Darkest Dungeon has some lessons to teach a player for a tabletop old-school game. Chronologically it's the reverse - Darkest Dungeon rewards you for playing like you memorized Gary Gygax's advice in the back of the AD&D Players Handbook.
Here is are some "Darkest Dungeon" tips and how they apply to the tabletop.
Have a Plan
You can't just go willy-nilly after an adventure. Unless circumstances force you to just go and see, have a plan for what you want to do. Even if you have to just go and scout around and hope . . . make that the plan and go with reconnaissance in mind. Know what "success" looks like for the plan, what is a sign of failure, and have a secondary objective in case the primary one is out of reach. And if things aren't going well . . . see "Managing Risk" and "One More Room," below.
"Go in and find enough loot" is a hope, not a plan. It's a definition of success not a plan of action.
Bring the right people.
You need a mission that suits your party and a party that suits your mission.
In DD this means choosing the right four and the taking them against the foes and into the areas that best suit them. On the tabletop, this means only going to places you can handle with the group you have. If you need to purge a temple of evil, have your cleric. If you need to fight a large force of fodder types, bring your multiple-attacking fighters. If you need to fight one big monster, make sure you've got at least one guy who does high damage. Etc.
Bring the Right Stuff
You don't have unlimited money and encumbrance (item slots in DD, weight in most tabletop games), so you can't bring enough of everything. You need to decide what you absolutely need to succeed and bring that, and some "this would be nice" stuff if you can afford it with money and space. But it also means don't bring more than you need - the "everyone has a 10' pole" line from Gygax in the PHB is apt, here. Extras are nice, but overages are still overages. Don't over-pack and don't under-pack.
Food and light sources, though - you probably can't overdo those in most cases. Aim to end with extras, just in case things take longer than you thought.
Don't Get Distracted
DD is full of curios. Most of them are a bad idea to touch, at least some of the time. Best bet? Don't touch them. Ignore them and move on unless they're part of the mission or clearly, unmistakeably treasure. Even then, have a care. Tabletop . . . the same. If you have a plan of action that doesn't involve some distraction, avoid the distraction. Get in, get your plan executed, and get out safely.
Manage Risk
You need to be bold and take risks to get anywhere in games of these sorts. But don't be bold when there isn't a reward, and don't take risks you don't need. But cuation won't get you anywhere. If you're being totally cautious and careful you won't get anywhere. You'll need to risk injury or death, put resources on the line, or flat-out just expend permanently resources you can't replace in the service of getting to your goal.
Risk has to be managed - when the risk comes with a certain reward, you may need to take it. If you're always being very careful, eventually, you'll be unable to complete your missions and run out of resources. That goes for DD and on the tabletop.
Don't go "one more room."
If the mission is successful, unless you have absolute certainty you have easy profit and no or minimal loss, just end it there. Get out. Don't go another room, another fight, another hallway. Just leave. Anything less than certainty is risk, and risk isn't your friend. Sometimes "one more room" pays off. But in general, it's not going to.
This is especially true if you're either just being a completist. And for those moments when you're saying, "Well, that door probably leads to an empty room, which would be great, so let's just open it and make sure it does." You know, those moment when you don't want it to be a monster, a trick, a trap, a puzzle, or mystery. So just leave it alone. Make it part of the next plan, for next time, and come prepared. But don't risk victory trying to make it a more complete victory. Or risk a near-TPK becoming an actual TPK because you decided just to check out that one thing on the way home.
Actually if this whole post has one takeaway for you, let it be this one. Don't go "one more room." It's far more often a mistake than a good decision.
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