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Fancy a game of football on Saturdays? I mean all Saturdays. Every one, for the next few months. We need you to join a pivotal part of the game.
This is you. This is how you sound when you ask people to play D&D.
You canāt miss one game, or weāll have to call the whole thing off for that week and no-one will be able to play football. Can you make it? (forever?)
Did you tell people up-front that theyāll need to attend every session? Do you tell them to keep that time-slot open, but also that anyone else can cancel?
Alice had to go to a Christening, and then Bob was ill last week, and Charlieās going on holiday next week. We never get to play a game!
Yes! Yes, you took the time-slot where people are supposed to be free, and you pulled the last bit of freedom out. You have zero provisions in place for absences, except to cancel the game.
Everyone I know has scheduling problems with D&D. āAdultingā, amiright?
No - you are not. Stop asking the world to conform to your ridiculous fantasy. I donāt mean the one with fireballs, I mean that ridiculous fantasy where scheduling problems have manifested upon you; that one where these problems are not entirely self-created by your inexplicable belief that the same people could arrive for every event, without fail, as if you were a band on tour.
I found new software, where everyone signs in and writes the days they are free, and then we use AI, and this guy cuts the head off a chicken as a sacrifice toā¦
Just leave the table open!
Let people come when theyāre free, and cancel when theyāre not, like every other social event in the world. You can have a two-hour game with two players, or a three-hour game with three. You donāt need an identical, perfect, line-up every week. You donāt need precisely four players at the table.
There are six members of the party. They all need to be there, or I cancel the game.
Hear me now! This madness must end.
But I have this really cool plot, with cliffhangers, andā¦
Do you?
Do you have cliffhangers?
Are they big, wide cliffs, that go on for three weeks?
Do you like waiting three weeks? Does the suspense build? When the table meets, two months later, when none of the people in the group had any responsibilities, nor illness, and everyone was totally organized, did it feel suspenseful? Did they remember what happened last time?
Or did you need to recap the entire thing, to explain why that elf was hanging off that cliff, because everyone had in fact forgotten?
I donāt really know if this would work for our game, itās more narrative-based, with plans, and the genre makes particular demandsā¦
No it does not. Thereās nothing about that game that requires a continuous slide from scene to scene, or a static group. Every 90ās television series managed to be episodic. The X-Files, Eastenders, Star Trek. Half the soap-operas had kids just narratively vanishing because the actor had to go to real-world school.
And unlike them, you donāt even need to reset the world each game. An open table doesnāt mean Star Trek: TNG, it can be DS9; not every episode of DS9 needed Nog.
That could be you - a dozen PCs, gallivanting off to the Alpha Quadrant three-to-five at a time, while Kira randomly disappears on not-terrorist business, and Miles needs to stay and unfuck the turbo-lifts for the third time that month.
Give the players something to message each other about between sessions. Let those characters do other shit. Leave a chair open for that one guy who says he wants to play but can never make it - maybe people will find they actually can make it once you stop telling people that the entire event hinges on their presence.
And if the system canāt handle someone who doesnāt ālevel upā at the same time as the rest of the group then make their character level up; or just find a better system.
Donāt be a stranger. Open the table, and keep the game-time[a] flowing.