GM prep all week for D&D session

All seven of my players have lives. It's actually kinda rare that all seven of them can be there for the entire session (in fact, I think last week was the first time in months that that's happened). My solution...

1) Have a narrative mechanism in each campaign by which PC's can be easily added to and removed from the goings on.

2) Don't make anything which is critical to the advancement of the story dependent on any one particular PC being present.

3) Be flexible with antagonists so that threat level can easily be adjusted.

* As long as at least two people show up, the show will go on.

>New campaign is set in a city and based on investigation/intrigue so it's really easy to lose a player for a session and come up with whatever they did in downtime later
It's a special kind of relief when you can keep running when one person has a scheduling conflict.
It took me 2 years and 13 attempted campaigns to get this far where we have a set day of the week

This. I have to plan a full week ahead of any gaming session, and once it's in the schedule, I'll treat is as seriously as an appointment with a dentist/lawyer/parole officer/shrink.

>player like this in our group
>we end in town x last time he played
>next session, we find out at the last second(like, 30 minutes before game start) that he made other plans the day before and can't make it
>keeps making last minute plans, we decide to run without him
>get through some plot, next session we start in forest y
>play finally decides to do a session and shows up
>he goes apeshit when he finds out we've been running sessions "behind his back"
>refuses to accept that it's been 2 months since he showed up to a game and we're not just going to stall the game until he decides to show up

Was a bit of an asshole even when he did bother to show up desu. Stopped showing up completely after that. He tried to get back in a few times because it's a smaller town, so word travels fast and no one else is willing to put up with his shit. Good end imo.

Sounds like someone should call the assassin's guild. I heard they once killed a guy who locked himself in an enchanted lead box. Knife to the throat.

>do you want them to literally stop having lives?

That's what I did, and I disrespect gamers without the same level of commitment. They are poor roleplayers, uncreative, and treat the game like a joke.

I broke up with a long-term girlfriend and turned down a promotion at work to make space in my life for gaming. It is a passion I care about. I see it as no different than people being retards and going to art school instead of STEM.

If people want to have parties every other weekend and have babies and lots of social obligations,that's fine, but they do not belong in my games, which are excellently GMed, due to 15 years I spent tirelessly honing my craft. In return I demand high standards from my players, which are sometimes met, but often are not.

It staggers me that people choose wiping shit from a tiny asscrack and listening to bitch in-laws over an unequaled creative experience.

>Hour before the session.
>Sorry, I'm too busy studying!
>Look at Steam.
>They start playing a game right after messaging me.

At least you get calls. I feel lucky if I even get told someone isn't coming

>GM has been sessioning infrequently, have been waiting months to continue our campaign at this point
>session day finally comes, schedule for Friday afternoon and wait for the GM to message us on skype
>"no session I'm busy Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup"
I didn't say anything at the time, but goddamn, I should've torn him a new anus. He wasn't busy with an abrupt appointment, he wasn't stricken with an emergency that needed his attention. He just wanted to play a video game he could've played any other time and didn't care about letting the rest of the group down.

Run smaller games.
It's completely acceptable, and sometimes even preferable, to have a DM and just two players who are really interested as opposed to a DM and 5 players who don't give a shit.

If you can get two players who can show up every week, trust me, you'll have more fun with them than 5 guys who aren't committed.

If you can get three people who can show up every week, even better.

And if having a small playercount bothers you, you can always give NPCs and meatshields to the party to keep the fights at a decent size. But honestly, two players vs enemies is fun too.

Sounds like your players are additional pretty stupid.

>I didn't say anything at the time
And that's where you fucked up. Don't let that shit fly. Call him out on being a cunt.

And don't kid yourself, he's a cunt. If he can't give more than a day's warning about a cancelled session, over something so trivial, he isn't worth playing with.

That's what I tell my players: I can live with you missing sessions, I won't be mad as long as it's not at the last minute. But then someone drops out an hour before the session starts, which has been planned for that day, at that time, for a week, same as the last eight weeks, for a reason they could've sent me a message about the day before? Bullshit.

I have a player with sleep issues, they're considerate enough to send me a message saying they haven't been sleeping well lately, so they may not be able to make the game. They do this one or two days in advance. That's all I ask.

