Game logistics

[Jack99]

- Games run on Sunday afternoons. Sunday from noon until about 5 pm is the one block of time that most adults consistently have as an open / unplanned block of time.
- E-mail is sent out on Thursday asking who is available.
- If I get 3 people to commit to the game by Saturday evening, we play. If not, we skip the game.
- Players who were present last week but are absent this week are simply missing. No explanation is ever given or expected for why the character was not active.
- Players level up in lockstep.
- Experience is determined by the players present for the game.

This has mostly worked for me, though lately it has broken down due to otherwise uncontrollable factors.

What about the rest of you.
For the DMs
How often do you try to run a game?
What will prompt you to cancel the game?

END COMMUNICATION

We are a group of friends who have been playing together since '89. If everyone is available for a given campaign, I have 7 players. For this one, 6 are available, since one is not participating. 2 small kids and an wife made him choose whether it was D&D or soccer. He went with soccer.

ATM 2 of my players are on pause, due to RL work-related stress.

So I actually only have 4 regular players, the lowest in years. (/cry)

We play every Tuesday night, from 6-11. My players are dedicated and have set the time aside to play. Thus, there is no "signing up" or similar. People are expected to be able to play. Three things have made me cancel a game.

1) If I am so sick I can't play (happens once every 4-5 years or so). Such cancellation will always go out via SMS the same day.

2) If we have less than 3 players (happens a couple of times a year due to sickness, and a couple due to people going on vacation/conventions). Unless due to vacation, this cancellation goes out the same day as well, since people rarely know they will be sick in advance.

3) If I am away on convention or similar work-related stuff (happens 2-3 times a year). This is announced months in advance. If I am only away a couple of days, we might try to reschedule to another day the same week, but usually its a whole week, so we just skip said week.

Exp doesn't exist in my campaigns, so people just level up when I tell them. Usually this happens between sessions, so that we do not waste time at the table looking for feats and powers.

People who are absent's characters are just not there, and reappear magically when they return.

 

[Nagol]

I'm only involved with one gaming group at the moment. I get involved with others occasionally, but they don't generally last and leisure time is more scarce now. For the past 20+ years, I been in a mostly stable group of seven people. The current game is D&D 3.5; I'm DMing and it has been running since 2004.

The group gets together every other week on Sunday afternoons from approximately 13:00 to 17:00.

If less than 50% of the group cancels, then the game goes on. If the DM cancels, someone else runs a one-shot or continues a fill-in adventure. The group gets together at least 90% of the time.

Characters without a player present are still in play and are run collaboratively by the DM and other players. An absent player may give some vague instructions regarding expected actions. If the absence is expected to be protracted, the character will bow out at the first return to civilisation.

Experience is awarded as per the game rules.

People are absent for a variety of reasons. Specific personal events (vacation overlap, child/spouse's birthday, visits from remote family, illness) are the most common. Commonly celebrated holidays like Christmas are probably the biggest culprit of a session cancellation.

 

[Gilladian]

We game at my house, so I have pretty good control over when and how sessions happen. We play on Sunday afternoons, fairly short sessions from 3-6 pm. This is because both my husband and I work full time, and I have elderly parents I must keep an eye on. Also, my players seem to like the shorter sessions, and cancel less often for other activities.

We have 5 players plus myself, usually the DM. If one person can't be there, we play anyway. If two can't make it, we sometimes get together anyway and hang out/chat/play wii or whatever. We're all old friends and enjoy each other's company a lot.

The only things that cause us to miss games are my work schedule (I pull about 1 sunday in 4 to work) and sickness or holidays. We probably miss about 1 in 6 weeks because of those combined factors.

I also play in an online game, which meets on Saturday nights for about 4 hours. We seem to miss more sessions of that, usually because somebody's internet connection isn't good. We skip that if 2 people can't get online.

 

[vagabundo]

- Games run on Sunday evenings. Sunday from seven until about 9:30 is the one block of time that most adults consistently have as an open / unplanned block of time.
- E-mail is sent out around Thursday/Friday asking who is available.
- If I get 3 people to commit to the game by Saturday evening, we play. If not, we skip the game. (the three (Money=£) man rule we call it, due to a typo)
- Missing Player's characters are run by other players
- Players level up in lockstep - mostly.
- Experience is determined by the characters present for the game.


What about the rest of you.
For the DMs
How often do you try to run a game?
What will prompt you to cancel the game?

Fixed for my personal - but very similar - circumstances.

I usually only cancel if the £-man rule is violated. Or, on rare occasions, where I dont want to game - if I'm feeling burned out or want to do something with the wife.

BTW, DND has been rocking for me recently so we've had a good run of games with great attendance. My Players are eradicating Clan Grimmerzhûl in their fortress in Thunderspire, in my heavily modded H2 campaign.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I am performing playtesting, so the average number of players at any given game session is from 6 to 8 players.

- Games run on Thursday evening, usually from 5-8; sometimes starting as late as 6, and running to as late as 10.
- Players who were present last week but are absent this week have their characters played by someone designated by the player, or are unavailable. I prefer unavailable if the situation allows it to be so. Characters played by other players earn only 1/2 XP, as though they were henchmen.
- PCs level when they level.
- Experience is determined by using XP values for monsters and other challenges, divided by the characters present.
- The game is only cancelled if fewer than four people can make it, I have a problem attending (I am in Wisconsin this week, for example), in the case of severe weather or illness, or by mutual agreement.

