All The DMs That I Play Ditch The Game

[Bartmanhomer]

Hello everyone. Every time that I play Dungeons and Dragons versions 3.5 edition the Dungeon Master ditch the game because they're doing something else in their lives. The first DM ditch my very first game because he have to take care of his adopted baby. And I'm not sure about the second DM because he promised to stick around that he was working at his job. I understand that everybody got their own lives and prioritizes with other things because I'm still new at Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. And I'm feeling a bit annoyed about their delays and waiting. Does it ever happen to anybody else? :annoyed:

[Vitruviansquid]

Yes, this happens pretty often. People make commitments to play an RPG, and then that commitment is the first thing to go out the window when they want to make other commitments. Frankly, tabletop RPGs are just games, and there are a lot of things that should take precedence over them. It would be nice if people did not attempt to start RPGs knowing they could later not have the time for them, or tell people far in advance when they'll be quitting, though.

[Bartmanhomer]

Yes, this happens pretty often. People make commitments to play an RPG, and then that commitment is the first thing to go out the window when they want to make other commitments. Frankly, tabletop RPGs are just games, and there are a lot of things that should take precedence over them. It would be nice if people did not attempt to start RPGs knowing they could later not have the time for them, or tell people far in advance when they'll be quitting, though. I know and it happen to me twice. I just want a DM who's very committed to the D&D games. :mad:

[Stealth Marmot]

This happens to most games really. It can also be players cant schedule a time when they are all open. DMing takes a lot of time and effort.

D&D games have the failure rate of restaurants.

[Bartmanhomer]

This happens to most games really. It can also be players cant schedule a time when they are all open. DMing takes a lot of time and effort.

D&D games have the failure rate of restaurants.

Your kidding right? :confused:

[TheIronGolem]

Your kidding right? :confused:

If anything, he's understating it.

It's just one of the pitfalls of this hobby. And it only gets worse as you get older. The more responsibilities you take on, the harder it is for you to find a 4-6 hour block of time that you can dedicate to pretending you're an elf. And it's even harder to get that block of time to line up with those of all your friends who also have jobs and kids and whatnot.

[Pugwampy]

My problem is opposite . I have players who wont commit and leave the nice guy who does the most work with his thumb up his butt for two months on end .
Jobs , exams , girlfriends , player upsetting players , sickness , yadda yadda . Problem with this awesome game is it needs everyone to sit down and have fun at the same time .

Treat every session like its your last good friend . Dont save up any potion or magic wish for next session . There might not be a next time .

Be the best most cooperative player you can be . Being a DM is a thankless task . He does the most work and all for your entertainment and for free . DM wants to play too , dont doubt that . The cooler your game session , the longer he took to prepare it . Its hard to find a DM that is committed long term . Some do have more stamina then others . Kiss up to your DM . Make him know that your appreciate all he has done for you .

[veti]

Your kidding right? :confused:

Why? Seriously, it's a game. A hobby. A thing you do in your spare time. Not enough spare time? - then the hobby is the first thing to go.

Babies are definitely more important than games. So are jobs, although I'm not sure what you're saying about your second DM anyway.

[Bartmanhomer]

Why? Seriously, it's a game. A hobby. A thing you do in your spare time. Not enough spare time? - then the hobby is the first thing to go.

Babies are definitely more important than games. So are jobs, although I'm not sure what you're saying about your second DM anyway.

My second DM have to delay the game because of job as I already mentioned.

[Pugwampy]

If anything, he's understating it.

It's just one of the pitfalls of this hobby. And it only gets worse as you get older. The more responsibilities you take on, the harder it is for you to find a 4-6 hour block of time that you can dedicate to pretending you're an elf. And it's even harder to get that block of time to line up with those of all your friends who also have jobs and kids and whatnot.



I have played and DM,d <mainly Dm> for 8 years .

I have had 3 "long term" campaigns , 2 of which I was DM. Long term meaning on average 15 - 19 strung along sessions . I have had about four or five 4-6 strung along sessions and one or two 1-2 sessions .

Do the math its not much for 8 years. Maybe 70 - 80 days ? spent on DND fun . Not even 3 months .

Literally I play for a year and skip a year or two for whatever unwanted reason . I had an awesome 14 session campaign this year and i am very grateful but now i have to wait , probably another year. Its a curse .

Do you know whats the worst part ? I think of DND and playing DND everyday of my life .

[Spore]

I have met my friends and gaming group about 4 years ago. We started ... 5 campaigns together, in different settings and player constellations. So far we have finished one of these. One player was kicked out - due to him being an butthead irl - two players became fathers, so one of them quit roleplaying. I dropped out of college and working shifts, vastly decreasing my possible free time. Another player got divorced, the DM finished his nursing school. The DM's wife completed her bachelor in finances, after that she had a burnout which she is currently recovering from.

