NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5565853" data-attributes="member: 22424">In a "game club" environment, I would very strongly push for a policy that "all new campaigns start at less than full load". That is, if the DM (and game) can handle 6 players, the campaign is limited to 5 players at the outset.This guarantees that if someone new joins, there will always be a spot for them in at least some game, and ideally they'll have a choice of games to play.I base this on an experience I had on both occasions I joined a game group - although there were loads of games going, they were all full, so the organisers had real trouble finding me a spot at any table, never mind a game I actually wanted to play.(The clubs also had the problem that every time a given DM would kick off a campaign, the same group of players would immediately jump in - and sometimes they would be pre-registered by the DM. That made the club very clique-y. But that's another rant...)I once thought as you did. Then I watched my game group slowly fall apart over many years.While you're in school/university (or perhaps the army?), it's easy - you have a bunch of friends all with a similar schedule and demands, so you can find a time when they're all available. This state of affairs can go on quite happily for several years.But in time, you hit the constraints of the real world. Al decides to move away for work. Bob gets married and starts a family. Chris and Dave have mutually-exclusive work schedules.And suddenly, instead of having seven people able to turn up most of the time, you have four - few enough that even one cancellation means the game is off for everyone... and most sessions there's someone who has to cancel.(Even worse - when we got to that situation, we found that we couldn't recruit. There was so much history and so many in-jokes, and habits, and references that any new player automatically felt like an outsider. They never stuck around. It sucked, but there was nothing we could do.)Trust me - you're much better maintaining at least some loose ties to the wider network of gamers - that way, you can maybe pick up some people to replace those you've lost, and when people do have to leave your group, they can probably find another game that suits.</blockquote>

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