So literally ever since I started GMing the Pathfinder game I'm doing with some friends. It was the first actual Pathfinder game for both them and me. Only three of them (not counting me in) Played DnD 3rd edition before and two never played any PnP RPGs at all before, but that's beside the point.
So far we played an astounding six sessions since January, although we were planning on playing on a weekly basis. Two weeks were cancelled because I was out of the country (trhose were the only two sessions missed because of me). Other than that sessions were cancelled because too many players had to bail out for whatever reason, some more understandable than others. And in the six sessions that we actually managed to establish, not a single time had all six players been present. One player is currently on a prolonged therapy and won't be back for another six weeks from now, so I took his character out of the game for the time being. So he doesn't even get counted here anymore, we've been playing two sessions since he went and one we played with three players and the other with four (out of five players left), this and last week the game got cancelled as a whole again because two players forgot we were going to play and made other appointments and the third player (who also had been missing in the last two sessions), i haven't heard a single sign of life from ever since I came back from my two weeks out of country, for next week I already know at least one player is going to miss again and... ARGH!
Yeah so there's my problem, I know its normal and has to be coped with, that sometimes players are missing out but I can't seem to get a single session established in which the whole group is actually at the table.
So, do any of you know this problem, got any advice or anything?
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Are you running an Adventure Path, or is RPGA, or modules? I'd suggest sticking with modules, or a short-length homebrew game, so that you won't be relying so much on everyone showing up each game. You could even have extra PCs prepared in case the people who do show up are all playing sub-optimal classes (like, if everyone brought rogues to face a module full of golems).
Running my own world and campaign. I like to express my own ideas and I think campaign modules never portray the races the wqay I want them.
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I've definitely been there. As a college student, it's hard for me to find people willing to play regularly, what with school, tests, etc. Unfortunately, I can't say I've come up with a fantastic solution...
However, I agree with Zeugma's advice to have extra PCs around. In fact, I might recommend looking at some of the recent threads on troupe-style play. With spotty player attendance, I hate it when missing a certain PC just throws everything. But if everyone has sort of a pool of characters, the people who do come can build a group that's able to play regardless of who shows up. It seems to me that this kind of concept might help the players function better even if there isn't perfect continuity.
I hope you find a solution somewhere. Constant player absence is frustrating.
I've definitely been there. As a college student, it's hard for me to find people willing to play regularly, what with school, tests, etc. Unfortunately, I can't say I've come up with a fantastic solution...
However, I agree with Zeugma's advice to have extra PCs around. In fact, I might recommend looking at some of the recent threads on troupe-style play. With spotty player attendance, I hate it when missing a certain PC just throws everything. But if everyone has sort of a pool of characters, the people who do come can build a group that's able to play regardless of who shows up. It seems to me that this kind of concept might help the players function better even if there isn't perfect continuity.
I hope you find a solution somewhere. Constant player absence is frustrating.
The problem with the troop style is that we end sessions in the middle of a quest more often than not, and its hard to replace characters right there. And makes establishing a plot much harder than it already is with main characters that just dont do exactly what you want them to do.
I feel your pain TS.
In my case, I'm about 10 years older than my college-aged players. While my own schedule is very weird (3rd shift Mon thru Thurs nights), it is never-the-less consistent. Unfortunately, the lives of folks in their early 20s is anything BUT consistent.
One player has early-morning classes during the week and (due to a lack of assertiveness) is still beholden to his parents' whims. Two others are servers at a local restaurant and Sat/Sun are what keeps their rent paid. As such, even though I'm free from Friday morning until Monday afternoon, it's a Herculean challenge to get the group together.
Basically what it boils down to is that there is no such thing as "free time". Instead, people have to make time for the things that are important to them.
In our case, the two servers will steel themselves for a late night after working all day and needing to be at work again in the morning. The student will (after much encouragement from the rest of us) stand up to his folks and head out. I've even taken off from work, here and there, if there's a particularly good window-of-opportunity for everyone else.
