Why do so many campaigns never finish? Genuinely curious what others think

[GrimCo]

Friend of mine is planing to start new game after year of hiatus. So, in our discord group, with 10 people in it, he asked 3 questions- how often can you play, what day of the week (with caveat that weekday games start at 18h and weekend ones at 17h), and when can you start. Poll results are interesting.

How often - 5 votes 2 times a month, 3 votes 3 times a month, 2 votes 1 time a month
What day (multiple answers allowed) - Mon-Thur every day got 2 votes, Friday 0 votes, 3 votes Saturday, 4 for Sunday
When can you start -half people said last week in March, half said second week in April.

With all that data, friend managed to cobble together game that starts second week in April, will be played once a month, with 4 players. Out of 10 people.

I'm writing this just to illustrate how complicated scheduling can be, even if you nominally have more than enough candidates interested in gaming.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Though one can always question with some results like that whether the truth is that some of the people just really don't want to play that much. I realize previous committments are a thing, especially when you have families, but I find the "no Fridays" kind of telling.

 

[GrimCo]

Oh, i have pretty good idea why Friday is off. Younger and single people skipped Friday and Saturday cause that's when they go out. On the other hand, us older, married and with kids, we opted for Saturday and/or Sunday, while also skipping weekdays.

 

[prabe]

Oh, i have pretty good idea why Friday is off. Younger and single people skipped Friday and Saturday cause that's when they go out. On the other hand, us older, married and with kids, we opted for Saturday and/or Sunday, while also skipping weekdays.

That's why I've found every-other Saturday (and/or Friday) to work really well. People have half their Saturdays (or Fridays) for whatever other things they want to do. I'm also running tables of five and six players, and if one person is out we run their character by committee.

I've run on weekdays, and the big problem I had was getting home from work and stuff, then getting ready to run at a reasonable time (so we could wrap at a reasonable time).

 

[GrimCo]

I've run on weekdays, and the big problem I had was getting home from work and stuff, then getting ready to run at a reasonable time (so we could wrap at a reasonable time).

I played on weekdays. Timing was always problem. While DM worked from home, rest of us were mostly working from office, some till 16, some till 17, sometimes someone had to work overtime, traffic in the city, finding parking spot, all that led to session starting at 18:30-40 at best most of the times ( session was nominally scheduled at 18h). My personal hard cutoff time during weekdays is 22. No matter where we are in session, i'm packing stuff and going home. We played 5-6 sessions in the span of 4 months and then called it quits.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh, i have pretty good idea why Friday is off. Younger and single people skipped Friday and Saturday cause that's when they go out. On the other hand, us older, married and with kids, we opted for Saturday and/or Sunday, while also skipping weekdays.

Yeah, but my point was "I don't want to game because I want to party instead" is, well, not exactly an indication the game is any kind of priority.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I played on weekdays. Timing was always problem. While DM worked from home, rest of us were mostly working from office, some till 16, some till 17, sometimes someone had to work overtime, traffic in the city, finding parking spot, all that led to session starting at 18:30-40 at best most of the times ( session was nominally scheduled at 18h). My personal hard cutoff time during weekdays is 22. No matter where we are in session, i'm packing stuff and going home. We played 5-6 sessions in the span of 4 months and then called it quits.

I realize I'm an unusual case, but I can't imagine getting enough gaming time in on weeknights while getting to bed at a decent hour with any regularity.

 

[aramis erak]

Oh, i have pretty good idea why Friday is off. Younger and single people skipped Friday and Saturday cause that's when they go out. On the other hand, us older, married and with kids, we opted for Saturday and/or Sunday, while also skipping weekdays.

Funny, my friday night games always had players... Even in high school.

 

[aramis erak]

I realize I'm an unusual case, but I can't imagine getting enough gaming time in on weeknights while getting to bed at a decent hour with any regularity.

For several years, my wed game started 1830 and ran to 2130 (with a 2200 chased out of the store); switched states and stores, and it went 1830 to 2230... currently, it's 1800-2030, and yes, a bit short, but it's due to player schedules.
In HS, we had a 30 min lunch with two 7 min passing times, and we got play happening - 1–2 scenes per day...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, that'd just be too short a time frame for me. I don't think I've played in games that didn't run at least six hours as a default, well, ever.