The Agony of No-shows

[Wombat]

Live happens.

My current campaign is set up around the notion that some of the players may not be able to make it from week to week. The PCs have a homebase and they adventure out from there with whoever happens to be there that time (and most of the players have multiple PCs). Additionally, 8 out of 10 adventures only last a single session (although there are spillover implications from week to week, of course).

Since we are all 33+, we had to make allowances for family, wives/girlfriends, and job hiccups. This method worked out well for us.

 

[Eternalknight]

I was constantly having two players no-show without letting me know, and when they did show, they'd show half an hour late. They also had lame excuses, like "We were watching TV" or "I was playing a game on the X-Box". I figured they weren't too interested anyway so I booted them.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

We recently killed a very very good and very very interesting game because I could only get 3 people to try it (+1 NPC) and when one person was gone it just got hard to keep things on track. Eventually it was to the point that family obligations and whatnot kept SOMEBODY out of the game very single week ... and 1/3 of those was ME missing, which definately killed the game.

Airships! We will miss thee.

--fje

 

[Waldorf]

First no-show without a phone call gets a warning/strong suggestion to call if player can't make it. Second one results in player being thrown out of the game.

 

[lgburton]

if i'm a player, i usually just let the DM decide what he/she wants to do about the situation - though i do get very annoyed with a no-call no-show approach to gaming.

as a DM, if they NCNS me, i get really pissed off. really really pissed off. like to the point where i havn't gamed a campaign in several years because i just havn't found enough reliable players whom i can stand. (keywords: whom i can stand!)

i'm actually prepping to run a campaign right now, and a friend of mine was very offended when i asked if he could commit to a once a week game.

such is life

 

[Space monkey]

And what about if it's the DM. Game day is tomorow and there's two PC's and one DM. The DM has yet to confirm that he will be there.

 

[Ace]

So, it's game day, you've gotten yourself all riled up in preparation for the game, and then, oh, three out of five players don't show up. Only one of them calls to say he won't be making it.

How do YOU deal with this sort of let-down? Because it's made me grumpy.

3 times no show, no good excuse (i.e an emergency) and no call means its time to get some players with better manners

When players do this they are usually not interested in the game and don't have the guts to tel you

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

I've never experienced anyone calling at the last minute to cancle or not showing up...

Gaming for our group is an Event. We plan pretty far ahead in our group forum here at EN World/Gmail threads.

 

[IronWolf]

And what about if it's the DM. Game day is tomorow and there's two PC's and one DM. The DM has yet to confirm that he will be there.

A friend and I had a DM last year that was hardly reliable. I think we only played three sessions over a three or four month period of time. The games were always at his house so we were at leat notified, but usually on the day of. It quickly became frustrating and the group just disentigrated with little real word it was disentigrating.

Now we have a fun, reliable group - so it worked out to our advantage.

 

[farscapesg1]

Well, our current DM is a little too relaxed on this for my taste. We have some players that have a habit of not showing up and not calling to let anyone know. If we don't have 4 players (not counting the DM) we don't game for the session. The last time this happened we ended up going out and buying LOTR Risk and killed several hours playing that, but we were all really ticked at the one person that didn't show. Hopefully he will get the boot since he didn't show again today, again after saying he was going to make it and then not calling us. In the past, the DM has been pretty easy on it, and it usually took three times in a row before he got rid of them. Of course, this means if they miss twice, then show up, the count as reset. That is just too easy to abuse and kill the fun for the rest of the group.