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We use Warhorn to schedule our games, and lately we've had an increased (and still increasing) number of just plain no-shows. No notice, don't even bother to delete their signup (so someone else could use the slot) - just not showing up at game times.
Yup. This has ALWAYS been an issue, especially with on-line games (its not clear if your games are on-line or in person).
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I'll try to answer but the why (what you asked) and how to deal with it (what might be more useful).
Why:
Often its newer people to the community; they may still have some anxiety about attending a new event and just bail. And then feel too embarrassed to reach out.
People double book by accident and forget to deal with it; either because they don't realized there's a waiting list and its polite to cancel or because they forgot, or they just don't event think about it.
A real life emergency happens.
More for on-line games than in-person: people book the same scenario multiple times at different events/lodges, maybe trying to find a game that runs sooner, and forget to drop their original one/backup one they kept in case something fell through.
A person just forgets about it. Especially if they don't have a semi-regular schedule and only plays sporadically. There are times when you have to book so-far ahead, that if you only play once a month, they time between booking and playing can get quite long.
There's probably more reasons but those are the main ones I've seen.
How to deal with it?
1) If you have any form of broadcast announcements (emails, discord announcement channels, blogs, etc) that your community uses. Just include a reminder about the sign-up etiquette expected. Include this on a join event Warhorn signup page.
2) Try to reach out to last-minute no shows, avoid blaming, avoid too much criticizing, just remind them of the expectation. Let them know its costing other people the chance to play and/or possibly causes the table to fail to fire for everyone. If its online, and these are random drive-by (no-show) attendees, maybe reach out to some of the online VOs to document persistent issues who don't really have a home lodge to build cultural norms.
3) If you're having trouble with tables failing to fire as a result of no-shows, see if you can have any "standby" players. Either a perennial online person, or someone who lives close to the venue who can just come over last-minute to make sure the table fires, to avoid alienating the people who did show up.
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The problem I'm complaining about is for games we open to anyone, anywhere (we're in Australia, we regularly have Americans and Europeans playing in our games). I understand all the possible reasons you've outlined, but many of these are experienced players (since we're playing level 9-12 scenarios some of the time) not newbies. I understand that life happens - but how difficult is it to drop us a line? Also - delete your signup!
Enough whining. Still love the games :)
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Often it is selfishness. There's a whole lot of psychology at play here, but the biggest factor is that there is no personal cost to the person signing up if they don't log in. If you sign up for a local game and don't show up you're going to get banned (if you do it more than once without a valid reason). Online it's just a bunch of strangers and you can always just move on to the next group. Why not sign up and hold a spot in case your other plans fall through?
I don't think actual numbers are written down anywhere but many years ago a Dragon*Con staffer told me that when they started requiring people to BUY tickets for games instead of just signing up, the rate of no-shows dropped dramatically. Even though the price was a pittance compared to the cost of travel/entry it was simply "having some skin in the game" that motivated people to show up. Though he didn't say this part, it likely caused people to be much more discriminating in what they signed up for in the first place since they had to shell out the money while signing up.
Some space-limited activity groups will occasionally use an escrow model to ensure attendance. You pay to sign up and get your money back when you arrive at the event. Haven't heard of any RPGs doing that, and there might be legal issues trying that with OP.
Contributor
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It kind of depends on the community, as well. On our Meetup group we have relatively few no-shows, but we mark people as no-show if they fail to show up, and will move them to a waitlist if they are chronic about it so that other people can have the seat.
So... most of our folks show up to what they have RSVPed for, because there is a community expectation.
Hmm
Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
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For my online games, I've begun requiring that players import their character to my Foundry table at least 24 hours before game time. People who take the effort to sign on to the table and import/build their character there are much more likely to be serious about playing.
If it passes 24 hours I'll send a discord message to anyone who doesn't have a character on my table yet. If they don't reply I drop them and get a waitlisted player in immediately and message them, asking them to import their character. Tends to weed out the people who aren't serious about showing up.
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People sign up for multiple games waitlisting then forget they got into a waitlisted game and forget to un sign up.
I've forgotten about games I've signed up for, gotten the dates mixed up. I'm usually here when someone pokes me anyway.
I am 50% and 90% certain someone has gotten me to run a game by saying i was scheduled now....
We use Warhorn to schedule our games, and lately we've had an increased (and still increasing) number of just plain no-shows. No notice, don't even bother to delete their signup (so someone else could use the slot) - just not showing up at game times.
Yeah, I just did a in person con and decided to ditch the last Sunday but a day before I emailed the GM and gave them an apology notification as the scheduling software did not have a way to cancel my RSVP.
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I don't want to say anything unnecessarily negative, so I'll try to choose my words very carefully. For context, I write adventures for org play, but I've not played any in over a year. I also used to GM for my local lodge, but have stepped back from doing so. The reason for both of these is the same.
Frankly, and as politely as I can put it, there are a lot of hurdles towards people, particularly new people, to playing org play games. Many of the systems that have been incorporated into org play which facilitate ease of play for more experienced players, are a series of whole new challenges that they first need to learn, grasp and master before they can simply sit down and play the game they want to play.
To refer back to what I said earlier, I've been unable to play for over a year because I have difficulty navigating and booking slots on Warhorn, and have thus far been utterly confused about how to create a character on Foundry, and have frankly been avoiding in-person games because I don't know how to update my PF2e character to their post-relaunch version equivalent. Those are my hurdles. When I was GMing, the usual hurdles I was informed about from new players I ran games for were substantially more, which ultimately led up to players signing up for games and not turning up.
I can't say for certain that this is the reason why it happens for you, but it's worth bearing in mind the possibility.
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I have been saying this for years but 4-hour games are also too darn long for the majority of adults. Many scenarios rightfully take 4.5-5 hours, or sometimes 6. GMs and more often players also slow down games and/or lack respect for their peers' time.
An adult who has to get up early for work, has kids — or even other hobbies — will have a difficult time finding a free 4 hours.
Add in a commute to the FLGS, and you're looking at 5-6 hours.
Lots of things can come up that prevent one from following through on a commitment like this. Such as just being tired from everyday responsibilities.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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There are a number of reasons why people no show, unfortunately, limiting and controlling signups, requesting RSPVs or that the characters are imported etc. are all options you can use to limit this happening, but they do tend to take up a fair bit of time to administer.
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It can be a lot, for sure, creating a Warhorn account, RPG Chronicles, signing up for new Discord servers and navigating those, not to mention Forge accounts and Foundry characters, character builders, character importers. And that's just Foundry, there are other VTTs as well. It definitely seems overwhelming at first.
I would say find a GM (or an experienced player) willing to help you out. I've helped many players with those steps and the nice thing is that for the most part, once you do it once, you're done (and/or it makes more sense for the next time). It definitely seems like a lot but I can get you from not even having a Paizo ID to being Foundry-ready in an hour, tops.
It definitely is a leap but there are folks out there willing to help.
This is true, and I agree. But it also relies on GMs playing a large number of roles, staying up to speed with multiple sites and systems, and having the time to dedicate to helping the players. And while that is fantastic when a GM can and does do that, it's also a rather big workload and could definitely lead to burnout and exhaustion. I'm all for streamlining processes as much as possible to help take the burden off players and GMs both - I think that would really help. Ease of Pick-up-and-play rocks, after all.