 

[JediSoth]

When I had regular game going, I would play every other Saturday evening. I tried to Yahoo Groups to organize the games. To wit, I would

• Put up a poll to determine where we'd get food up to a week in advance
• Send out a reminder e-mail about the game no less than 4 days prior to the game

Some players would RSVP, some wouldn't. Most would eventually vote on the food poll.

On the occasions when only one player would vote in the poll, I would assume that to mean that he/she was the only person planning to attend the game that week, and I would cancel the game. If two or more people voted, then I would plan to have the game, though if attendance looked like it was going to be sufficiently low, I would make sure to have some board games handy.

For two years, I had trouble getting the same 4-6 people to show up each session, so most of my games were a little light on the continuity. It also made it VERY difficult to have plots that took any given character's background into account. One time in particular, we started following up on a character's background and then he didn't show up for two sessions while the rest of the party followed a plot they didn't have a vested interest in aside from helping their absent friend resolve a personal matter.

I set-up in-game reasons for character absences, which worked in most cases. In my Ptolus game, for example, absent characters (providing the session didn't end in the middle of a dungeon crawl or combat) were assumed to be off working their day jobs, doing research or something like that.

I plan on keeping the same guidelines for future games

• gaming every other Saturday evening (I will go to every Saturday if I can get away with it)
• Start time 6:00 with a recommendation to show up at 5:30 to get the BSing out of the way
• A reminder to be sent out by the Tuesday morning prior to the game with expectations of RSVP by everyone
• A suggestion that if they need to bail on the game, or are running late, they let me know before the game starts (people not showing up, and not notifying me was a problem in the past)
• When a player is absent, if their character is in media res at the beginning of the session, the PC will be NPCed for that session. If the previous session ended at an actual good stopping point, the PC will just be absent.

The only reasons I would cancel a game are family emergencies (like when my wife died...I canceled that week's game) or illness. If I didn't have time to properly prep, then I would let everyone know that we would play board games or if they insisted, I could improvise a totally sucktastic session. I made every effort to schedule events around my gaming schedule.

I won't use Yahoo Groups in the future, though. The site was slow, poorly organized and didn't have many features I want. Obsidian Portal seems to be much better for Campaign tracking, though I haven't explored it enough to know if it can serve as a message board for my group as well.

 

[Crothian]

We run weekly games. If 3 or more players can't be there or if it is a critical point in an adventure and we need more PCs we will cancel the game. We will cancel if the DM can't make it. Before we cancel we try to move it to a night that works for more people.

 

[rexartur]

My wife and I have hosted a weekly game of some sort or other for the last 10 years.
Currently it's Pathfinder, and we start at 10am every Saturday and play till everyone wants to stop (we used to start at 12 and go all night, but the earlier start leaves room to get in lots of gaming and still be able to make the call to go out after if we want- sometimes we stop at )
When weather permits we play outside in a screen house.
During each session I ask who can make the next session. As long as we have about 4 players, we game. Those not at a session are "Mark the Red'd" (see The Gamers). We don;t worry too much about what those characters are doing.
Occasionally we'll cancel a game due to not enough players or commitments on our part and we tend to take several weeks off during our Ren Faire season.
XP is earned by players present. Players level up when they earn enough XP so it's possible for there to be a difference of 1 or 2 levels depending on attendance.

We're adding a Wednesday evening Pathfinder Society game, but that will be just one session of 4-5 hours in length.

I'm in the process of setting up an every other Friday Basic D&D (RC version) game.

My wife and I play any number of games whenever we feel like it, including solo RPG, board and miniatures.
Our 2 kids join in when they get tired of the X-Box, WoW, and friends (so less and less as they get older - but it's all good).

All in all, between my goal of wanting to play every game out there and wanting to run every adventure using the system for which it was written, I'm .00006123% of my way through the early 70's.

 

[MortonStromgal]

For the DMs
How often do you try to run a game?
What will prompt you to cancel the game?

Once a week for 3+ hrs, we cancel if more than 1/2 the players can't make it. I try to run it serial enough to do this but running anything pre-written is problematic as they expect alot more time and everyone there.

For experence I like to take a nod to White-Wolf and ask my players the following at the end of each session

What did you or your character learn?
How well did you roleplay your character?
Did you do anything Heroic?
Did you include any other players?
Is there anything you would like to add?

Then award XP based on that + bonuses for a neat roleplay scene or saving the party from doom with something out of the box.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I am actually a bit surprised how many other people fell into the Sunday Game habit. It looks like the majority of you have much more reliable / consistent games then I have managed to have.

With my current group of players, the typical reasons for cancelling are as follows:

Player A: Heavy crunch at work (and for those of you who bought Assassins Creed 2, I must say that I hope that the game was worth my player not being able to game for about 5 months), also a Girlfriend / Fiance who lived in Toronto that he would visit some weekends.

Player B: Work related crunch. Vacations. Occasionally other plans. Usually reliable.
Player C: Work related crunch. Vacations. Occasionally other plans. Mostly reliable.
Player D: A 50 / 50 split of work or other plans. Usually Reliable.
Player E: Casual player. Likes the game but will bail if more interesting plan is available.

I stick to the 3 player minimum because I do not like running other players PC's for them. The other reason is that I typically plan my game relative to 4 players showing up. Three players will usually handle an encounter designed for 4 players. But for only 2 players, it screws too much up in terms of the players knowing what the hell is going on from one game to the next.

END COMMUNICATION