Monthy Groups vs. Weekly

[Darth K'Trava]

Maybe you should set up a regular schedule with games happening more frequently. I'm in four different games, one each week. And yes it is difficult to remember stuff from one session to the next, especially important stuff that your character wouldn't forget. Maybe giving roleplaying experience if they do do some roleplaying may get them to roleplay more and less "let's kill anything that gets in our way and whizzing on altars..." Or maybe keeping journals might help.

 

[Kalendraf]

I run both a monthly campaign and a weekly one. From what I've seen, it's the monthly group that is much more cautious and the weekly one that acts braver, but usually not to the point of doing stupid actions as you described. Some of the variation is likely a result of the party composition and alignment. The monthly group is very lawful good to neutral good in orientation, while the weekly one is a bit more chaotic.

Monthly - LG Fighter/Cleric*, LG Paladin**, NG Bard, NG Sorceress, NG Ranger, LG Monk
Weekly - LN Monk*, NG Cleric**, NG Bard, N Fighter/Barbarian, N Druid, CN Rogue

*, ** - Indicate characters run by the 2 players that participate in both campaigns. The other players are in just one or the other.

Thus, just in roleplaying their characters, I'd fully expect the weekly group to be more prone to risktaking, which is exactly what I see.

The biggest problem with my monthly group is that we have a very hard time even meeting that often. In summer it's lucky for us to play even 1 time in 3 months with all the busy schedules, but we try to play a bit more often in fall, winter & spring to make up for that. It's tough to remember all the details when it goes much more than a month between sessions.

 

[DaveStebbins]

My group also gets together just once a month.


To help with the continuity problem, I started e-mailing a recap each month. Later, I started posting them on a bare-bones campaign website. The problem is that the same things that keep us from meeting more often than once a month also keep (some, maybe even most of) the players from reading the updates.

After last weekend (our June date), I resolved to have fewer puzzles, NPC encounters, and multiple path options, and just make things more straight-forward hack and slash for a while to see if that sparks a greater interest.

Luckily, my adventure is nearly over and soon one of the other DMs will take over for a while.