Message them back on steam chat, then.

at least your players called to say hello

>LARP
pure cancer

I have found that weekends (sat, sun, and to a lesser extent, friday night) are pure poison for Rpg groups. Those are all the days where "some shit" is likely to come up, like family obligations or plans within other social circles. Play on a Wednesday night for reliability in attendance.

>A wealthy man learns that he's drawn the ire of a rival.
>Invests in a special bunker. A specially enchanted box made of lead that keeps divination spells from seeing him and from people from approaching the box.
>After finishing the box, the wealthy man promptly moved all his valuable goods inside and locks himself in.
>Wealthy man notices a wereboar hanging from the wall that he doesn't recognize and stabs it, having heard the exploits of a certain assassin.
>Suddenly, said certain assassin leaps out from under the table and stabs the man in the neck with a knife shaped axe.
>MY TACTICS ARE TOO SUBTLE FOR YOU!

Did. Repeatedly. They ignored all messages. And before you ask, yes, I know for a fact they're the same person.

I even asked them about it later in the week, tried to probe if they just wanted out of the campaign but didn't want to say so, but they never once responded to me. Just dropped off the face of the planet... except for regularly playing Steam games.

I'm not sure if it would feel better or worse if they had blocked me, so they'd always appear offline.

>So we'll be doing this gain next week right?
>Yeah, here's some feedback for next time
We haven't played since last month...

>End of Roll20 session. Everything going good so far.
>Let everyone know that games same time next Saturday, as usual.
>Everyone is cool with it.
>We voice chat over skype, so I can just PM everyone the day before to make sure they're going to show. Everyone says that they can show up.
>I show up an hour before to make sure everything is ready to go.
>The time everyone is suppose to be there hits.
>No one shows.
>An hour passes by, so I just close down the game.
>Next day I get PMed by group asking were I was.
>I tell them my side of things.
>Find out that not only did I not account for Daylight Savings Time, I find out my group is from the European countries and don't even have Daylight Savings Time.
>mfw

>That day, user learned how to schedule games using 24hr UTC

I've had three or four different clocks set to different time zones for the game ever since.

>Create world
>Try to ask questions with players to form it to their liking
>Run first session
>end of session
>"Thanks Gm, great session." "Yeah that was pretty great"
>No other messages in skype for a week until next session starts
>When asking questions to the player, no response for 3-4 days.

Fuck players who just dwell silently in the chat. I have seen nothing that kills a game faster for me than game disinterest.

I'm sorry to be the one to deliver these news to you, but you're not right in the head.

Speaking of which, what did your GF tell you when you broke up with her over games (if you did tell her the reason)?

That is, if you're not a troll.

Scheduling is rough

git gud

This is why I always specify timezone when running games. Helps a fuckton when I've got an east coast player, a Brit player and I'm in Alaska. Hey, if the sun isn't going to set, why shouldn't I run the game at midnight?

It's kind of like dating. If your date cancels at the last second or shows you up, then you drop her (or him, or it) like a sack of red-hot potatoes. That's a gigantic neon sing reading "I do not have any respect for you or your time". Sure, you might get an apology or a half-hearted commitment if you press, but it doesn't mean anything.

With GMing, it's even more egregious because you put so much time into prepwork in addition to committing your own time and clearing a space. If a player can't show his respect for that effort by at least being there on time and putting in his own prepwork (read the rules, remember basic facts about the game), then he's not worth wasting your energy on him. And frankly that isn't much to ask from someone who has already given his word that he would do this.

>commitments
You know what? I have commitments too. I have a life, work, loved ones, other interests, and problems of my own, yet somehow I still manage to put hours every week into prepping this game, and then I clear my saturdays and I show up on time. I have to cancel at most twice in a whole year of weekly playing, and even then I give some warning. It's almost like I can budget my time without looking like a complete fuckup.

Better than
>I'm dropping the game just because, I'll play Diablo 3 instead

Players who turn up in my game get bomus XP , all the loot in that session and the session XP which oddly works in incentivising people to come and for wasters to just leave entirely.

>people who turn up get bonus XP
>plus session XP

Your players must really hate you if you have to incentivise them with double XP

Oh man, this so much. I have had plenty of hobbies but none of them were as challenging to organise.

Some players can never commit seriously to a campaign and worst of all they don't realise they're preventing others from playing and enjoying the game.

I haven't played for two years because of that and I've yet to find serious players unfortunately.

