While I was again mailen, phoning.. shortly trying to find a date to get the group together, my frustration grew and grew. I browse and lurk on this forums and by general find a lot of good advice on it, so, I thought, to post here about my problem and ask how other groups set their D&D times.
First of all, I will try to not make this too long, but a short introduction of my group. I am the DM, but wasn't the DM for the oldest characters. That group fell apart, but we loved (three of us) loved our old characters (they had quite a history by then) so much, I decided to take the DM's roll for this and play my old character along with it.
It resulted in a few loose stories, here and there. Two other players joined and some more loose stories followed.
The consequence of these loose stories was, that I didn't have a 'preset' time. We didn't agree on a date in the week or something, I simply called/mailed when I had story, we found a date on which we all could and there we went.
Then already I had troubles getting everyone together if we couldn't finish the story in one session and it required a next session. Often, there were weeks or even a month in between. The problem usually was that one or two players couldn't make it.
Three sessions ago, a fifth player joined, a D&D newbie. One session ago, a sixth.. (he only came to watch, but asked if he could join.. of course I couldn't bring myself to reject.. sigh. That's another problem.)
By the time the fifth player joined, I was writing up ideas for a 'big' story arc aka, a campaign. (I'm now looking into using AoW campaign.)
Most of my oldie players (the first four, I played another campaign with them, with the same problems) are asking for shorter periods between sessions. I must tell, I would like to do this also, but I'm not managing.
-I have no set date (usually it's in the weekend.) As like in every two weeks saturday. Would this be a more handy thing for people's schedules? I don't like D&D becoming a 'must' do thing..but it's getting rather tiresome this way and most of the players also like shorter periods in between.
-How much time is there between your sessions? How do you handle it when one (or even more) player can't make it? (I tended to not cancel sessions if one couldn't make it.. but keeping in character is proving rather difficult.)
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If you don't make a fixed schedule, you will probably not play much. I play weekly with my group on a weeknight. It sometimes changes if several players have things come up but it is pretty standard. If you set up for every other Saturday the players will be able to plan ahead to keep their schedule open, or they won't and you will have to let them leave the group until their commitments free up. If you can't get together at least every other week then you will have trouble following the storyline and keeping a vested interest in the world and characters involved with the story. Take a poll and find out what days and times work for the group and make it so. If down the road something needs to change, stay flexible but consistant. Life is hard, things come up, people get sick, etc. don't hold it against players but don't let one player weaken a group too much by not showing up 50% of the time or more.
IMO
FH
This is an example of why my DM lets everyone have 3 people at the most. One with the main group, one with a monthly group like AOW, and one for soloing. That way you can never not deny your characters. And he also knows if some people watn to do side quest that are not availiable when the whole group is together. Just about every week we all try to get together and adventure. We don't usually have a problem but sometimes we just can't adventure with certain characters when others aren't there.
~GtG
We play biweekly on Saturdays. There are six players and one DM. If two players can't make it, we play something else (Settlers of Catan, Axis & Allies or whatever) but most of the gaming group usually still gets together to let the kids play, drink some beer, etc.
If only one player can't make it, we still play and that person needs to make arrangements to have someone else play their character while they're out...assuming they want the XP.
My suggestion--set a firm "gaming" date such as every 2 weeks on Saturday from 1pm to 9pm. Set house rules for attendance and missing players. If you only want to do RPGs on that date, might I suggest a backup casual game, such as a d20 modern spy game, where even if the D&D game falls through, you can run an "episodic one session" adventure.
That way those who are regulars are rewarded with a game, and those who tend to be less reliable know that there will be a game whether they're there or not.
Another DM I know gives out "action points" for timeliness, attendance, bringing your share of munchies, helping clean up, helping looking up rules, keeping a campaign log, etc...
The characters in his game don't earn action points every level, only the player can earn them for his/her character. That encourages attendance but doesn't punish those who can't make it too much because if they're not playing, they're not spending action points either.
Just some ideas....
The trick is to find a day that most of the people can make most of the time. Generally, I think it's better to pick a night where you can play for maybe a bit less time in a single session but do it every week rather than have a big every other week game. But that's my opinion. If your other players can't make the weekly game a good percentage of the time, that's just the way it is. Maybe they can play a "special guest star" if they can show up on occasion.
Scheduling is always the most difficult part; I have months between game sessions due to college and everything. But when we can all get together, we have a lot of fun. Throwing an occasional 'D&D party' for everyone where you can play a one-shot game with pre-made characters can serve as a good compromise as well.
