D&D General Scheduling Games (Herding Cats)

[Whisper-Kitten]

It passes after 25 years or so...

No that‘s when they come back after they ignore they advice you game them about their life choices.

 

[SkidAce]

No that‘s when they come back after they ignore they advice you game them about their life choices.

That's a reality too valid to face.

 

[Umbran]

As a slight tangent: how do you all schedule one shots or limited engagement games. Say you want to try out a new ruleset you discovered, or your SO really wants to try this esoteric RPG? How do you find players and make sure you can get it scheduled?

Between my wife and myself, we know a whole bunch of gamers we get along with in the area.

When I want to run a one-shot, I pick several dates that would work for me, and send around a Doodle poll to a likely list of candidates.

When I do this only occasionally, it works just fine. When I tried it as a monthly thing, though, it didn't work out so well.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Methods:
1. Doodle.com - DM sends one out every 3 months with their upcoming availability; and then picks 8-10 dates and we all lock those in.
2. Decide at end of session, with a relative understanding of the others in group's standing conflicts (I am DM in this one)
3. Group chat, everyone throws out upcoming dates (sometimes the DM starts, other times it's a player - most often me)
4. Regular days. I've got a first sunday of month game (rotating GMs), a fourth sunday of month game (another DM), and a first&third Wednesday game (I am DM, and this one is the only one that happens at my house).

So basically all of those, and none is universally better or worse than the others. TBH, most of those groups have tried one or more of the other methods; and each group has settled on the method that works best for them...

 

[Eyes of Nine]

 

[Dessert Nomad]

The idea that the DM is the one responsible for everything except saying what PCs do is one of the things that leads to fewer DMs being available. The only stuff that is really the DM's job is creating the adventure and running the game as it goes, trying to say it's also their job to coordinate food, act as HR, act as scheduler, act as space-provider, be a rules expert, know every player's character's mechanics better than the player does, act as recruiter, act as banker (floating the money for space and/or food), and all of the other things that seem to be commonly expected. Divvying up responsibility among the various people playing the game makes a lot of sense, and encourages people to try out DMing.

Also I'm a firm believer that if you are going to delegate responsibility to someone, you have to accept their authority. If everyone expects the DM to sort out scheduling and refuses to take responsibility, then you have to accept that the DM may decide that scheduling a game that works for them and some players but not all is the best choice and live with it. Dumping 'you're responsible for scheduling' on the DM but also saying 'you have to schedule to my preferences or I'll pout' is just not reasonable, and moves to impossible when multiple people have conflicitng preferences.

It sounds like the group in the OP isn't taking responsibility for scheduling and everyone is just hoping someone else sorts it out, or half-way paying attention and thinking a date has been settled when it hasn't. I think you have to either accpet that not everyone will make every session and just scheudle when you can get a decent amount of people while accepting some won't be there, or have everyone make the game a priority and put singificant energy into finding and committing to dates that work. If people are taking the 'I have kids so I won't commit to anything' tack, I don't think the second route will actually work.

 

[Scott Christian]

Who should lead discussion on scheduling? The DM, a designated scheduler?

This is a group discussion with no leader. But that doesn't mean one person can't be left out because "their schedule will not work with the others"

Do any of you use tools to help make this easier? Google calendar, surveys, something else?

No.

Any advice or anything else I'm missing?

I have been a part of some campaigns that have been great but fizzled due to scheduling. Most of the campaigns I have been a part of have gone from start to finish. The difference between the two has always been - one has a scheduled day (always the same) once or week or every other week, the other hashes out scheduling after each session. Guess which ones finished and guess which ones fizzled out?

 

[Osgood]

I've been in two games (curently DMing both, but that's not alway the case). Scheduling could not be more different.

One group has a very regimented schedule: From Nov-Apr we play the first three Sundays of the month, from May-Oct, we scale back to two Sundays to accomobate folks having more stuff going on in the Summer. If one person can't make it, they can't make it, but if it's two people, we either cancel or move to another week if it works for everyone; same if a game day happens to fall on a holiday. It works great, we have a Google calendar (though a couple of people can't seem to save it on their phones for some reason).

The other group only meets once a month, and it usually goes like this: A week or so after the last session someone sends a text to see what people's schedule for the next month is, we usualually get together on Saturdays, so people start throwing out Staurday availability. If we are lucky there is one that works for everyone (usually the last Saturday of the month, but if I suggest just making the last Saturday of the month the regular day, you'd think I suggested we sell one of their kids for pizza money...). Sometimes we wind up on a Friday or a Sunday because no one can do any Saturdays. Then we try to figure out the time... it's almost always around 3:00, but about a third of the time someon can't make it until 5:00 (of course, if it's a Friday, it's a later start becuade of work). Decembers are almost always a wash because of the holidays, and there is uauslly at least one other month that winds up being a no-go because we are down too many.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. I ran the idea of a set game day by the group.

One of the players is convinced that a regular schedule won't work. Another player does factory work off and on on weekends and she doesn't have transportation, so we have to go get her (long story), and the DM seems to be content letting everyone else make a decision.

I give. I don't think it's worth the fight.

I appreciate it anyway.

 

[GrimCo]

My only advice is to just choose a set day of the week and say it is that day every week. Those that can make that day can play in the campaign, those that can't won't.

Then, once the day of the week is established, the group can choose to cancel any singular day if say half the group can't make it any particular night.

From personal experience, this is what works for our group also. We all agreed that Sunday morning works best for all of us. So nominally, we play Sunday 9:30-12:30 ( on some rare occasions we might even stretch that to 13:30-14), and we don't play from late June to mid September, or during winter holidays.

In these last 12 years, we tried multiple methods. From getting together, pulling out old school calendar and each of us crossing out dates we are certain we can't play in the following month. Then we did it with google calendar. But in the end, we just set fixed time and we have our whatsapp group and each week, someone will ask "Guys, we playing this week?". If at least 3 of us can play, then we play. To be fair, our group is on semi hiatus. My brother moved on the other side of Europe, one friend just had kid, other one has 3 kids of preschool/elementary school age, i got 2 preschoolers myself and last one has fresh teenager. If we hit 15-20 sessions per year, we consider that success.