>Make a character
>Start getting invested
>Start hating the name
>Start hating the character
Help Veeky Forums

This post is pretty obvious satire honestly.

Then ask to change it, or play a new one. Ain't nothing stopping you.

>GM prep all week for D&D session
>Hey user we've got a bit more interest for fridays.
>Ok who's going.
>14 people
>Work at 7am next morning.
>Goodbye.

Yeah but it isn't fun to play when you have to work the next day.

What? The majority of Europe do have summer time.

Currently my GM insists on playing a system we don't particularly like, while not really wanting to put his game on hold when other people in the group offer to run something else.

I don't know about the OP's group, but the sort of thing the OP is talking about is basically what results because of that. If people actually care they'll show up on time. I can think of a lot of reasons why someone might not tell you why they're late or just cancelling on you, but ultimately it means that whatever they did instead was more important to them. If they're just playing some game on steam of "going out for coffee" (how many hours could that possibly take?) they probably just don't want to be there. You either need better people or to run a better game

Yes, but they change to and from it on different dates than Americans do.

Yeah that's right. Though they are kind of synchronized no?

I've done that, and I end up hating that name too.

I always have.

One guy is from London, one guy is a Swede. one guy is from Norway and the last guy claims to be French but we aren't really sure about him because he could just as easily be French-Canadian.

I always figured they liked staying in character, so the accent (which I never really took note of because I'm use to watching shows from across the pond) never really clued me in like it would have any normal person.

>tfw you're the only yuropoor in the group and timezones fuck everyone over

It was more that the ones who were regular were annoyed that the loose ones could not turn up for three sessions then get leveled up to everybody else while grabbing the loot then disappearing more. This evened things out.

Fucking kick the fucker out of your play group! I mean, people really sell themself short after investing time in setting up shit like this for people to enjoy. It's a service that is offered for free, because you enjoy the social event, but it is built upon the premise that people are respectful and show up in time.

No mercy for people who fuck around with showing up late.

> I'll treat is as seriously as an appointment with a dentist/lawyer/parole officer/shrink.

I wouldn't go that far but anyone who flakes on their friends is a real shitty fucking friend.

>But these aren't 'real life obligations' they are just doing other shit instead.
They don't take it as seriously as you do. This is evidenced by their own behavior.

Either clear up how seriously you expect them to take it, re-evaluate your own expectations, or find a new group who is as committed as you are.

None of the three are easy, but they are simple.

> Player has a fucking retarded character lined up.
> A treefolk bard who has sailed the seven seas and has hollowed out one of his fingers as a flute.
> Want to break the news gentle that I'd like him to edit his character so it's not one huge fuckball of shitty memes.
> Mail him saying that I'm not sure his character wouldn't work that well and that I'd like to sit down with him to go over his character to see how we could make it work.
> No reply
> Whatapp him, tell him to check his mail
> Message shows as been read.
> Still no reply a few days later.

God fucking damn it. He's a good friend and I'd like to avoid the drama of kicking him. But this shit is just so fucking annoying that it'd almost be worth it.

Just to play devil's advocate, are you sure they weren't farming Steam cards while studying?

If they left a game open for drops and then went off to study it explains both why they didn't answer you and why they had a game open.

>If people actually care they'll show up on time.
THIS

This is a symptom, not a problem. Don't just ask if they're not showing up on time, ask why they're not. And I don't mean the surface explanations (they found something else to do) but the underlying motivations (why did they seek something else to do?).

Sorry OP, but it's quite probably your fault. Either you picked shitty players who aren't really interested in the game, or you're playing it so poorly they've lost interest and are only pretending to still be engaged out of a misplaced sense of politeness.

This is exactly what I did. After numerous campaigns got killed by disinterested and uncommitted players, I decided to take the two guys who actually wanted to be there and just play a game with them. A third joined late, but this looks to be the best I've run, as the players are actually somewhat interested and don't ponce off on game nights.

Pretty much the exact reason why my DM always comes up with at least 2 different campaigns. one for if everyone makes it, one for if we're down a person.

What you should have done:

>Messaged him right away
>Bro, I'm sorry, but you're out of the game

And since you made it sound like it was an online person

>Unfriend them and potentially block them.