I used to have your exact problem as DM. To solve it, I conferred with each player about when was good gaming time for them and then chose the best conceivable date and time for everyone. I then informed all my players that if they didn't show up without telling me so beforehand that I would kill their character (even if it means starting a session with 'an anvil drops out of the sky on Bob the Fighter's head') after waiting upon their arival for 15 minutes (give or take a few depending on my mood). If they tell me so beforehand, my only question to them was 'which one of us would you like to play your PC?' PCs played by other players got combat XP, but not roleplaying XP which rewarded those who did show up.
As a result, I never again had a player just not show up (I never once had to drop an anvil on Bob's head). There were still sporadic conflicts-of-interest, but less often and I was always informed of them.
Hope that helps.
Thank you for your suggestions.
-a poll might be a good idea. I think I will try to aim for a preset day per week, as it indeed will give people the opportunity to set their schedule. Weekends tend to be taken up, however, I have two evenings I'm following art classes (in the week), another player also follows classes, and one other follows two other campaigns (though, pre-weekly, I think.)
-action points? What can the players do with them? It sounds like a good system. (Reminds me of something we tried once, but in a different context.)
I'm running the SC hardcover campaign, so it's me DMing for 6 friends of mine. We've been gaming as a group for a few years, so allow me to relate our preferences.
We game every Saturday night after I get off work. I've found that if it's longer than that between sessions, they're not likely to remember as much of what's going on and it's harder to get in character, for me as well as them. A shorter time between sessions isn't really feasible as most of us do like to pretend we have social lives.
In my game, if one person doesn't show up, game is still on. If they let me know they can't make it and someone is willing to run their character, they'll get half the XP everyone else does. That way no one thinks they can just pawn their character off on someone else and not suffer any penalties for it. If I expect someone to be there and they just don't show up, they get no XP, and if they complain, I just tell them "well, show up and it won't be a problem." That's kinda hardcore, I know, but it's the way it should be IMO. The DM is only half responsible for keeping the game running and keeping it fair to everyone involved- the players are the other half.
If more than one person doesn't show up, we don't game; at least that's true in theory, so far we've never had more than one person bail.
We have a consistent group of six right now (including DM) that meets weekly and everyone has crazy schedules that rotate in availability, so here's what I did:
I got a cheap pocket calendar, and sat down with the group to figure out dates and times for once a week about six weeeks out. I then typed it up and e-mailed it to everyone so they had the schedule. I try to pick the best possible night in the weekly schedule so that as many as possible can be there, but what we agreed is that we set ONE NIGHT, each week, and we pick the day where the MOST POSSIBLE can be there. Meaning, we may schedule for days when not everyone can make it but the game goes on. When we get close to the end of the schedule, we set another six weeks as a group.
This has worked quite well for us. There are some weeks where things come up that make us outright cancel, but it's not often (usually due to half the group getting the flu or something like that).
I know many groups try to figure out some way for their characters to still be there if the player isn't, but we don't do that. The group always splits whatever treasure they find at the end of each session, so those that worked for it are those that keep it. Also, we don't use XPs, so I don't have to worry about that. Players that miss a lot of sessions feel it at the end of the game when levels are given out.
One of the quesitons I tend to see on the boards around this type of arrangement is, "so how do you come up with a plausible explanation of why the character keeps popping in and out?" Answer: We don't. The group needs to suspend disbelief for this to work and just go with the flow. We usually make some statement about a character wandering off during the night and catching up later, or getting caught by a scout and being found in a cage later, etc.
-action points? What can the players do with them? It sounds like a good system. (Reminds me of something we tried once, but in a different context.)
I think Eberron uses them, as does d20 modern. Action points are points that players can spend to improve die rolls. Before the DM announces success or failure of a roll (skill check, attack, saving throw, etc) a player who is nervous about the roll can announce that they are going to use an action point. They then get to roll a d6 (or a d8 if they took a certain feat) and add that result to the die roll.
In d20 modern, action points are earned every level. This DM I know passes them out as carrots for his players instead.
We have a consistent group of six right now (including DM) that meets weekly and everyone has crazy schedules that rotate in availability, so here's what I did:
While this is certainly one whay of doing it, I've found that the hectic schedules of my gamers often is highly structured. If they are doing something on a Tuesday (like fencing practice) then they will be doing that every Tuesday and gaming on that day is just right out. Weekends are much the same. Sometimes you just want to unwind from the week, sometimes you've got a date with your wife, sometimes the yard and house just need work and paint - and that sometimes always falls on the weekends.
