The Neverending Cycle of Player Turnaround

[S'mon]

The problem would be that I can't even seem to finish a single adventure with an original group. Some of the smaller adventures I ran were Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, Speaker in Dreams, Eternal Boundary, & Fires of Dis. I didn't have an original group complete any of those. The players that began the adventure were not the same players that finished the adventures. Running one nighters all the time doesn't seem like much fun as the DM.

That does seem a problem. While you can't expect not to lose players over 8 years, Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury shouldn't be more than 4-6 4-hour game sessions - I ran Forge last year converted to 4e and with additional wilderness stuff it took my group 5 sessions to clear Khundrakar, ready for re-habitation by the dwarves. And I didn't lose any players over the 10 weeks I ran it fotnightly.

IME losing a player every year or so is pretty inevitable as they move away, get new jobs, etc, but if they're dropping like flies there may be other issues. It may be you're a little burnt out from DMing right now and could use a break for a few months.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

We've pretty much given up on the ideal schedule. As a group we decided we like gaming enough to torture ourselves once a week. We chose a day that doesn't really work for anybody...we just know the next day will come quick. So once a week we can live with only a couple of hours of sleep: not for everyone but it fixed our problems.

We also developed a system of rotating DM roles with very short episodic campaigns...even including handing out pregens for the sessions.

We've become very good at tying it all together so that it blends into a large overarching campaign; but, it always remains at a point that could be left for several weeks should there be any backsliding.

We all contribute to a wiki listing NPC, geography, adventure logs...you know things that can be done individually yet dicussed or revised later: this makes introducing new players very easy as we direct them to the site.

This has been our solution...hope you find one.

 

[Mark CMG]

I like playing in groups that play more than one game and rotate the facilitator duties. The more narrow the focus and limiting the times of play, the higher the expectations that players (new and old) will come and go, I suppose.

 

[Beginning of the End]

If you're getting players dropping out due to their schedules who would still be interested in playing, then I recommend shifting your campaign structure to an open gaming table of some sort.

We've been having a ton of success with it.

 

[Lanefan]

I've been running long campaigns for a while now and might have a few suggestions:

1. If your players are dropping out because they can't make weekends, try running on weekday evenings. A slightly shorter session is way better than no session.

1a. You said above that you're running every two weeks. Do whatever it takes to jump that up to every week to keep peoples' interest. From my own experience, if a game only sails every two weeks (or less) people start finding other things to do on the same night in the off weeks, and those other things eventually take over.

2. Your players sound like mine when it comes to how long it takes them to get through an adventure. Don't sweat this at all; as long as they're having fun, who cares how long it takes 'em?

3. Always be on the lookout for new players even if you don't need them at the moment.

4. Player turnover in a long campaign is a fact of life and thus the mechanics of bringing in a new player need to be as simple as possible. You don't mention what system you're running but from your adventure list I'd guess 3.x, and char-gen in 3.x is a beast at anything other than very low level. It's too late for this one, but for any future campaign I'd suggest using something that has relatively quick and easy char-gen at any level to avoid these headaches.

5. Keep a player-accessible journal or log of your game's history, either on paper or online. That way, a new player can read it during the week to catch up on the story, learn about the party, etc., if they so desire.

Hope this helps!

Lan-"I too am down a player but he's coming back in June"-efan

 

[Sunseeker]

Honestly, I don't find gaining new players to be such a burden. In a larger campaign, there's always a town that can be used to introduce a new figure to the group, in lieu of that, the group can always "stumble" across the last member of a doomed party in whatever cave/forest/swamp/plane they're in. I enjoy playing with new people, and honestly, I could never run a campaign for as long as you have. I'd get bored.

So I run and play in shorter games, adventures with a short-term goal, we're not out to save the world, we're out to save an island, help some people, ect... 5-10 levels worth of content. Sometimes I start new games that "continue", that is, something that was unsolved or defeated but not destroyed in a previous adventure in the same world pop up again and are now a problem. I like to get returning players, but it's always fun to get new people as well.

Honestly, player turnover is never an issue unless it's happening VERY regularly, ie: every session or two. But that would indicate there's a problem on my end, not theirs. Beyond that, people's lives change, the best way to accommodate for this is having plenty of people(I love running larger parties)both inside and outside the game and flexible game nights. really if I played with the same people for 10 years, I think I'd be quite sick of them.

 

[Thagdal]

After I had my social around at house gaming group almost vanish - well actually i had two groups, both nearly died so merged them.

Anyway, after that near death, I started investing time at the lfgs shop as GM as well, so to keep a more ready pool of players available.

Its a fair time commient for a lot of people if its an expected weekly game for 3-4 hours, let alone getting to the game place, recovering afterwards etc.

Monthly or fornightly games might have less turn over...

 

[Bleys Icefalcon]

I feel your pain. I started playing Expert Rules Dungeons and Dragons and Gamma World at Bellevue Community College a loooooooooong time ago... soon afterwards, I joined the Navy, and for the next 23 years, I must have gamed with 200+ players. So many, as we would all end up transferring to different commands, different parts of the world. Only 1 player has managed to stay with me, and we were lucky in that his transfers and mine ended up being regionally close to one another - except for my 4 years in Japan.

Now that I am retured from Active Duty, we decided to try and get another group together - and it was a pain, most of the established players were already in established groups. Quite a few of the people we lured it were the dregs - IE: those who'd been ushered oout of other groups. But we eventually got a nice core group.

Then one of the guys who worked for the IRS got promoted and transferred across the country. Another graduated from college and got HIS job across the country. A third we had to run off for being too much of a trouble maker. A fourth was a Navy Officer, and his 2 years were up, bam, tranferred to Japan. And lastly the aforementioned son lost interest in gaming, and found interest in girls. Go figure.

Anyway, two of the firends he introduced to our game are still in it - and they in turn have reccomended new players.

Our group now consists of:
Me (primary DM) - Gaming/DMing for about 30 years
Alex - 8 years experience (2 in our group)
Jared - 5 years experience (2 in our group)
Darrell - 1 year experience - all in our group
Christian - 1 year experience - all in our group
Logan (the FNG) - about 2 months experience

Of those players only Alex and Darrell can be counted on no matter what to be there every time. So we're always on the look-out for 1-2 dedicated, motivated and reliable players.

 

[kitsune9]

Has anyone else tried to keep a campaign going like this and gone through this same situation as often as I have? If so, how do you handle it? Is there any advice on how I might handle the campaign if I have committed players that want to play the same mid level PCs while at the same time possibly having half the party changing all the time due to player turnaround?

I really don't look forward to going through all of this again. But if I want to play, I guess I have no choice.

I have had players leave through other commitments and such and I'm thinking of letting another player go because he doesn't seem committed to playing much of the game anymore.

Anyways, if the players drop to the point that it's difficult to run a campaign, I will end the campaign, recruit new players and then do a new campaign.

For example, I started out my campaign with about six different players but off-and-on got whittled down to just three core players and the fourth one who shows up whenever. I'll run the campaign with the three players, but if another one quits, then that's it for the campaign, find new players to get the table back up to six and start a new campaign.

If the campaign is in low-levels, I'll introduce new players mid-stream into the game, but if they're high levels, I hold off.