Unrelated:

>Friend knows I play D&D
>Is extremely interested
>Need a new group because my last group disbanded
>Invite him and scrounge up a few more players
>He suddenly remembers last minute that his family is in town
>That's fine
>We wind up not playing
>Next week
>The day before
>Run into him
>"YO! Bro! Are you excited for D&D tomorrow?"
>"You know it, my man!"
>Tomorrow comes
>He's not there
>Text him
>"Huh? D&D? Didn't we agree to move that yesterday?"
>Kicked him on the spot.

We're still good friends.

I don't see even a single meme in that character description, in fact that sounds pretty cool. What do you have against it?

Some people see anything other than the bog-standard fantasy adventuring party as being some kind of special snowflake mary sue character who is doubtless not serious. Also, many people just use "meme" to mean "anything I don't like."

That's what I suspect, which is why I asked, yes

>play fantasy game
>get mad when someone tries to introduce something actually fantastical
what, was a treefolk bard sailor not suited to your grim gritty grimdark setting? Then fucking tell them "humans only" or something.

maybe your friend's avoiding you because they came up with something cool and creative and you immediately shot it down because it's a "meme".

Well it sounds like he's addressing it in the character creation stage, so don't really see the problem here

Pretty much what says. I question whether or not the player would be able to make it work, but more importantly: have fun with it at the table. I'm afraid that he'll be frustrated trying to meshing the different aspects of the character into a whole and will want to reroll after a few sessions, which isn't fun for anyone.

A simple reply of "well, I was thinking of doing X and Y" would've been a fine answer to my question. Not replying at all is just fucking rude.

Sort our life out mate

>Got a group together over the internet to gather at a time
>Was somehow unaware that everyone in the group was in different timezones

I'm calling shenanigans.

Yeah, I assumed different time zones. I just wasn't expecting to be running for people who happened to not be on the same Continent as me.

>Was somehow unaware that everyone in the group was in different timezones

It's easy to forget. I see people posting on here at 3AM wondering why no-one responded in 20 minutes, but it turns out it's a reasonable time in their part of the world and they just didn't think about the fact that other parts of the internet would be asleep at that point.

I don't expect anyone to come to the table with a grimdark Byronian character with 20 pages of background.

Hell, that group and I go way back. I know that it'll be a game rich in bad puns, in-jokes and references to bad movies. That's fine. Furthermore I think that the character in question could be loads of fun if played well. However, I also think that it needs some preparation, at least in the form of a slightly more worked out background so that it doesn't feel like it's a few seperate concepts being held together by prit-stift and string. Since I know the player, I wanted to sit down with him and discuss how he could do that.

However, and this is what drives me up the fucking wall and also why my first post was way more negative than it should've been (I really fucked up my case with that post, I know), is that he doesn't give me the common fucking courtesy of a reply to a well intentioned and non-hostile email, even after a reminder a couple of days ago which I know he has read. It's his worst habit and something which I do not want to deal with.

The wisest post in this thread. People who flake are worse than cancer.

If your reaction to a game you don't like is still planning a session, agreeing to show up and bailing at the last minute you're a fucking piece of shit. I don't care how bad the DM is, at least do him the courtesy of messaging him saying you're not coming because you're not having fun.

Yeah, but how did he get everyone together in the first place? Did he just post "Okay, meet up at noon" and then all of them psychically know that he meant noon in HIS timezone?

You're trash and you should not be surprised when you're not invited to the next session.

If you don't want to play in a game anymore, tell the GM that you don't want to play anymore.

Don't just bail at the last minute, offer up a shitty apology, and then do the exact same shit because you just can't be arsed to be honest with yourself and the GM.

My guess is the communication was asynchronous. That is, user posts a thing at 6PM his time, then everyone else replies later from different timezones.

And it's an online thing. They most likely never met in person at all.

I did call it a "misplaced" sense of politeness, didn't I? They're trying to be polite but ultimately just avoiding confrontation. I'm not supporting it, I'm just saying it's a symptom of some other problem.

You're missing the point. The guy you responded to wasn't saying that it's okay to flake. He's saying that it's more productive to address WHY they're flaking in the first place. If someone really wanted to be there they'd have made the time (outside of the odd emergency)

It doesn't make them any less trashy for doing so.

>Sunday
>"Hey, you free to play some tabletop next Saturday, 1:00?"
>>"idk"
>Wednesday
>"So did you check to see if you're available?"
>>"no"
>Thursday
>"Hey man, I really need to know if you can come"
>>"I'll check"
>Friday
>>"Yeah I can come"
>Saturday, 12:35
>>"Hey, I can't come, I forgot I had plans for today"

I had every player but one in a five player game skip the second session of our campaign at the beginning of the summer because Overwatch was coming out of beta that day.

