How do you keep your group together?

[kensanata]

I have six-seven players per group I'm running, and we all know that real life does intrude into our gaming life. Thus, players not showing up is ok. But we never cancel a session unless we have less than three players. And that happens very rarely. This policy does require us to turn a blind eye to the varying number of player characters, but we just laugh it off as a "editing mistakes".

We also use an online tool for voting on dates (doodle.ch).

But nothing can save a session where five out of seven cancel, of course.

 

[Boregar]

Thanks for all the replies, guys.

I will say that, although I didn't make it clear in my first post, that it wasn't just the last two sessions there had been problems. There have been other problems for a few months before this too. And I understand that everyone has stuff going on in their lives, some of which is much more important than gaming.

I was talking about this with the two guys who didn't cancel last night, and we did think that part of the problem was the size of the group. It didn't start out this big, but I just have difficulty saying no to someone when they ask to play.

So I think what I'm going to do is talk to all the guys, and find out if they are able to commit to a regular game. If some of them are not, then I think we'll have to trim the group size. I could try and retain an NPC in the group which could be 'lent out' to anyone who can't make every session, but who might want to play occasionally.

What do you think?

 

[robberbaron]

Our group has peaked at 10 members and over the last 25 years the gaming has gone from 2-3 times a week down to weekly with a couple of players only doing every other week and a couple of others having a lot of RL stuff that keeps them away from the table.
And we start later and finish earlier.

At least they generally don't cancel at the last minute.

I understand that this is all just a feature of adult life but, jeez, it can get annoying.

The only way I know to get most of them together is to run my campaign on a day when the 2 bi-weekly players can make it. I'd probably get 7 or 8 of the 9 players to turn up.
Trouble is I have been getting more and more dissatisfied with D&D3.5 (not a thread hijack, just giving my reasons) and have put my game on hiatus while I get some enthusiasm back.

[Edit] Find out what sort of game they REALLY want to play and, if you can run that, great.
If not, it may be time to run a game just for the ones who turn up.

 

[Erithtotl]

I'm going to be a little redundant here, but my observations on gaming groups, having run/played in extremely consistent groups, and very inconsistent groups over the last 5 years.

A major factor in picking your players has to be reliability and commitment. Make it clear that people are expected not to constantly miss sessions. Also, seek players who have at least somewhat flexible schedules so that if circumstances change slightly the game doesn't fall apart. Finally, if you have a player who is going through life changing events (new job, having a kid, getting married, etc), spend a few minutes getting to open up on how realistic it is they will be able to make sessions under their new circumstances.

Start your group smaller, 4 players, and then once you are convinced these guys are reliable add them through referall. Avoid adding people who have mentioned 'that might be interesting' or 'I haven't played in 20 years but I'd give it a shot', unless you don't mind them leaving.

Encourage interaction via email or a website between sessions. Not everyone will necessarily follow these emails or discussions as closely as you like, but it keeps people engaged in the game between sessions.

Avoid 'big story' plans that rely on the players. Set various plots and characters in motion in the world and then see how your PCs get drawn into those plots. The worst thing you can do is, for example, give every character part of an interlocking prophecy that will come to fruition 12 levels from now. When people quit this throws your 'master story' off. As your group progresses a good DM can drop enough vague plot hints that he can weave them together into a 'big story' later in the campaign, and the players won't even realize that he didn't actually know what that 'big story' would be at the start.

In short: Stress finding reliable, flexible players. Avoid long, complex plots that rely on one key player to make sense.