What are the biggest real-life hinderances to your gaming?

[GQuail]

My main problem for D&D is that some players are notably more reliably to attend than others. I'bve got a big group (8 players) so it's rare to get a full house: but whereas one or two are there every week, barring illness, others aren't so great.

One player in paticular missed 5 sessions in a row, coming back for thie first time this week: this to be fair was due to University exams, but out of those 5 sessions at least one he outright promised me he'd make it because his exams were over, then didn't turn up because "a chick said I was hot, but she had a boyfriend." :-( The same guy has a habit of turning up for sessions, then part the way through announcing he has to leave at 9 or so because he's meeting people at a pub. After almost two years of playing on the same day at the same time, I have no idea why he's making regular commitments on game night.....

But yeah, I'm often missing a couple of players, and the side-effect is that it's hard to write an adventure with specific plot hooks for characters because I can't rely on some players to be there every week: I know that every X weeks one does overtime on a Thursday, one is likely to wander out halfway through and miss the cliffhanger, one misses the first half depending on if he gets a lift from work or not so misses the resolution of the cliffhanger...

Worst of all, because I can't design plots around those players, if they do get invited to the pub or asked to do overtime or what have you, why wouldn't they say no? After all, the session won't fall apart without them, because nothing really happens to their PC anyway, right?...

Otherwise, though, I don't have huge problems. Gaming is at my place, multiple players have cars and can ensure everyone gets to and from safely with minimal fuss, and far from work ruining my RPG mood I'm usually desperate my Thursday night to put on a geeky T-Shirt aftr work, get behind the screen and see what my players are in the mood to maul. ;-)

 

[bolen]

I now have four players but none are very regular. It is hard for me to find players in Ky

 

[Nyaricus]

Lack of responsible players. My group has cancelled two or our three last meetings, both because people decide to make plans the day of our scheduled get together that was set up a week in advance.

I may be able to snag one reliable player from this group...

And this is my group.

 

[Mycanid]

Well for me it is also a time issue. Hah! Whoulda thought? But also schedule conflicts is a biggy.

 

[Animus]

For me, it's a lack of people, and for the people I do know, it's a conflict in schedule. Also, I just moved to Atlanta, Ga. from Ann Arbor, Mi. and don't own a car yet. I drive my sister-in-law's car when I do need to go somewhere (like work), but for personal stuff it's not a guarantee. Other than that, I have all the time in the world to game. I just need to fill my schedule up.

 

[ShadowRaven]

My game group is scatered to the four winds. Since the end of highschool and real life began most of us have moved away, and though we try to get together, online and off, as much as we can, well, it takes weeks of planning to get one weekend of gameing in.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Explained in a thread I just posed 2 mins ago

If I had seen this thread, I may have chosen to reply in it instead of starting a new thread.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=164359

Since my own explaination is pretty long winded, I can summarize it here, as I voted for lack of fellow gamers, job demands, and family demands. In practice, only the first 2 apply to me personally. Also, I just moved, so being in a new city does not help.

1) Not enough dedicated gamers.
2) The demands of jobs and / or family on dedicated gamers.

Casual gamers only game because they want to hang out. Sure, they like D&D, but they also like going to movies, or going out to bars, or playing poker, or whatever. Since D&D is a form or entertainment, casual gamers are unreliable if they have the means to do something else of more intrest.

And dedicated gamers are hard to find. And even when you find them, they cannot ignore the demands of family or job. Getting 5 adults together who can free up the same 4 hour block of time (or more) on a regular basis is near impossible outside of university students. And to run a game, you need most of your players to be able to show up at least 80% of the time.

I am a video game developer. In my line of work, finding dedicated gamers is not too hard, but I have had both of my last 2 campaigns killed by crunch time. And the most recent game was only able to play once 4 hours once every 2 weeks on Thursday nights to begin with. If I tried for more frequently, I would have had too many cancellations due to peoples familys.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[mhacdebhandia]

My lack of gaming comes down to a few things:

• Working nine to five. Since most of the people I want to play with are still in university, that cuts me out from gaming that occurs on-campus during the day and means I can't play as late into the night as they can, not having to get up at seven the next morning.
• My fellow gamers working in the evenings. Again, because they're mostly students, their jobs are mostly at night, and when they don't have shifts to work they have essays to write.
• My fiancee being in America. Because of the time difference, the only time she and I have to spend chatting to each other properly is on weekends, which cuts out a lot of my availability to play on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. Evenings are okayish, but most of the people I specifically want to play with work weekend evenings.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Americans don't have any right to complain about fuel prices. You pay US$3.67 a gallon? That's nice. That's US$0.97 per litre, or about A$1.29.

In Sydney, we routinely pay A$1.46 per litre, or US$4.16 per gallon. It's even higher for people living in rural areas.

In conclusion: bite me. Though, to be fair, fuel prices are nowhere near being a major problem for me, because I carpool to work already.

 

[Nathan P. Mahney]

We have two guys who live a good 100 kms away, so we only game every couple of months, which sucks. I want to run a weekly game (hell, I'd do nightly if it came to it!) but without those two it just wouldn't feel right.