While it is true that it would be frustrating to have to cancel because of attendance, when you have only 3 people there it becomes a bit more difficult to plan a full session when people can't show.

And yes...we are no longer kids, but we all didn't start playing RPG's until Nov. of 2014, we don't have any kids of our own, and we planned all of our sessions for the same day every month to accommodate all of our on-calls, weekend hours, and stuff like that... Plus we like to get together for awhile once a month because this is usually the only time that all of us guys get to hang out as a full group. If we tried to run it any more often with shorter sessions, attendance would be even worse.

This is really the first time this happened in terms of attendance problems, and like I mentioned in my original post, we have 1 person who has had unexpected work conflicts when he wasn't supposed to be working, 1 person who had a couple family get-togethers come up, and then this other guy who has another obligation to attend to...but it all has come up very recently and we never had issues with our core group of 4 that we started out with.

One of the managers that I used to work with had a saying...he even had it printed as a banner hanging above his office door.

"Life happens."

If I understand correctly from your first post, you scheduled out the whole year's sessions at the top of the year. I don't know about your group, but for me, while I might say in January that those dates look good, I don't know what else might come up later on. I certainly understand that it can be disappointing and frustrating to have to reschedule or scrap a session, but...life happens. It seems to me that the most frustrating part for you is that these sorts of issues haven't come up in the group previously. Look at it from this perspective: in the past couple of years that the group has existed, the members haven't remained static outside of your game sessions...new and different responsibilities and obligations have surely entered members' lives. Life happens.

At the risk of offending, it also seems that you're taking the fact that life happens a bit personally. For example, referring to the reasons the initial player was going to miss/be late as "excuses" (and, hey...they may be excuses, but I'm the kind of person that gives the benefit of the doubt). Or, while saying your group is aware that they don't get XP if they're not there, seeking to look for other, punitive consequences for missing the session. (Just my impression, and it may just be a consequence of the silent, text-only medium of a message board.) Deep breath. Life happens.

With this new development, rather than making a unilateral decision, float it out to the group: "We'll only have 3/5 of the group this month. Would you prefer to forge ahead, reschedule; or cancel this month?" I think asking the players - the ones who will be directly affected - will be much more beneficial than asking us?

I actually just had to cancel game this Friday because a player couldn't make it. Her department at work was shut down, and she has to pull twelve hour shifts in other areas to make up for the lost income. Even if she could get to game on time, she'd be wiped out. This was also supposed to be our last session before a month-long hiatus due to events and travel plans, and the alternate game next week was already canceled because of a birthday party.

In short, I understand your frustration. You schedule regular games with the understanding that a regular schedule means everyone can always make it. Certainly your regular schedule means people can make it more often than not, but "not able to make it" is never off the table (no pun intended).

I only have four players in this week's game, and a long time ago we decided that meant if one person can't make it we shouldn't play. If we had five or more, I'd change the rules to make it a majority thing. As it stands, I plan to take the time to make our next session (in July) be a bigger and better affair, and also go to see a BYOB magic show. Because hey, a canceled game means more personal free time, and that's something I have precious little enough of as it stands.

So I was just told by another one of my players that they could be late by an hour or two to the next session (he said he is not sure and may be on-time but he doesn't know), and we already have one person who is not showing up. That leaves 3 of 5 players available...would you still go ahead and play, then just wait for the player to show and continue as usual...or cancel the session entirely?

Are you in the middle of an adventure, or could you do an aside? Send them to the mall for some fun or something?

So I was just told by another one of my players that they could be late by an hour or two to the next session (he said he is not sure and may be on-time but he doesn't know), and we already have one person who is not showing up. That leaves 3 of 5 players available...would you still go ahead and play, then just wait for the player to show and continue as usual...or cancel the session entirely?

I’ve had things like that happen in my game.

When the players who were going to be late weren’t critical to the progress of the story, we continued without them and let them come in when they could.

But when I knew that the story hinged on those characters/players being present, I didn’t see much choice but to postpone the game, or at least roll back the starting time.

Alternatively, you could hit a “pause” button and do something unrelated with the other players who are/were present, and then switch back when the critical player(s) are available again. I never did that in my game, and in retrospect that’s probably something I should have been better about.

So, for you and your game, I think you want to take a look at where you are in the story and whether or not those characters/players are critical to making forward progress in your story.

Then plan/play accordingly.

I suppose I could try to continue forward with the story, then make it take a sharp left turn and go another route until the late player will show up. My main problem is that we ended on a cliffhanger, the crew is arriving at Nal Hutta in a broken and beaten up ship, they had just finished the boss battle and got away successfully, but not before the enemy scored one final hit to their engine before they jumped away.

The plan was to have the ship start falling apart in atmo during the descent and kill off the pilot and copilot NPC's, knock out the PC that is missing the session, crash in the swamps, then proceed to try and meet the "mystery Jedi" that gave them these coordinates.

