It's hard being an adult gamer

[Oryan77]

If I can ask, how big is your group? If one of the problems is getting all 8 people together to play every other week, try paring down your group to 4 players. 5 Schedules are much easier to work with than 9.

My group is only 4 players and myself as DM. Weekday games aren't really a possibility because 2 of the players are full time college students, and I take night classes while working a full time job.

I'll try to set a standard schedule and stick with it. If people don't show, I'll just run a solo adventure that day for those who do show up. The problem with that is that I'll need to prepare several solo modules in advance to be used in emergencies. Now to find some good 1-shot modules for various levels

Thanks for all the advice so far.

 

[MoonZar]

I have tried for the last year to run at least a bi-weekly game. So far I'm averaging about 1 game every 2 months. What's worse is that I've formed a new group within the last 6 months trying to get more play time and we still don't play any more than I was.

To top it off, I can't get anyone excited about the game because we don't play enough where we can really develope their characters and get emotionally involved in the campaign. I understand people have real life to deal with, but I always get the feeling that my game must not be important enough to work schedules around like I'm sure they do to play World of Warcraft.

I don't think I'm a boring DM. When people first start playing, they are really into it and we'll play all the time. But then after several sessions the schedules always seem to be once a month or less. It's as if they'll put the game as their first priority for the first few sessions & after that it becomes, "if I don't have anything else going on, I'll play".

Is this a sign that I need to improve my game or is it really just part of being working adults? I'm cool with looking at myself to see if I'm the problem, but "I" think my games do have a lot of flavor and excitement in them. If I was going to blame a session for being dull I would blame all the wasted time that the players spend focusing on rules & battle tactics.

Is it a bad sign also when the DM is always the one asking each week, "Anyone up for a game this weekend"? I would think if players wanted to play, they would be bugging me all the time about when we're going to play next. Or is that the difference of being young vs being adults now?

Hello,

Maybe you should ask your players what they have to do that prevent them from playing. This a personnal issue, but this could give you a HUGE idea if you're the problem of this simply because the players don't have interest in dnd anymore...

DnD game are scheduled in advance, so if someone can't come to play this because he have others priorities.

Maybe dnd is simply #23 priority just after watching a movie at home. If this the case, you should simply find others players more available who really like the game...

 

[kenobi65]

DnD game are scheduled in advance, so if someone can't come to play this because he have others priorities.

Well, yes and no. Yes, there may be other things that come up that have to take priority, but no, it doesn't necessarily mean that the player in question isn't very interested in the game.

Some examples, from our group:
- Player comes home from work, ready to go out and play, but his wife's had a horrible day with the kids, and says, "no way in HELL you're leaving again."
- Similarly, kid or spouse gets sick, player doesn't feel good about leaving them home alone.
- Bad weather makes it impossible for the player who lives an hour's drive from the game to get there.
- Flight delays make it impossible for the player coming home from a business trip to get there in time.
- A project comes up at work that forces the player to work late, and thus he can't play.

This is all part of being an adult. It happens. Unless you have a job / relationship / whatever that you just don't give a flip about, when these things come up, they do take priority.

As important as gaming may be to a person, even if you want gaming to be the #1 priority, sometimes, it just can't be. You deal with it.

In our case, I have adjusted the types of adventures I run to cope with it. While we certainly have overarching plots and ongoing storylines, I write the particular adventures so they can be completed in an evening, with the players / PCs who are able to be there.

 

[Elf Witch]

Well the weird thing is, I prefer being a DM rather than a player. I'm an ambitious DM! I usually manage to juggle my schedule around so I can DM...only for it to end up a bust because players flake out on me. Which as any DM knows, that's a huge waste of my time spent preparing for the session.

Here's a guy who ONLY wants to DM, and I can't get players to take advantage of that. So I'm left wondering if my games are boring or something...yet I know if we would just play my games the players would have a blast. I can understand how players wouldn't get excited to play a campaign that they aren't attached to, so they don't make it a priority to make a session. But you've gotta attend sessions & play the campaign to get attached to it.

