My group has had a rough month and we haven't been able to meet for our weekly sessions. Tonight, finally, we're getting back into the swing of things and I'm working my butt off to make sure I can rekindle everyone's excitement. This includes, refreshing myself on the rules and my adventure notes as well as coming up with character specific bones to toss my players as the night goes on. My goal is to get the group so thoroughly entrenched that it'll feel like we never had a hiatus in the first place.

This is a fairly common problem - especially with groups of older players who have responsibilities such as jobs, kids, schoolwork and the like. I'm curious to know what sort of tips & tricks my fellow GMs have for bringing a gaming group back to life after a dry spell. What methods do you use to bridge the gaps between sessions?

I encourage them to plan what they want to do next with their characters. As an example: once we had a 3 week break, and yet when we came back everyone was quite excited with what they had come up with, especially the grand missionary who had this "great" idea of how to build a 10km tall statue of the Emperor in orbit of a planet. Really, it doesn't take alot of time and it's something you can keep in the back of your head while at work or during class. If you come up with something - just jot it down, maybe expand the basic thought a bit, then bring it to your next session.

Maybe start using Skype/Teamspeak/Ventrilo to play on days where you guys are free, but don't have the time to meet up? Otherwise, try your hand at online Play-by-Post gaming, on a site like www.rpol.net or on Dark Reign.