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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5985059" data-attributes="member: 2205">I think I know exactly what I'm talking about.  Considering that for some reason you seem really invested in justifying your position and explaining it over and over again ad nauseum, I think I know exactly what you're talking about too.  I just have a very different opinion on the subject than you do.Really, that's OK.  You don't need to convince anyone on this thread that your houserule on attendance is "better" than whatever it is they do.  If it works for you and your group, then it's great.  It absolutely would not work for my group, or for me.  But since I'm not going to be in your group anytime soon and there's no way I'll be proposing a similar rule for my group, then surely everybody wins here, right?  You don't need to get defensive because I think your rule is draconian.  You don't need to tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about because I have a lower tolerance for draconian behavior from my friends than you do.  My surprise and disapproval can't possibly have any impact on your game, can it?  So, so what?  A lot of people have various differences in playstyle and expectations from the hobby than I do, not just on this issue.  Their games are neither better nor worse than mine.  Presumably, at least, their games are better for their group and mine are better for my group.And if that's true, then there's no problem.  At all.You seem to take exception to the word "draconian" as if it is some kind of pejorative.  It's not.  It's just a descriptive adjective.  Your stance on play is draconian.  It's very strict.  Frankly, even if you called me ahead of time and said, "Bob isn't available, we're going to reschedule," I'd consider that draconian.  My response would be, "Well, is everyone else going to be there?  Then why aren't we playing?  RPGing is my hobby, that's what I was planning on doing, and surely, that's what everyone in the group was planning on doing and wants to be doing.  If one person can't make it, OK, no problem.  Life happens.  But why are the rest of us all being penalized for that?"Hence the use of the word draconian.  It doesn't mean you're being "mean" to your friends.  It means that your expectations are very strict.  Much moreso than I would ever accept.  If a session of my group ever got cancelled because the GM said he couldn't run the game without everyone being there, my immediate response would be to say, "OK, well everyone else show up anyway, and I'll run something.  Because playing an RPG was what I wanted to do this weekend, not some consolation prize of board games and watching a movie."  And I'd be confident that in my group, everyone else would agree with me.Of course, I'd also be confident that everyone in my group would expect that "the show must go on" with one or even two players missing.  More than that, and we come close to falling below critical mass to have a workable game in any given ongoing campaign.  With three people missing, that's when we start seriously talking about cancelling a session.  One or two?  That's almost standard.  We're too busy for there to be a time that we can schedule that works for everyone.  Almost every day of every week has got someone in the group showing a conflict with a priority that, frankly, the rest of us all agree is more important than gaming.  So we pick the days that work the best for the majority of the group, and whomever has to miss, well, we accept that.  In fact, it's quite rare that literally everyone is at any given session.  We almost always have at least one guy out.  Heck, one guy had surgery recently.  While he's in recovery, should the rest of us give up our hobby?  Or should he get cut from the group because he can't make it?  Our response is that of course neither of those is required.  We carry on without his character for a few sessions, and when he's good to be out and about again, we pick him back up.To me, that's a non-draconian playstyle philosophy.  This business of "if literally every single person in the group isn't here, then I don't run" is draconian by definition.But again, that's not a pejorative.  If your group is happy with that houserule, then hey, that's great.  But don't tell me that I don't know what the word draconian means, or that I'm incapable of correctly semantically applying it to a situation that I would find draconian.  If you do that, you've gone way beyond telling folks online who are curious about how you do things in your game, and moved into arguing that your way of doing things is better than theirs.</blockquote>

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