Honestly, the will to MAKE time for your friends and to be flexible is the only thing that will see your problem thru. If others don't see the game as a high enough priority to make time for it then there's really no amount of juggling you can do that will make a difference.
I'll admit that there's been a few times I've thought about disbanding my group (which consists of our group of friends from the local renaissance festival) in favor of trying to assemble a new group. I'm not quite ready to follow-thru with that just yet, but it may be a viable option in your case.
Good luck to you...
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The problem with the troop style is that we end sessions in the middle of a quest more often than not, and its hard to replace characters right there. And makes establishing a plot much harder than it already is with main characters that just dont do exactly what you want them to do.
Emphasis mine.
Sounds like there's a bit of (attempted) railroading going on IMO. I'm kind of neutral when it comes to railroading...I personally do not mind a bit of railroading--I like to see the story unfold (especially in homebrews) and don't mind being "pushed" in the right direction. That being said not everyone is like this. In fact, I might even be inclined to say that a good majority of players are opposed to "railroading," preferring instead to develop the story themselves. It sounds like there may be a disconnect between your DMing style and your players playing style (which could be leading to the poor attendance).Just talk to your players, find out if it's the game that's not drawing their attention enough to encourage their steady attendance or if it's actually RL stuff keeping them back.
If you're really bothered with the situation, and if you think there is nothing more you can do, do as I did a few months back and disband your group.
Try to find new people to play with, it will make yourself happier, believe me.
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The problem with the troop style is that we end sessions in the middle of a quest more often than not, and its hard to replace characters right there. And makes establishing a plot much harder than it already is with main characters that just dont do exactly what you want them to do.I've definitely been there. As a college student, it's hard for me to find people willing to play regularly, what with school, tests, etc. Unfortunately, I can't say I've come up with a fantastic solution...
However, I agree with Zeugma's advice to have extra PCs around. In fact, I might recommend looking at some of the recent threads on troupe-style play. With spotty player attendance, I hate it when missing a certain PC just throws everything. But if everyone has sort of a pool of characters, the people who do come can build a group that's able to play regardless of who shows up. It seems to me that this kind of concept might help the players function better even if there isn't perfect continuity.
I hope you find a solution somewhere. Constant player absence is frustrating.
True, but establishing a plot is almost impossible when there are only 5 main characters and all 5 are never there. If there are, say, 12 main characters, and any of them could conceivably be there, then it might flow better in-game that the party is constantly changing, since you would always need to make concessions for characters that just have to fade into the background regardless. Of course, ending mid-quest is just hard to deal with, period.
Obviously I don't know your players, but I know with mine (all of whom were brand-new to role-playing), not everybody wanted to commit to a serious, on-going story like I did. They had fun playing, but it simply wasn't a high priority to them to keep it up regularly. Eventually I needed to seriously lower my expectations and shift the kind of story I was trying to play. You may want to talk to your friends about the situation, if you haven't tried already. Perhaps it's not holding their attention, as mentioned above, or maybe it just isn't what they are looking for in an RPG. Or maybe it is just impossible for them to attend a tightly woven story-driven game like you are running. You might need to switch to a slightly different style, or, like Greyblade says, if your interests really aren't compatible, this might not be the kind of group you want to deal with.
Just talk to your players, find out if it's the game that's not drawing their attention enough to encourage their steady attendance or if it's actually RL stuff keeping them back.
THIS
Talk to your players. People tend to be pretty reasonable when you're up front and honest. If life just doesn't allow for regular attendance, run one-off adventures when you can get everyone together. If it's your DMing style, maybe you need to tone it down. You do make it sound like your ego is getting in the way.
I have a group with several players that have lots of RL stuff that keeps them from games, and most everyone else has 1 weekend a month with something going on (which is usually a different weekend for everyone, making it difficult to find times when everyone can come). What I did was just make a calendar and have everyone fill in the dates they're available. I then pick dates where at least half the players can show up.
