When you spend a week prepping for a session trying to tailor it for each of your PC's and an hour before you play one...

When you spend a week prepping for a session trying to tailor it for each of your PC's and an hour before you play one of them says they're too tired to play

Calm the fuck down and go to bed user. The hard part is done, it'll just go smoother later.

>Haven't had a game in three weeks
>One player's schedule changed so the normal night doesn't work anymore
>My schedule is inconsistent
>Another player has occasional surprise shifts
>Yet another is always late
>This is it
>We're all trapped in scheduling hell

Welcome to my world
>finally get to run the campaign I've wanted to run for three years
>get a session in
>have to leave because life stuff before we finish
>leave off on a cliff hanger
>try to get back together
>Every time I have two players on one of the others is gone
>leaving for basic in a few days so I can't even wait for things to stabilize

>Session is this afternoon
>Come up with the important details during work
>Think about what fights I want during the drive home
>Connect it to the players while I sort my table and wait for them to arrive
>Everyone comes and has a good time
Feels pretty goddamn good man.

This. People need to chill the fuck out.

>Be GM
>Finish preparing grande finale to year long game
>Wait 2 months because of scheduling problems
>Finally get all 5 players to show up
>Suddenly "wife problems"
>Have to cancel cause I spent the whole night fighting demon bitch from hell

You evidently didn't taylor it enough or you would have included the "one of the party menbers is not available contingency."

Honesty sometimes a player wants to do something stupid, has a bad roll and the DM has to literally have to temporarily take the guy out the game due to recover time or quest to revive him. No, you cannot play as a ghost, next time don't try to solo a whole army.

Unless they agree beforehand to play a suicidal run.

>Spent entire summer preparing scenarios and campaigns tailored for your party
>Finally enough time to really flesh-out all the elements
>Tested on old group and they find most of the scenarios amusing
>End of summer, going to contact my current group
>3 of 5 people quit or didn't make it to another semester at the uni
>The group is officially disbanded

This is incredibly disheartening

From the teachings of ,
you still generated content for potential future use, assuming you can get a fresh group.

Not really - it was tailored not only for characters, but specific people playing said characters. So unless I find new group with exact same personalities, knowledge and behaviour, this won't take off

> exact same personalities, knowledge and behaviour

If it makes you feel better you are lying about making the game that accurate.

Either that or you are delusional.

I was playing with those people for past two years. I know the two that still remained for more than ten. And I had all two months to plan ahead the games.
I know what I did and how in-depth.
If you don't believe it, not my problem, really

Yeah, and you are describing my group.

You lyin or you are delusional. What you have can easily be kitbashed for other groups.

Not him, but I guess the entire idea was how much time he spent on this, instead of kitbashing stuff on the go

Yeah, and the stuff that he made can be used for other, future games as well.

>designing campaign setting from ground up
>carefully get player's interests and gauge what they like about it and don't like about it, and even invite them to suggest their own parts of the world
>carefully craft their ideas together into a grand whole, as they are all excited about the admittedly weeb setting of castles in the sky and everything flying
>campaign ends successfully after 4 years and all the players loved it

I made the setting flying airships purely in order to say "if anyone is missing from a session the reason is that they fell off the airship and don't get back till next session." This was true even while they were deep in an underground facility.

PROTIP: always allow for one player to be missing, and be ready to run a oneshot if more than one are gone.

>PROTIP: always allow for one player to be missing, and be ready to run a oneshot if more than one are gone.

This. Especially with a group that has a hard time scheduling.

Lessons learned from this thread:
1. Current tools for GM scenario building are total dog shit if they exist at all
2. Scenarios should be built in stages to allow games to start before the whole thing is created

The system I'm designing will be a godsend for GMs who are cramped for time and don't want to miss the window of availability the group has

Hi Scott.

Try not being late next time.

>plan a session around the ever changing work schedule of one player
>it's a shit time for most players but better than nothing
>said player is late
>text him "hey"
>"drinking :)"

>doing that much prep
>not being able to do it on the fly with a little framework prep
GMing isn't worth tearing your hair out for. If you can't think on the fly, you're not cut out for this job.

Ditto. Pic related, picked piping fresh from here >

I hate having little to no choice for players where I live. My current group is so hard to get together for a game.

>we had to meet tonight
>after a month of fucking nothing the real game can finally begin
>DM has a fight with one of the players, another player takes advantage of the situation to say they won't be coming anymore
>campaign falls apart completely
>player who left asks us to play in their own homebrew game
>have to make new character
>have to learn new system
>all over again