to them I'm running a simplified version of the rules to help keep things easy. I also tend to keep the scenario relatively simple and straight forward so we don't spend a lot of time on red herrings.

I'll say that running games for complete strangers at my FLGS has been a lot of fun. I've met a lot of decent people and I had a pretty good time at all but two events (the Deadlands game I ran and the GURPS game I was a player at).

 

[jdrakeh]

I always love gaming (both playing and running) at The Yellow King in Colorado Springs and have never had any problems there. I even head down there a few times a month for a "hobby hangout" with friends (we build models, paint minis, work on writing, etc). The owner is a great guy, there's a good selection of food and drink, and if business is slow, we (my friends, myself, and the owner) will often break out a board game (we've played everything from Red Dragon Inn to Twilight Imperium). The noise level is never unbearable and outside interruptions are kept to a minimum. Over the past two years, I've played in a Planescape game, a Vampire 5e game, and a Werewolf 5e game there. All great.

 

[Jahydin]

I mostly run games with my close friends, but on occasion acquaintances- never total strangers.

For those that have ran public games for a long time, has anything about your DM style or player expectations changed over the years? Does it actually match the kind of game D&D 2024 is? I've always been dying to know...