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I have a group with several players that have lots of RL stuff that keeps them from games, and most everyone else has 1 weekend a month with something going on (which is usually a different weekend for everyone, making it difficult to find times when everyone can come). What I did was just make a calendar and have everyone fill in the dates they're available. I then pick dates where at least half the players can show up.
This is a good idea.... also, look into using either the boards here or another site that allows for campaign journals. (there are enough of them, you can even use a blogging site like livejournal) and do a write-up after each session. This way, you have comprehensive quick catch-up of what is happening for anyone who missed the game, and those who can't spell can get the correct spelling of major plot points. (this is also a good way to throw in a little extra foreshadowing). Invite your players to respond or write their own journals, even offer bonus XP based on how accurate and in-character they are.
You also might consider using a virtual tabletop like Fantasy Grounds. People can find it easier to make time to get to the computer in their own home for a few hours. It also widens the group of people you can call on to play in your game. I wouldn't be playing at all these days if not for Fantasy Grounds, and my group still gets together once or twice a year for a longer face-to-face session.
So far we played an astounding six sessions since January, although we were planning on playing on a weekly basis. Two weeks were cancelled because I was out of the country (trhose were the only two sessions missed because of me). Other than that sessions were cancelled because too many players had to bail out for whatever reason, some more understandable than others. And in the six sessions that we actually managed to establish, not a single time had all six players been present. One player is currently on a prolonged therapy and won't be back for another six weeks from now, so I took his character out of the game for the time being. So he doesn't even get counted here anymore,
I'm not sure this would work for you or not but I was having this difficulty at one point a couple of years ago. What was finally done was we made a steady game night. In our case its Wednesday. We then picked something we were all interested in (in our case Magic the Gathering) we would do if not enough people showed up to play D&D.
The thing I found was that this actually improved attendance quite a bit. Thing is if your schedule is flexible then you find that your not really just negotiating with your players - your actually negotiating with everyone else that has demands on their time.
In our case the problem was mostly spouses. He (and usually it was a he in our case) wanted to go out and game with his friends while she wanted to him to fix the cupboards he'd been neglecting to do for two weeks.
Thought about like this it was easy to have Tuesday (or Thursday or whatever) not be good for him. Make day X game night and you change the message - its no longer a negotiation. Now instead Wednesday is game night and if you can't make it well we are gaming anyway.
This means that the other people in this person's life eventually come to recognize that he is busy that night - they make other plans. It also means that there is no real opportunity for ones spouse to negotiate. She knows full well that Wednesday is game night - she can put her foot down and say "you can't attend, life's a b@!*~, suck it up" but thats a whole different kettle of fish to vetoing 'I'm going out, as I sometimes do, to hang with my buds',
The problem with the troop style is that we end sessions in the middle of a quest more often than not, and its hard to replace characters right there. And makes establishing a plot much harder than it already is with main characters that just dont do exactly what you want them to do.Emphasis mine.
Sounds like there's a bit of (attempted) railroading going on IMO. I'm kind of neutral when it comes to railroading...I personally do not mind a bit of railroading--I like to see the story unfold (especially in homebrews) and don't mind being "pushed" in the right direction. That being said not everyone is like this. In fact, I might even be inclined to say that a good majority of players are opposed to "railroading," preferring instead to develop the story themselves. It sounds like there may be a disconnect between your DMing style and your players playing style (which could be leading to the poor attendance).Just talk to your players, find out if it's the game that's not drawing their attention enough to encourage their steady attendance or if it's actually RL stuff keeping them back.
I acutally don't do railroading, although I sometimes set some tracks i let if flow and let the players decide what they want to do.
It's not the lack of interest that keeps them away. It's a mix of simply forgetting there is going to be a game that nicht and having more important appointments.
