D&D 5E What to do about flakes?!

[iserith]

The way I deal with scheduling and whatnot is have a large pool of players (8 in my upcoming campaign) and only 5 seats with a 4 PC minimum. As long as the DM can play, there's a game. I set a date and people work out among themselves who will take the seats that week. If someone can't make it, that's no big deal because others will take the spot.

 

[Trudy]

I understand this is frustrating, but I do encourage you to have some empathy for your players. There were a few weeks this year where my depression was so bad that by Friday (when our in-person 2e game was running), I could barely manage the drive home from work, let alone the drive to the game store where we played and 3-4 hours of social interaction. I didn't want to cancel or disappoint my friends, so every week, I told myself: "This will be different, I'm going to go, no matter how bad I feel!", but sometimes The Depression was so great that it led to some last-minute cancellations. (I'm doing much better now and rarely miss a session.)

If you're going to continue without them and you are concerned about how to make the story work with the same characters absent all the time, you may want to send those players an email and brainstorm ideas as to why their character is frequently absent. There are plenty of fantasy stories with "flaky" party members who disappear and show up on a whim because trouble has just shown up, or because they have obligations outside of the party. Coming up with an in-character reason for why they're not always with the party might alleviate some of your frustration with wanting to tell a story with half the party absent, while still giving them the opportunity to participate/contribute to that story. It's also a good opportunity to draw them back into the game; I know after missing a few game sessions earlier this year, I wasn't sure how I'd feel going back. Feeling a little more connected to what was going on would have helped.

It's harder to do this with last-minute cancellations, but if you do decide you don't want to proceed without those characters, one of our DMs put together a side-story when one of players in our tight-knit Thursday game couldn't make it for two weeks. She drew up characters for all of us, and we all played the villains of our current campaign twenty years in the past -- when they encountered the magic item that set them on their current path. I can tell you right now -- after playing my villain for the past two weeks, I'm enormously attached to him, and man, will it be tough to kill him when/if it comes to that. It also gives the DM the opportunity to tell more of the story to the players without infodumping on them later on. It's also been really, really fun -- and since we still have more to go, we've opted to continue playing this side-story whenever someone's out, and since the DM has everything drawn together already, there won't be a problem if there's a last-minute cancellation.

Hopefully this helps -- best of luck!

 

[Mistwell]

We have 5 players, and will continue with any game that three players show up to. Whoever is missing, one of the the players who showed up plays their character as well as their own. It's worked fine for us for years now.

For us, friendships are way more important than the game. we're not going to kick someone from the game because the difficulties of life get in the way sometimes.

 

[Morrus]

For us, friendships are way more important than the game. we're not going to kick someone from the game because the difficulties of life get in the way sometimes.

Same here. A couple of people rarely make it, but we're always pleased to see them.

We generally run with a quorum of 4, and cancel with fewer. We have 7 people at the moment (plus the two who rarely make it), so it rarely gets cancelled (although that hasn't always been the case).

When somebody isn't there, their character magically fades into the background and develops plot immunity.

 

[schnee]

For us, friendships are way more important than the game. we're not going to kick someone from the game because the difficulties of life get in the way sometimes.

I think it depends, though. If they make a habit of bailing at the last minute, and don't have very good excuses, that's when you tell them they're letting your other friends down and should come back to the game when they can make their commitments.

I have to get the feeling they are treating us with respect, and are in good faith.

So, being sick, or last minute stuff with kids? A pass. A habit of 'uh, something came up' with no real explanation? They get a talking to.

 

[Oofta]

We just created an NPC for the cleric since that was the only character that the group really relied on. If the cleric's player didn't show up, someone would run the NPC as a secondary character. At one point we also created a front line tank NPC but never ended up using them.

It got to the point where the PCs started a running joke that this was really some fantasy version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because the guy playing the cleric was the only one who missed games on a regular basis. That and the NPC and PC clerics were never in the same room. Truly mysterious. The other option was to just load the group up on healing potions that expired after the end of the session, but we found that it was easier on the DM to just include the NPC.

But as long as we had 3+ people to play (we normally have 6 players) we were good to go, and whoever was DMing just adjusted for the missing person.

This is easier if you have a more episodic game. The other option is one used by my group many years ago where we just said that there was a curse on our team and certain members would just turn into a stuffed rabbit or similar toy whenever their players couldn't be there. Getting rid of the "curse" eventually became a major plot point.

 

[Lichemaster]

I pour milk on my flakes, frosted that is

 

[Bradley Hindman]

My solution is to run two games concurrently. The primary campaign is a homebrew game that we only play when everyone is present. This game is the one that I spend my time planning, incorporating character backstories, and developing well braided plotlines. The secondary campaign is played when someone is missing. This "In Absentia" campaign is always purchased (currently we are using Curse of Strahd) and therefore requires little to no preparation time from me.

 

[Quickleaf]

With our group, we try to play weekly, so that everyone is immersed in the game, and we can look forward to kicking butt after a tough work/school week.

everyone in the group understands and agreed to make this a sort of committment, but we all understand that emergencies happen, and things come up, so its cool if people have to cancel from time to time. But this should not be often, we agreed on that.

i find the hardest part about being the DM is the logistical nightmare that comes with getting people to show up sometimes. Now, i must admit, my players do show up regularly and they enjoy the game, when we play. But sometimes, it just bugs me that players cancel their attendence at the last minute!! This literally ruins it for me and other players who could have planned to do something else instead of waiting around and planning to host this game. Other players feel the same way.

Now we have still went on with a player missing, no big deal. But sometimes, two players cancel at the last minute, and its horrendous for evryone else! Or, they tell me all week long that they are going to show up only to cancel the day before!

This is by far the suckiest part of D&D! Especially when that player is an integral part of the storyline, which i try to do using thier backgrounds and such as to make thier characters "come alive" as an important part of the game, instead of some murderous hobo.

When i have to tell the other players that the game is cancelled because a few people cant come at the last moment, i just know it bugs them. It hate it myself. This is because ive set aside time out of my busy week to host a great game at my place. when it gets cancelled (especially at the last moment), im often left with nothing to do and stuck at home because i could have joined other friends doing something cool or gone out with my family or just not be hyping all the other players up for something thats not going to happen.

how do you guys deal with flakes?

D&D is such a fun game, but i swear, i just hate it when players cancel at the last moment! it makes me want to stop playing sometimes!

Maybe tell it to your flakey players and talk about it?

I mean, I get that many of us want to tell these sweeping epics with a recurring cast, but a lot of the original D&D games were much more drop-in-and-play from what I understand. Maybe your group could use a different game/campaign model to reflect everyone's schedules?

 

[tardigrade]

For the campaign I DM, we aim to play once a fortnight and it goes ahead as long as four players can make it - we explicitly discussed this and agreed on a minimum turnout in session zero. Missing players' characters either fade into the background or explicitly go on downtime activities depending where we're up to. I play in a very casual one which aims for once a month but we wait until everyone can make it, but that really slows things down, and in the other we aim for once a fortnight but the DM runs sidequests if we don't have the full party. That seems like more prep work though and in mine we don't really have sidequests; it's pretty sandbox-y.