Inconsistent Gamer Attendance
I am sure at one time or another everyone has had a very valid reason for not being able to make it to a game. It happens to everyone. We are truly sick, have to work, have family obligations and so on.
But what about those players in your group who pretty much always have a reason for not making it. At least half the time they don’t show and it’s always a different excuse and sometimes they are honest and say they want to hang out somewhere else that evening. Do you continue to let them play? Do you ask them to try rejoining the group only when they know they will have more time to spend? Do you ask them to leave the group all together?
I think it’s difficult to decide. For instance, in starting this new campaign we had a few other players who over the weeks had one reason or another for not attending. We’ve just kept going and when we mentioned to them that they would have to catch up somehow (mind you they have missed over 5-6 sessions) they decided on their own to play some other time. I think they realized how difficult it would be to keep up with other PC’s who were 2-3 levels ahead of them.
Being relatively new to the D&D world I hadn’t really realized how much 2-3 levels advanced a PC. One of our players returned after missing a few sessions and after a couple rounds that only knocked my Eladrin Wizard down to bloodied, his character, A Dragonborn Warlord was at 0 hit points.
Because he is a really good player, loves the game and really only wasn’t attending due to things beyond his control we all did our best to help him advance and even handed over our XP from that session to help bring his character up.
Have any of you had situations like this? What did you do to encourage attendance? Have you ever had to do anything to help out another player so they could stay in the game?
This is a never ending battle, and it continues to frustrate me after almost two decades of playing RPGs.
What helps (a little) is to make it clear before the start that attendance is not optional. I liken it to an intramural or church league sports team. Sure, you’re playing for fun, but you also have a responsibility to the rest of the team. If you don’t show up, you’re hurting everyone.
Another thing that helps us is having a regularly scheduled game night and keeping that day sacred. Thursday night is RPG-night, and everyone knows it. We can be flexible, but I heavily discourage the emails that go out with “I can’t come this Thursday, can we play a different night?” since that usually just ends with everyone confused.
Like I said, almost 20 years now, and no solution. Email didn’t solve it, fancy scheduling websites didn’t solve it, whole new gaming groups didn’t solve it. It’s just a frustrating truism of the situation.
The last time this happened, I just didn’t invite the guy to play in my next campaign. I advertised the campaign as meeting regularly, and he wasn’t offended, since he knew he couldn’t make it. So far, we’ve gamed once and week and no one has missed a session.
This would be tougher to do with an existing game, but I think it’s the approach I’m going to take with all my games from now on: decide off the bat how much I care about attendance, and make that clear from the start. I can find other ways to hang out with the friends who can’t make it regularly, and there’s always one-shots.
Aside from that, planning in advance always helps. Let people know far ahead of time, so there’s no excuse if they can’t make it. If someone is missing a lot, ask them if they want to opt out. Don’t blame them, just say, “You seem really busy. Are you sure you want to be in this campaign? Don’t feel obligated just because you want to hang out; I know you have a lot going on.”
I’m utterly confused by your group’s handling of XP. I don’t understand missing XP for missing a session, unless your group is internally competetive. Will the people who showed up feel cheated if someone who missed gets XP? Yes? Why, is the fun of having been there for the game not enough for them, that they also need a higher number on a piece of paper?
That doesn’t seem to be the case for your group, so why not just let people who miss sessions level up along with everyone else? Give them the average that the group got that session, or the lowest that anyone got, or a bit lower. They’re probably not getting much loot, so they’ll still be behind the curve, but not enough to cripple them in the long term.
If you’re doing things that way, the solution for absentee players becomes a lot easier. Put their character in a situation where it’s easy for them to explain opting out of adventures. Maybe they have to run the family business part time, or perhaps they have obligations to their guild, or they’re frequently ill. If you’re out in the wilderness, have that guy be the one looking after the base camp while everyone is down in the dungeon.
Another way of handling the character is to have that PC’s player designate a proxy, who takes over the character when they’re gone. You can also have the party as a whole, or the DM’s girlfriend, play the character. The latter approach led to me coming back to find my alcoholic cleric suddenly nine years old and banned from taverns, but that’s what I got for missing a game where there were youth potions flying about.
Purge them.
Whether it’s because they’re lazy and disorganised, or because they simply are that busy makes no difference – in the end, you want them there and rely on them, and they’re not around.
“We’d really love you to come regularly. When you think you can come regularly, let us know.”
The reasons are irrelevant. If a football player is always injured, he’s off the team – everyone has sympathy for him, but in the end they need a full team with people who can play regularly.
There are oodles of gamers out there without groups, and lots of non-gamers who are curious and open-minded and would like to give it a try, why should they miss out because the space is taken up by someone who’s not using it?
The other thing I do is to run short closed-ended campaigns of 10-14 sessions. If a player didn’t enjoy a session or is feeling a bit under the weather, or has a new kid on the way or is getting married at the end of the year, when they’re facing an open campaign of infinite sessions ahead, it’s a bit daunting and they may chuck it in. But if it’s just another half dozen sessions then they stick with it.
I’ve found the short closed-ended campaigns give me more reliable players, that and the fact that I am known to just chuck out the slack and uninterested – ironically, being willing to chuck people out means you less often actually have to chuck anyone out, it makes people lift their standards a bit… or decide before the campaign begins that they won’t come, rather than after ten sessions.
If one can’t make it, we always reschedule…
We considered playing without one player who couldn’t make it once, but it turned out the player in question was hurt by us even considering it – in the end, that player found the means to join us.
We would’ve played something that was not within our campaign and would’ve used other characters – just to try something else.
Depending on how chaotic schedules can get and how many players there are, I would consider just playing without the missing players – but still give them the XP so they don’t get left behind.
If I remember well, the 4th ed the DMG suggests to handle it this way.