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Threeshades, not sure how old you are your group is. But I have found as we get older. People get married have kids, jobs etc that finding time to meet becomes harder and harder. HS was the golden years, early twenties seemed bad then cause no more all night games every week and play several times a week. It dropped to once a week. Now my group is lucky to average once every other week, with some times where we don't play at all for a month or two.
Threeshades, it is the way it goes. As Dark Mistress pointed out life gets complicated. I rock a three player group almost weekly but...we bail on two or three sessions every six or seven weeks. My Geeks are 25-39 in age if that's any help.
What ever you do, do not take it personally. Things just get in the way. Don't get me wrong, I get bummed when we don't play, I start jonesing for the DM screen and itching to roll some dice.
One thing that has helped our games is a "restart" if we miss three weeks or more. You don't even have to tell your players about it if you dont want to. I'll retool the adventure and start'em out all over again or move on with something different. (the arguement could be made that as we get older our memory starts to slip...)This helps a lot, I use recurring monsters/NPCs to keep flow and continuity but adventures or modules that take three decent sessions to get through seem to be best.
Hope that helps.
So far we played an astounding six sessions since January, although we were planning on playing on a weekly basis. Two weeks were cancelled because I was out of the country (trhose were the only two sessions missed because of me). Other than that sessions were cancelled because too many players had to bail out for whatever reason, some more understandable than others. And in the six sessions that we actually managed to establish, not a single time had all six players been present. One player is currently on a prolonged therapy and won't be back for another six weeks from now, so I took his character out of the game for the time being. So he doesn't even get counted here anymore,I'm not sure this would work for you or not but I was having this difficulty at one point a couple of years ago. What was finally done was we made a steady game night. In our case its Wednesday. We then picked something we were all interested in (in our case Magic the Gathering) we would do if not enough people showed up to play D&D.
The thing I found was that this actually improved attendance quite a bit. Thing is if your schedule is flexible then you find that your not really just negotiating with your players - your actually negotiating with everyone else that has demands on their time.
In our case the problem was mostly spouses. He (and usually it was a he in our case) wanted to go out and game with his friends while she wanted to him to fix the cupboards he'd been neglecting to do for two weeks.
Thought about like this it was easy to have Tuesday (or Thursday or whatever) not be good for him. Make day X game night and you change the message - its no longer a negotiation. Now instead Wednesday is game night and if you can't make it well we are gaming anyway.
This means that the other people in this person's life eventually come to recognize that he is busy that night - they make other plans. It also means that there is no real opportunity for ones spouse to negotiate. She...
This worked for us too - we're all in our forties or late thirties now. Wives, children, proper jobs were all getting in the way of a regular game. They've now all come to think of our gaming night as "the boys night" and incorporated it into the various social schedules. By turning up anyway, even if someone was absent, it now becomes rarer that someone can't show.
I have a group with several players that have lots of RL stuff that keeps them from games, and most everyone else has 1 weekend a month with something going on (which is usually a different weekend for everyone, making it difficult to find times when everyone can come). What I did was just make a calendar and have everyone fill in the dates they're available. I then pick dates where at least half the players can show up.
I started planning sessions months in advance... yes: months. About 2-3.
W usually play 1/month so whenever a session gets cancelled it's a pretty nasty thing. Planning in advance actually WORKS (if all attendants note it in their agenda that is). PLUS you can anticipate when someone won't be there...
In our case the problem was mostly spouses. He (and usually it was a he in our case) wanted to go out and game with his friends while she wanted to him to fix the cupboards he'd been neglecting to do for two weeks.
Thought about like this it was easy to have Tuesday (or Thursday or whatever) not be good for him. Make day X game night and you change the message - its no longer a negotiation. Now instead Wednesday is game night and if you can't make it well we are gaming anyway.
This means that the other people in this person's life eventually come to recognize that he is busy that night - they make other plans. It also means that there is no real opportunity for ones spouse to negotiate. She...
