When Kenny Ho, a freelance film stylist by day, started thinking about starting a side job, he immediately turned to his favorite hobby: playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Now he and three friends, Shaan Jivan, 28, Sam Lawes, 37, and Josh Saco, 49, all work on their collective side hustle at night. RPG taverns – a pub in South London built specifically for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) players.
In case you’re not familiar, D&D is a fantasy-based role-playing game. It is known as a game that can go on for hours, if not longer. If you have a Stranger things fan, it’s the game that inspires many of the show’s alien events, and the kids play it in the Hellfire Club.
Kenny went to gaming bars to play D&D, where he made friends with Shaan, Josh and Sam. They all felt that other gaming bars didn’t quite meet the needs of playing D&D, considering how immersive the game is.
So Kenny pitched the idea of running a specialty bar together, and they decided they could offer something different to the London player community – a group of people they had now immersed themselves in.
“I just picked up the phone and everyone jumped on it,” Kenny tells Metro.co.uk. “We all love D&D, and we all wanted something that wasn’t just about our day jobs. We have very different superpowers: I have the creative vision, Shaan is brilliant with finance and people, Sam is a marketing expert and Josh is the hospitality expert. So it felt like a no-brainer: the stars kind of aligned.”
A special bar for D&D means it is set to pay for the game as intended. In some generic game bars, space may be limited or the time slots may not be long enough to play the full game. Instead, RPG Taverns offer slots for experienced players and slots for beginners who are new to the D&D universe and eager to learn. In a regular bar, support for newbies on how to play wouldn’t necessarily be available.
All four friends invested equally. ‘We used our savings to get it off the ground: rent, inventory, furnishing the bar. It wasn’t millions, but it was enough to make it happen and engage all of us in the right way. The good news is that the company started washing its face quite quickly, thanks to a strong marketing campaign and word of mouth,” Kenny adds.
RPG Taverns has only been around for 18 months, but is already earning £15-35k per month. The community played a big part in that early success, and Shaan says the foursome had a lot of help getting started. For example, a friend in the community works as a set designer so donated some materials to help them decorate the venue. Such helping hands gave the place a DIY feel and got D&D players involved from the start.
Shaan adds that they have paid back those who helped in the beginning and are keen to ensure that everyone involved in the business is taken care of.
“The best part is that everyone brings different skills, so we don’t get in each other’s way,” says Kenny. ‘We also saw what works – and what doesn’t – in other places, so we could build something with a clear shared vision from day one.
“The biggest challenge we face is that our small business is growing quite quickly, and we are trying to manage the pace of growth and ensure that each of us, our employees and game masters, take care of ourselves and each other to avoid burnout.”
Last week Kenny was decorating the venue for Halloween, making full use of his stylistic skills. He says that having two jobs can be stressful at times, especially as the bar’s popularity grows (slots often sell out), but that it is worth it and that he has more ambitions for the future.
“RPG Taverns was really a test to see how well this would work and we are very pleased with the great success it has been. We would like to see it as a network of ‘Taverns’ across the UK,” Shaan says of his hopes for the company. “I see this model of D&D bars becoming as prevalent as board game cafes.”
For now, the bar remains an afterthought for all four owners; none of them have quit their day jobs yet.
The fact that the bar owners are all enthusiastic about the game they offer and play makes all the difference – and that’s what keeps D&D fans coming back.
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