I believe that public play is one of the best advertisements we have for our games. By playing in plain sight you give others a chance to see what’s going on. The mystery of Settlers of Catan or Dungeons & Dragons is revealed as people hover around the table and watch. This is true for all games including RPGs, card games and board games. Every time I play a board game at my FLGS someone walks by and asks about it.
For years the only place I ever played games was at home. D&D was just another one of my nerd hobbies. I had enough problems with social awkwardness during my teenage years that the last thing I needed was additional ridicule from my peers because I was playing D&D in public. It wasn’t until many, many years later that I realized how much there was to be gained through public play.
Throughout April Dungeon’s Master is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. The challenge is to write a new article ever day in April, excluding Sundays. That’s 26 articles over the course of the month. To make things even more interesting the title of each article will begin with a different letter of the alphabet. We bring gaming to the masses as “P” is for Public Play in today’s article.