I've actually just gotten through this problem myself. It sounds harsh, but you NEED to make a definite "Game Night" and stick with it. My wife always has something else for me to do if I'm not presently busy, but if I've got definite, regular plans, then she knows I'm not available at that time. When we would just game "here and there" on different nights, it got impossible to go out without catching an ear full of nagging. When we decided on a strict night and time, she chilled out a lot.
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I'm not sure this would work for you or not but I was having this difficulty at one point a couple of years ago. What was finally done was we made a steady game night. In our case its Wednesday. We then picked something we were all interested in (in our case Magic the Gathering) we would do if not enough people showed up to play D&D.
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In our case the problem was mostly spouses. He (and usually it was a he in our case) wanted to go out and game with his friends while she wanted to him to fix the cupboards he'd been neglecting to do for two weeks.
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+1 as others have stated. Though we change every semester or so. By setting a specific night and playing 3 Dragon Ante or painting with a video until everyone can show we know have a regular meeting. On the flip side it does mean you have until Thursday to get those cabinets finished and your mate has every reason for holding you back if you couch potatoed all week!
In my case that night also became the one my mate works late (since she works with students she bravely tries to work around their schedule at least a little :) And she goes out regularly with her folks or friends for her night. It became a win win.
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There is a ton of good comment above.
One of the things I do is that I establish a "mutually beneficial" game night, and I run the game. If no one shows, then it's me and the cat. I hate playing the cat, he fudges his rolls somehow and gets nachos all over my miniatures. Regardless, I have had to shift to what I call 'open table'. In other words, we don't even bother to pretend there is a reason why X isn't here this week, but Y is. I just do a synopsis and then we just play. This isn't the gamestyle of choice for DMs that like to run deep stories, but I've taken this approach to be able to game on a regular basis and hopefully get to a more regular-attendance game.
Or playing more against the cat.
PS: The cat plays a (4E) Shifter Predator Druid, and likes to spend most of his time in his Wild Shape. I really wish he'd learn to role-play, all his characters are so one-dimensional.
What changed everything for my group was MapTool and Skype.
It gets a whole lot easier to coordinate when people don't have to drive to whoever's house, then drive back late at night and get up in the morning to work.
Once you hit 25 and up it gets harder every year to keep a consistent game up :-)
True :-(
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I've definitely been there. As a college student, it's hard for me to find people willing to play regularly, what with school, tests, etc. Unfortunately, I can't say I've come up with a fantastic solution...
However, I agree with Zeugma's advice to have extra PCs around. In fact, I might recommend looking at some of the recent threads on troupe-style play. With spotty player attendance, I hate it when missing a certain PC just throws everything. But if everyone has sort of a pool of characters, the people who do come can build a group that's able to play regardless of who shows up. It seems to me that this kind of concept might help the players function better even if there isn't perfect continuity.
I hope you find a solution somewhere. Constant player absence is frustrating.
As a college student, you have trouble???
Really? When I was in college and later university, I played 3-4 times a week without having problems getting players.
Imagine how it is when you "grow up" and have jobs, kids, wifes/husbands, etc. Then it becomes a nightmare to run regular games...
Yes, all of my university friends are far more concerned with getting homework done, studying for tests, going on dates, or working (because college students do have jobs before they "grow up."). By contrast, my regular game consisted of several families, and we had no trouble playing every week. I'm sure it is difficult if your family members don't want to be involved in your hobby. But perhaps work/people can create conflicts at any stage of life?
Our solution to not knowing who will show up is an abbreviated "episode of the week" kind of style. We game on alternating Saturdays but almost every night is a stand alone adventure. The party is kind of like a rapid response team for the local area, and they are sent out on various missions kind of like a super hero group. It makes intricate long term stories very challenging, but it works for our group of players who enjoy getting together for anything as much as playing with our sundry adult schedules.
It's not for everyone, but it works for us.
Good luck!