Gaming group dynamics

[Quickbeam]

Our group currently consists of seven people, four of whom show up for almost every session, and three others who miss a gathering from time to time. We're all friends to one degree or another outside of the game, but the summer months always seem to pose a serious problem for our campaign. Each of us has the usual array of year-round RL obligations and responsibilities, but summertime adds in various athletic leagues and outdoor activities to the equation.

The problem: During the nice weather months, several of the players in our group begin missing sessions more frequently, almost to the point where they become a special guest gamer . It becomes more common for them to miss sessions than to attend, and the entire campaign suffers.

Our current solution: From late spring through autumn we only play once every other week, and usually in the evening on a weeknight to accomodate camping trips, golf outings, sport leagues, etc. If a player still cannot be present, one of the other players runs the missing person's PC.

Lately, however, it's begun to appear that one or two of the players is going to habitually be absent from our sessions, perhaps gaming once every two months or so. Any suggestions on how to handle this problem? On the one hand we don't want to boot a friend from the group because he/she has schedule conflicts. On the other hand we don't want to consistently make someone pull double duty or have the DM step in and control the missing player's character as an NPC. I have no problem shrinking the group down to six or seven players, but I think we'd all want it to be done gracefully if that's the best solution. We've also considered leaving these characters in nearby towns/cities to act as liaisons and resources when the players are absent. Whaddya think?

 

[Reprisal]

Don't treat them the same as regular players...

Though I don't believe you should do anything rash like kick them out, I would simply think of them as not being part of the group for the purposes of running the campaign. As you said, these people are very much "guest players."

Things like this annoy me to no end, but not so much that I'm not willing to DM for them...

Personally, you should meet with these people and tell them that it seems that they're not attending enough sessions to be part of the primary adventuring group and that necessity will most likely dictate that the stragglers be cut loose from the party. As such, they'll probably have to play some sort of pre-generated character with certain guidelines taken down for the player.

"Can't make many sessions? All right, well, you'll have to give up playing a single character for my sake. You've no problems with that? Great! Now, when I know you'll be showing up, should I prepare a certain kind of character for you?"

Of course, this all hinges upon your ability to know whether or not such-and-such a player can attend the session... I really have no useful advice for you otherwise, hehe.

So basically, make sure your "spontaneous" (what a nice euphemism! ) players are never accorded primary player-characters, and make sure that none of your adventures hinge upon one of these chronically absent players. It sucks! I know that, it's happened to me.

 

[Ulrick]

This is sort of a tough one, because I've had the same problem in the past.

Basically, if the problem gets too bad and you have a complex storyline, cut back on that storyline. Otherwise the missing players will miss out on a lot.

Yet, here's what I did:
1. I sat down with the players and explained that in order to be in the campaign, they'd have to make to the meetings at least 75% of the time. So, if you game every week, any given player should be there at three times out of the month. This can be applied to by-weekly or monthly meetings as well.

2. I then explained to the players that if they missed more that two sessions in a row, they'd miss quite a bit. If they can't make it at least 75% of the time, the should reconsider playing in the campaign.

3. While I was leanient on policies one or two, I made it clear to the players that Dungeon Mastering was a significant priority in my life, ranked a little above other extracuricular activities. When I scheduled a game on a certain date, then that takes precedence over other things.

4. I run kickass games so they always come back for more!

Ulrick

 

[hong]

Have a few NPC sidekicks/henchmen lying around, that the absent guys can control when they turn up. There's not much point them having a regular PC, when they won't be there most of the time.

Or you could co-opt them to help run the bad guys for you, depending on how combat-heavy your campaign is.

 

[Maldur]

we have a simple rule: when your not there you get none of the danger and none of the reward.

Worked so far ( about 15 years now)

 

[Quickbeam]

Reprisal:
We have begun discussing this problem as a group, and are considering turning these player's PCs into NPCs, or providing them with other NPCs relevant to the campaign when they're able to attend. No one intends to be rash or hasty (despite my username ) since we're all friends, but we want to retain some continuity in the group. Certainly I agree that making any of our storylines hinge on these characters is a bad move.

Ulrick:
We are sorta using a 75% ratio for participation by default right now. During the summer we only game once every two weeks, and simply ask that players attempt not to miss more than one out of every four sessions. It's just that the pattern of absence has increased for a couple of players despite these accomodations.

hong:
I don't think any of us had considered the idea of co-oping the bad guys, but I'll toss that concept out before our next session.

Maldur:
We'd happily revert to this system if there was a viable in-game means of allowing characters to pop into and out of our current locations. How do you handle this, or does your group not concern itself with the logistics of character appearance and disappearance?

Thanks for the replies thus far, please keep 'em coming .

 

[Tortoise]

Once a campaign has reached the point where the PC's can have cohorts, make the infrequent attendies run the cohorts. Give them enough background on how the cohort has been played so far, a few tidbits about how the cohort has reacted in certain previous situations and leave them to the task.

If they'd rather run a primary character that isn't a psuedo underling to someone else then they need to attend enough to justify having a primary PC.

 

[Setanta]

I've got nine players in my group (which I won't be anxious to do again in any campaign, that's for sure), and all of them have adult responsibilities. Sometimes work comes up, sometimes there's an issue with the kids, sometimes they have a wedding to attend, etc. So, we end up missing one or more people for almost every session.

I run a story heavy campaing, and in general I just have the story go on with or without all players present. Sometimes a story element involves a particular character to a degree that I can't run it without the player present, but that's fairly rare. If people don't show up, they sometimes have to hear about campaign shaking events second hand. That's pretty much the penalty (oh, and no treasure and stuff).

As for the logistics, I just have people show up and disappear as appropriate. We don't worry too much about the realism of it all. We've had cases where a dungeon crawl or somethingn spans multiple sessions, and if a player shows up for the second such session without having been at the first, he/she will just bump into the other characters at the beginning of the session. I try to keep things contained to one session to avoid this, but it can't always be done. At this point it's become something of a running joke the way characters vanish and reappear, but we all accept it as a necessity given the number of players and the difficulties that causes us in scheduling.

 

[Garmorn]

One group I knew just ran two campains. One the main season campain and the other an off season campain.

The ideal is that the main one is ran when attenance is high and regular. This is a deep/detailed campain like 'story based' groups like to run.

The other one is a light game like a light comedy or quick hack & slash or using the ideal of each session being a single indepent episode like they do with most tv shows.

 

[Kichwas]

One thing about adults:

If you're an adult you should have learned by now how to prioritize your time and schedule things consistantly.

There are no excuses for otherwise.

If they aren't making sessions they've commited to it's because they just really don't see it as important enough to be polite about.

An absense every now and then when something comes up is ok. Much like you take a day off from work when something comes up.

But an adult should be able to look at their time ahead of time and see where and how much they can slot in for something, and then stick to it.

If you can't slot the requisite time in, you should say so in advance and either push for a change in the time slot or bow out respectfully.