We used to game on Sundays from noon-ish until around 8pm, with a break for dinner. Unfortunately this took the entire day away from the players (and the DM) and nothing else could really get done. We flirted briefly with Saturdays, but that fell into the same category with the same end result: we gamed so infrequently that a campaign (and character developement, world continuity, etc) was out of the question.Now we game on Friday evenings from like 7 until around 10pm. The campaign is better attended and the sessions are shorter so it seems to take longer per adventure (though it's about the same time - just more metagaming in between and email'ing story arcs during the week). Gaming on Friday means that the end of the week gaming session is actually looked forward to - and it leaves the entire rest of the weekend free to do other things. From a DM's perspective, it allows me to plan the adventures on Sunday afternoon while relaxing and tweek things during the week easily, rather than trying to cram for an 8 hour session on a Saturday or Sunday.
My suggestion: have shorter gaming sessions at the end of the week. Couple it with a pot-luck dinner if you want before hand, but getting the players there to game for three hours on a day when nothing else really happens is SO much easier to do than getting them there, consistantly, for longer than that.
Celric
I see it like this:
Once every other saturday. It's ONE afternoon in FOURTEEN days, everybody can easily put this in their schedule nomatter what goes on in their lives. There's NO excuse for constantly being absent. If you or some of your players can't make the commitment of a single afternoon in two weeks then, I guess, that person doesn't REALLY want to play after all.
It's like joining a bowling league... If you don't think you can play (or don't want to play) every week; Simply don't join. It's ok to say no.
Ultradan
Our own group plays once per week, as agreed on by everyone a long while back. The day has changed because one person or another had other commitments (stuff like jobs and family come first regardless) that they knew were going to start interfering, and the time's changed (we recently decided to start two hours earlier so we could game longer and still get home earlier on average) over the years.
If one person is missing, they get PPC'd (puffy pink cloud) but aren't docked much if anything because it's always because more important things come up. We don't have folks just blow off a game for no reason, since almost all of us are long time friends. If more are missing... we just don't play, and find something to do with our families.
My suggestion: have shorter gaming sessions at the end of the week. Couple it with a pot-luck dinner if you want before hand, but getting the players there to game for three hours on a day when nothing else really happens is SO much easier to do than getting them there, consistantly, for longer than that.
I found more or less the same thing with one exception. I find that earlier in the week is actually better - people often have commitments for something like a Friday Night but almost no one has commitments for some of the days early in the week - at least not usually random commitments. So Monday through Wednesday evenings are the best days for my group.
F2K and Ultradan have hit the nails on the head.
Always get together, even if its not to play D&D, agree to gather, and not to game,
If people can't set aside once a week to play D&D, find a equally fun pastime, they're out there.
In my experience, there are two ways you can go:
1) You can set up a regular (weekly or bi-weekly) session when everyone knows that the game is on, and no-one needs to ask. If one player can't make it, you play anyway, if two or more miss, you do something else, but you only cancel a session altogether if more than half the group can't make it. That way, no-one is left wondering "is the game on this week?"
or
2) You have irregular sessions. In this instance, it's generally better to go for longer sessions as they will be less frequent. However, the key here is that everyone _must_ bring their calendar with them, and you _must_ fix up a time for the next session at the end of the current session before people start to leave.
The key thing is to tie down a time with as many people present as possible. It's much easier to do that than to try to coordinate things by email (which I've found people are poor at responding to promptly), or by telephone (where you have a series of 1-on-1 conversations).
The other thing to consider is the ability and willingness of the members of the group to commit to a time and stick to it. It's possible that one or two players are a lot more keen to play than the others, or that one player might really want to play but never be able to make the sessions due to other commitments.
It may be that you have no choice but to adjust the group formation, removing one or more players and drafting in others. If you want to play weekly but Andy can't because he's tied up with work and children then it might be time for him to drop out. It's not a value judgement, just an acceptance of reality - he has different priorities.
One extreme solution you might consider: switch to running two campaigns. The old campaign switches to a quarterly meet, with sessions taking up a full weekend day four times a year. (Try to make those sessions really special, and don't waste time with the dull book-keeping of the game. Play!) In parallel, start a new campaign for those who can commit to a regular schedule, with new characters, new stories, and new fun.