How I Started a Cairn Open Table

A Friend in Need by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge

First of all, if you’re reading this and you’re not familiar with either of these things, why are you reading this? No, seriously, email me and tell me. Just in case that is you though, Cairn is a rules light fantasy tabletop role playing game (TTRPG). An open table is kind of like a pickup game of basketball. Different players might show up each week, and it’s open to anyone each week. Cairn is a really good fit for this style of table because the rules are so easy to pickup and can be explained on the fly. Characters can be easily and quickly generated at the start of the session or even in the middle of a session.

Lurking on online forums and groups, will reveal that there are a lot of people who would like to play more TTRPGs than they do. Finding a group of players who can commit to meeting regularly is very difficult especially for adults with jobs. Often people just don’t have that many friends or have friends who are not into TTRPGs. Players might fall through as well which could throw things off. This is why having an open table, is the perfect solution. It’s especially good for people who don’t already have a group of friends who want to play TTRPGs because it’s very low committment for strangers to show up to a game and see if they like it. Unlike a one-shot which is strictly just one session, if those players do like it they can keep coming back to each session.

Now that you know why you’d want to do this let’s jump into how you can do this. The three main things I used, were BFF, Discord, and a Discord bot called Apollo. BFF is an offshoot of the dating app Bumble, but it is just for people looking to make friends. It stands for “Bumble For Friends”. Discord, is great for managing a community, but really any place you can regularly share event details works. Lastly, I used Apollo, the Discord bot to schedule and plan events. I chose this bot because it allowed me to set a limit on how many people could attend an event. I prefer to only GM for up to five players. By showing that there are only five spots open each session, it easily communicates this to people without you needing to say it each time, or awkwardly turn several people down. Of course you can use any apps you like. These are just what I used.

First I found people on the app BFF who might be interested in playing a TTRPG and matched with them. If they were interested, then I invited them to my steadily growing Discord server. After we had a handful of people who were interested, I scheduled our first session. People signed up for it, and we played. We’ve been playing weekly ever since. We’re going on our seventh session pretty soon. Since it’s an open table, you will be interacting with essentially strangers, it’s good to have some basic ground rules. I posted our group’s groundrules in our servers rule section, and then I briefly mention them at the beginning of our sessions. The rules are simple and essentially boil down to don’t be a bigot and don’t be a dick (basically the same thing).

We have about 20 people in our server which might seem like a lot, but it’s to ensure that each week there are players who are ready to play. A lot of people say they are interested, but might end up being busy or unable to make it to your session for whatever reason. I also wanted to point out we meet in a public place because we’re all strangers. After you’ve done several sessions, and have gotten to know the players it’s normal to transition and do a couple of sessions at someone’s house, but not necessary. We meet at a boardgame store, but you could meet at a bar, library, coffee shop, or even a park honestly.

Eventually, if your group continues to grow and flourish, you might even be able to start a second or third table being run by another one of your players. This would create a very healthy community of players and GMs, alike. It is similar to how TTRPGs were played in their inception as well.