DungeonmasterCal said:
I've not gamed in months....first the game nights fritter and wither away due to real life, then I'm in a major car accident and am out of commission for weeks. Now, I have the first free weekend where I'm able to game, and BAM! No one can make it. Three have to work, one has to go out of town, the other has to host a wine tasting party (against his will, but his wife hath spoken
).
Real life is the game killer. We've gamed so sporadically in the last year it's not even funny, and the Great Plan the rest of the guys had for a weekly short game has died after only about 5 sessions.
Gaming... a fond and distant memory............................................................
I can emphasize. I had the same problem a couple of times - each time wasn't just a single evening, but an extended period of time.
Unlike yours, we didn't have the real life problem, but rather the players-don't-give-a-damn problem. The first time, almost all games were cancelled - usually 30 minutes before it was supposed to begin, and often an hour after - since people just didn't show up, without a good reason and without saying anything. After 3 months or so I just quit the gaming group, and shortly thereafter it collapsed, anyway.
The second time, it was similar: We had a player problem, anyway, so every missing player would cause the session to be cancelled. And it happened almost every time, just because one or two people. Like with the first time, it wasn't a single campaign, but several games with roughly the same gaming group. I finally quit almost every campaign in it, and since then, the other games run smoothly.
(edit)
Oh, and there was another group, where we had a lot of cancelled sessions, too (luckily, these were cancelled in advance, not on the very day). The problem here was that we had just enough people in the party - 3 players plus DM - so if one player coulnd't make it, the game would be cancelled. Some people used that to their advantage, saying they had other things to do. It wasn't stuff that could easily be taken care of another day (very easily), but guy in question just figured that he won't miss anything, since there was no game without him, and so was careless about it. He also rejected everyone that wanted to join the group.
We solved it by finally overriding his decision and taking on several other people, and saying that when one couldn't make it, and didn't say so well in advance (usually, it's stuff you know in advance, at least if it's important), we would play without him. Suddenly stuff got much less important, and could be taken care of on other days.
