Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Quickbeam" data-source="post: 207264" data-attributes="member: 635">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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Any suggestions on how to handle this problem?&nbsp; On the one hand we don't want to boot a friend from the group because he/she has schedule conflicts.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; We've also considered leaving these characters in nearby towns/cities to act as liaisons and resources when the players are absent.&nbsp; Whaddya think?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Quickbeam, post: 207264, member: 635"] 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? [/QUOTE]

Verification