Somehow kicking them from the game made me an asshole and to this day one of them posts on the r20 forums warning people off from joining games I run

It's an older legend of Veeky Forums, sir, but it checks out.

I didn't say I was the one doing it. I'm just watching from the sidelines as I show up to game and everyone else is an hour or sometimes more late. I still think it can be easily avoided if the GM either was willing to do what the group actually wants, or if he found different players.

You can tell some people to stop being assholes and some of them will even stop. What I find much more effective is giving people less reason to be an asshole in the first place

That's what I did, and I disrespect writers without the same level of commitment. They are poor storytellers, uncreative, and treat the craft like a joke.

I broke up with a long-term girlfriend and turned down a promotion at work to make space in my life for writing. It is a passion I care about. I see it as no different than people being nerds and going to engineering school instead of MFA.

If people want to have parties every other weekend and have babies and lots of social obligations,that's fine, but they do not belong in my writing club, which is excellently run, due to 15 years I spent tirelessly honing my craft. In return I demand high standards from my fellow writers, which are sometimes met, but often are not.

It staggers me that people choose wiping shit from a tiny asscrack and listening to bitch in-laws over an unequaled creative experience.

I wish I could play with you guys. I am enthusiastic as fuck, but no one shares even close to the same level I am about it.
I don't even bother with doing anything with someone else. Its just a waste of my time.
I guarantee everyone that I can offer them time of their lives not just with Veeky Forums related, but with cars,exploring countries, book recommendations,sports... Whatever the fuck, I can make their lives better. Yet they refuse. They just continue to do their mundane shit. No one shares my level of commitment in anything, and that makes me stone cold towards any interaction.
I wish I could just play D&D with /a/nons in this thread and have fun for everyday 7 days a week.

> Want to play some tabletop gayms
> Friends tried to game for a while but they treated it like muh skyrim and muh murder everything and the GM was terrible
> No LGS in my state
> Only guy I've seen at my university that might be interested is like thirty and I'm 19
I dunno if I should bother

He was also a fat neckbeard, but he seemed nice enough.

>7 days a week

don't user. I remember when I had 2-3 sessions per week. It sucks the life out of playing. Now I'm playing once a week and it is great.

People make plans to go out drinking, watching football or movies. We take the friday for gaming.

>Friends tried to game for a while but they treated it like muh skyrim

try approaching it like lord of the rings. Send them on a quest or some shit. Give them goals they could be interested in.

Rogue - put him in some guild. give him some guild related quests. Spying. thieving. Sneaking around noble estates for precious info
Knight/paladin/cleric - give him some stuff that is related to his order. Send him on a quest by a noble. save a princess. make a treaty with other knight etc.
Mage - giving him a master. give him a old spellbook he needs to decipher. make him a part of wizard circle.

etc. etc. When they have things and people that are more interesting than just murdering around, you can expect them to start caring.

What's the most fun day for session? I've started GM'ing a campaign on Mondays and I feel it's been going pretty good. Friday and Sunday seem to be bad days since people will always have shit coming up.

>Spending a week preparing

I spend a half hour for my sessions, at most.

>But it's movie night on tuesdays
>we can only play on tuesday user
>but it's cheaper...
>we can ONLY play on tuesday, we as in 4 other people
>uhh... i'll think about it, i really want to go see suicide squad.
Fuck you james.

At the time I was in school, so I couldn't GM or play. They were playing Mines of Phandelver, I believe. The GM wasn't introducing anything in a very interesting way, and at least 40% of the time they weren't being serious about the whole thing because one guy was 'hah randumb funny lol xD'.

All that stuff is great, though, I might have to put that down somewhere. I want to GM, and I'd do it online, but I've read plenty of horror stories here to know that isn't always the best idea.

I had this happen three times to me.

This is basically a permanent ban from my games

>Fucking kick the fucker out of your play group!
I did. Gave them the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks, where I kept trying to contact them, then got rid of them.

No one is so busy that they cannot spare three hours a week to play.

I don't know, there are probably such pitiably overworked people in the world. They are probably not joining roleplaying game groups, though.

Unless your sessions are an hour long, they probably suck.