Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GM Lent" data-source="post: 9776593" data-attributes="member: 6798775">We generally have about a 2 to 2.5 hour block of time to play, so there are basically no single-session adventures at all. I run DCC modules, both those published already and some I'm playtesting myself to be published later. Among the "roll with it" aspects I've had to adoopt is just not worrying about who is where when. By which I mean, in Session A, PCs 1, 2, 3,and 4 arrive at the adventure locaiton. They enter it and begin exploring. But then in Session B, PC 3 couldn't make it and we have PC 5 instead. We act as though PC 5 had been there the whole time in terms of them knowing everybody/the mission/etc, because it saves a ton of time. If PC 3 is back the following session, we again proceed as though they were never gone.This approach is narratively nonsensical, but given our time constraints it's just the easiest solution. We keep things lighthearted, and occasionally the PCs will joke about it (What do you mean I wasn't on the ship? I was the one cooking for the last three weeks! Weren't you paying attention?).An exception: special stuff like magic items only go to PCs who are present when they're distributed. It's a way of rewarding the folks who make it regularly (we have exactly one person aside from me who has never missed a session since they started, and interestingly it's not my wife).Regarding DM-driven vs player-driven: I run modules, but I will work in stuff relevant to the PCs' backstories to make them feel more prersonal. And if a player has a specific destination they want to visit, I'll work whatever I was planning to run into and around that location.In home gamesd I like to keep things intense and more player-focused and character-driven and intense, but in a public drop-in game I find it's best to keep stuff more lighthearted. That way nobody gets upset that they missed out on things and it's easier to just keep things moving.</blockquote>

Verification