What I figured I could do now is not kill off the NPC's, but instead give them life threatening injuries and see if the PC's to try and find a way to save them when they crash land somewhere. I can't utilize combat very much because the person who is late is one of the major offensive players, and the person missing the session entirely is full defense and helps protect the group.

Oh well, like Nytwyng mentioned...Life happens...

(...and btw the excuse the one player has for not coming is really lame, the only person who doesn't want to admit that is him...no lie )

If the ship's breaking up, pull a "Lost" - the ship crashes in two pieces: "nose" section and "tail" section (depending on the ship and its layout, I'm just using those general terms to keep with the reference...doesn't have to be literal). The players there from the start are in the section with the NPC's...go ahead and kill off the NPC's if that's part of the plan. Now, just like the passengers of Oceanic 815, the PC's who aren't primarily combat focused have to survive (with or without combat). Meanwhile, the PC arriving late is in the other section, and they finally find one another when that player arrives (you can work out with that player in advance what happened in the meantime). And the player who missed? He was taken captive by (insert opponent of your choice here). The rest of the session is spent tracking down that PC for rescue, then proceed to the coordinates for the "mystery Jedi," and there's your cliffhanger to next session.

(And you know you've got me curious about his reason now, right? )

Just a thought. Ask your future absent player to describe what his character tries to do (off screen) while he is a away. Then decide what happens to him and tell it to him between sessions. This way he can have a bit of fun, and you can give him XP based on how good his ideas where and how well he describes his actions. And you can also decide he has gotten to some trouble and other PCs need to save him when he becomes active. I think optimal would be that he would complete a small story arch during his absence.

If he misses two sessions it would be quite easy. During first part he would get into some kind of troubles, and during second part he would have to try to describe how he solves the problem. Of course, you have almost total possibility to railroad his adventures during his down time. If he tries to avert any problems just by being at home and opening door to no one, then remember that when giving XP to him. Of course, remember you can use anything he does (or doesn't) do as later story hook.

We have used this kind of metagaming framework in many of our games. In one game (D&D) there were five of us gaming as antagonists of group who gathered to play weekly Our job description was to be evil overlords of their campaign. We wrote our actions and orders to our minions and GM used them as he saw appropriate. He awarded XP to us according to how much trouble we could stir up to actual IRL gaming group. One of the meta players actually managed to make a plan and deceive actual players to sacrifice a local princess to summon a demon (players didn't know they were summoning a demon).

My own .02 credits on a few points that have been brought up.

If a player is going to be late, or will completely miss a session... run anyway. It's more important to have that consistent game for your other players, who are there to take part. Over my twenty years playing this hobby, it's never been a devastating issue. Even if the missing player had the "important piece of the Thing that he would never give to someone else ever", you can work around it easily. He's just watching the ship. He doesn't feel well. He's out gathering information. He's planning, he's fixing something, he's actually just getting a drink at a cantina alone. He's in the washroom working off the effects of the Zangorian eggs he didn't know were so ... disruptive ... to human systems. The show must go on.

As far as experience goes... I would like to +1 the notion that it doesn't really matter. 25xp in this game doesn't go a very long way once you hit a good point. Don't give him experience or do, you as the GM either want the Heroes to succeed at a task or don't and will set the appropriate purple/reds to match, or, you honestly don't care and want to see where the story leads, in which case it doesn't matter. That said, since it doesn't matter in my opinion as a GM, I'd probably just give the player the XP, because it DOES matter to players. Maybe half of what the others got if you feel the need, but giving the player full XP would give them more incentive to show. If the other players gripe at this, explain they probably got cool equipment for their efforts, not to mention an entertaining 7 hours. In theory.

It doesn't matter in the long run, people are there to play and have fun. Players have more fun when they get more XP, and it's not like you as the GM has to fork out actual dollars in order to give it to them.

I play in a campaign where we have a guy who is in a similar situation. Instead of being late, he usually has to leave a couple hours early for work.

We had a discussion about it as a group, and at the end of the day, we realized it wasn't really a circumstance that required "punishment." I mean... work's work. Bro wants to play - it's not his fault for when we meet up to play.

So, basically, we just have a rule. When he's there, his character is active. When he's not there, we just pretend he's off somewhere else. We still give him full XP to keep up...

I mean really, it's not that big of a deal.

Ender07, on 25 May 2016 - 09:29 AM, said:Ender07, on 25 May 2016 - 09:29 AM, said:Ender07, on 25 May 2016 - 09:29 AM, said:

(...and btw the excuse the one player has for not coming is really lame, the only person who doesn't want to admit that is him...no lie )

I am curious about that lame excuse you talk about since the first post. Because if someone is ready to come 2 hours late for only 2 months, it mean he want to play. So,if he want to play, what kind of "lame" excuse prevent him to be at your table on time?