I don't get it. Do adult gamers bug the DM about when the next game is going to be, or was that only when we were kids? I always feel like I'm bothering people by asking them if they want to play.

Our group is all over 30 and we bug the DM to make sure we can play. We play every Friday. Of course sometimes real life makes us miss games and we all hate that.

We do this with full time jobs and families. We make the commitment to play and we try and keep it. It sounds to me that your players just don't want to do that.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I hate to say it, but if your players were serious about the game, I think they'd make the time.

Not necessarily true. My friends enjoy the games I run, and we used to play pretty regularly. Now, maybe once every 2 months. Most of us have jobs and/or family activities that we feel must take precedence over gaming, so it's hard to schedule anything on a steady basis. Another thing is a lot of the players don't want to play if X or Y can't be there.

I stopped DM'ing after nearly 16 years of being the game master for D&D 90% of the time. I had hoped to play and shrug off the burnout I was having. I've gotten to neither play or DM much at all since last summer.

But drastic measures are about to be taken. I have to do something, even if it's going back to DM'ing.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

If all else fails, you could try running an episodic game, where each session is a self-contained event, and characters can come and go. This takes quite some doing, but it would allow you to run a regular game even with a group who cannot all manage along regularly.

This is the drastic measure I was mentioning. My players balk at this idea every time it's brought up. For instance, we've not played CoCd20 in MONTHS because the GM won't run the game unless this one guy is there, and he works nearly every weekend. But I've decided that beginning in August, I'm going to plan a game for the first Saturday of every month. If folks can make it, great! If some can't, we can still game. If no one can, I have the night to myself, and I don't mind that, either.

 

[Oryan77]

While we certainly have overarching plots and ongoing storylines, I write the particular adventures so they can be completed in an evening, with the players / PCs who are able to be there.

I need to definately work that type of game into my sessions. I don't see how people complete an adventure in 1 session though. It doesn't seem like enough time for PC's to get involved and complete an adventure without it being the same dull scenario each time.

Our group is all over 30 and we bug the DM to make sure we can play.

Maybe you guys can show my players how that's done?

 

[Mark]

Is it a bad sign also when the DM is always the one asking each week, "Anyone up for a game this weekend"? I would think if players wanted to play, they would be bugging me all the time about when we're going to play next. Or is that the difference of being young vs being adults now?

Here's my advice. Try to plan for a weekly game. Advertise at all the local shops and online here -

http://www.enworld.org/f orumdisplay.php?f=49

- and here -

http://www.accessdenied. net/

Holidays alone are going to cause you to have to cancel roughly once per month. people's lives will likely have you canceling another game every month (maybe two some months). Gather a pool of about eight to ten players and let them know that the first five or six to sign up will be playing that particular week. The rest should work itself out in a month or two.

Good luck!

 

[Buttercup]

My group can usually only manage once a month too. We all bring our calendars to each session, and at the end we decide when we're going to play next. All of us play in another game together, with a DM and 4 other players. That game meets on the second Sunday of the month at noon. Be there or be square. Of course, with 8 players it's still possible to run if you're missing a few. My game does not run unless all 4 players (and me, of course!) can make it.

I play in another game with a completely different set of people, and that game meets every other Saturday at 6:00. It's a big group too, and unless the DM can't make it, it's on. We've played with as few as two people and as many as 10.

 

[Buttercup]

I hate to say it, but if your players were serious about the game, I think they'd make the time.

Eh? One of the people in my game works Saturday and Sunday at least once a month. Two of us work every other Saturday. One is active in local theater. None of us has family in town, so sometimes we go and visit them. This doesn't mean we are "not serious" about the game. It means we are busy professionals with multiple hobbies and out of town families. We could never play once a week, and honestly I spend far too much time at work to be able to prep for a weekly game. Good lord, DH and I barely manage to squeeze in laundry and grocery shopping. The thought of hosting a weekly game makes my stomach churn.

I think you need to consider that not everyone has the flexibility you and your players evidently do.