Scheduling Conflicts: How do you solve 'em?

[Panfilo]

A lot of reasonable stuff is being said about quorum and regularity, so I'll take a different approach. Part of solving this problem, if it comes up often (though optimally before), is finding out explicitly just where your game night falls in individual people's life priorities. I've known one person who considered D&D about as important as a hot date with a long-time crush, and another who bailed on a session to get a normal, non-event-related haircut. It'll depend on how well the campaign is going, as well as personality types IRL. Get an idea of where you stand compared to their other obligations (and what those are), and you won't be blindsided nearly as often.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, no DM = no game, obviously; so the following only counts players.

If it's a 2-player game (and I've run these) then both have to be there.
If it's a 3-player game then I'll sail with just two but all three is far preferable.
If it's a 4-player game then I'll always sail if three are there and will sometimes sail with just two.
Anything bigger than that: quorum is half rounded up.

Absent players have their PCs played by those who do turn up, following instructions (if any) left by the missing player provided such make sense for the situation.

 

[delericho]

Game night is coming. Two of your five players have cancelled. What do you do?

If the group is 5 players plus DM, we play on with 1 down but cancel with 2 down. At 6 players + DM, we'd play on with 2 down.

However, I'd also keep an eye on the situation - if we find that a particular player is constantly cancelling then there comes a point where it's better to discount that player from our plans (in which case we'd consider it a 4+DM group, which plays on with 1 down). That player might or might not be asked to formally drop out.

 

[Jhaelen]

Game night is coming. Two of your five players have cancelled. What do you do?

We still meet. depending on what we agreed on, we'll either play a regular RPG session or turn it into an evening of board games.

We 'solved' the problem for our RPG campaigns by having a pool of 10-12 players and we'd play if a certain minimum of players had time (three or four). Each player also had two characters so we had some flexibility and could ensure that a healthy mix of roles was available.
We also set an upper limit of players (seven). So, if a player didn't commit the date soon enough, it could happen that he was out for the next session because all the player 'slots' had already been taken.

 

[Nagol]

If at least half the players are available, the session goes on otherwise the game is cancelled.

If one or more players is struggling to attend regularly, talk to them and determine if the game fits their current life situation and discus if the player should drop out.

 

[Nytmare]

In college, we had different RPGs depending on which assortment of people were there. When I ran my D&D campaigns post college, it was usually a play down one, or play boardgames if we were down two or more. Now, as a full fledged adult with full fledged adult players, I run one shots and serialized games (Blades in the Dark) where the cast of characters can change week to week with no problem.

 

[Fauchard1520]

Here's a copy + paste from the Facebook page my every-other-week megadungeon uses. There are seven players, but I'll game with as few as two.

When it comes to the vote, the first tiebreaker goes to players that missed the most recent session. Second tiebreaker goes to players with the lowest XP.

NEXT SESSION
The deadline to vote is Wednesday, May 23rd at noon. I'll make the game day announcement based on the responses we've received at that time. As always, vote for all times that you can make.

Saturday, May 26th at 7:00 pm

Saturday, May 26th at 11:00 am

Sunday, May 27th at 6:00 pm

Sunday, May 27th at 11:00 am

 

[DragonLancer]

Two people down and we still play. Any more than that and we play something else for the night. Thankfully it doesn't happen very often.

 

[MNblockhead]

Game day is too precious. If even one player can make it, I'll run a game. If the party ended at a spot where it would be logical for one or more characters to vere off on a side adventure, I have some one-shots available for times like this. Even if I don't there are generally enough plot hooks, NPCs, and locations fleshed out that I can put something together on the fly. In the rare instance that the party ended the last session in the middle of a battle, dungeon, etc. Then I'll do a one-shot with pre-gens or a different game.

Worst case scenario, it's a board game day (I love board games, but I only get to run my game one Saturday a month, 8 hours I put aside each month for running 5e, so I hate to lose it).

 

[J.M]

I do one of two things in this situation (neither of which involves cancelling the game):

1. Run a one-shot. Maybe a different game, maybe a side-trek with the characters who are there, maybe a "flashback scene" that happened in the past (you may have to deal with continuity issues in that case)

2. Run the session as planned, treating absent PCs like "ghosts". They're with the party, but the spotlight is never on them, they never do anything interesting and nothing interesting happens to them. I prefer this approach to forcing a second PC on someone or playing them myself. Might need to scale down the challenges a bit.