Our campaigns end but due to our friendship and desire to play together, we always find games. I just wished the DMs would have more modest plans instead of planning sandboxes without any story progression, campaigns from 1 to max level or campaigns that have three acts, each of which takes 2 years of gaming time (due to our rare meetings).

[Darth Ultron]

Your kidding right? :confused:

It's very common.

It is easy enough to find people that say the want to play, and they might even show up for the first game......and then they get ''busy''.

It can be annoying, but you should not let it get to you. There are people that do want to game, you just need to find them.

[MrStabby]

I have met my friends and gaming group about 4 years ago. We started ... 5 campaigns together, in different settings and player constellations. So far we have finished one of these. One player was kicked out - due to him being an butthead irl - two players became fathers, so one of them quit roleplaying. I dropped out of college and working shifts, vastly decreasing my possible free time. Another player got divorced, the DM finished his nursing school. The DM's wife completed her bachelor in finances, after that she had a burnout which she is currently recovering from.

Our campaigns end but due to our friendship and desire to play together, we always find games. I just wished the DMs would have more modest plans instead of planning sandboxes without any story progression, campaigns from 1 to max level or campaigns that have three acts, each of which takes 2 years of gaming time (due to our rare meetings).

Good advice. I made that mistake. My longest running campaign is now well into its second year and probably about 300th hour. I planned out a 3 act story arc with no idea it would take so long. And yes - babies, jobs, relationships and sickness and so on have all got in the way. We have had two players kind of drop out - one being involved peripherally the other writing the book of the campaign (she enjoys it and keeps her in with the group so it all seems happy there). I realise that we are lucky to still be going after such a long time and so many changes. I am hoping to be able to get it to a close in another 100 hours or so but not sure if it will all hold together that long.

[Spore]

I tried to DM myself a bit too and I just KNOW DMs want to tell more and quickerthan they are able to in normal gameplay. I myself have thought of a 3 act campaign taking about 1,5 years and reaching from 3-13ish myself. Fully knowing that higher level spells could easily dismantle entire segments of my campaign.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I'd suggest playing a different game that's designed for a shorter number of sessions.

Something like Apocalypse World is designed to run for 8-12 sessions and provide a satisfying conclusion by that point. Might be a better option for people who don't have time for long campaigns.

[Pex]

It's not just DMs; it's also players and campaigns end for lack of them. Personally I blame Organized Play - Adventurer's League, Pathfinder Society, etc. They don't require commitment, so it doesn't matter if you miss a day or month. The games are preset modules where things happen just because the author says so, meaning your character doesn't influence the game world. That makes each session a glorified board game so players don't have any vested interest into what's going on. They don't need to care about NPCs or personal character goals other than leveling characters. There can be roleplaying within the game session, but the next adventure is its own thing. While this has become a rant of a sort against organized play style :smallwink:, the point is organized play players aren't relating to homebrew campaigns. Caring about NPCs and having consequences to their actions that affect future events becomes overwhelming they don't want the complications. Suddenly some real life event coincidentally interferes they can't play anymore.

I allow for the possibility players stop showing up for old school reasons of just not liking the play style of the DM and/or other players, but using Meet Up when I see the organize play schedules are always full but people looking for homebrew are still looking months later or even when a Meet Up finally does happen the game collapses soon after, I start to wonder. Finally now I am in a few homebrew campaigns that have been meeting for a while, so I know I'm not the reason players weren't showing up anymore in previous attempts. :smallyuk:

[Deophaun]

Wait, I'm confused. The Dungeon Master is the one that's supposed to chain up the players and hobble them so they can't leave and the campaign gets completed. He can't just ditch; that gets the police involved.

[Stealth Marmot]

Wait, I'm confused. The Dungeon Master is the one that's supposed to chain up the players and hobble them so they can't leave and the campaign gets completed. He can't just ditch; that gets the police involved.

Listen, not all of us have that much free time.

Between jobs, families, dark rituals, making sure we get enough sleep, properly disposing of the bodies, and spending time with the spouse, we just don't always have the proper time to spend on hobbling in a way that will preserve that precious balance of "Unable to escape" but "Alive enough to roll dice".

[Darth Ultron]

Listen, not all of us have that much free time.

Between jobs, families, dark rituals, making sure we get enough sleep, properly disposing of the bodies, and spending time with the spouse, we just don't always have the proper time to spend on hobbling in a way that will preserve that precious balance of "Unable to escape" but "Alive enough to roll dice".

It would just be nice if the type of person your talking about would say ''Nope, I don't have time to play a game'' and then go off to do all the ''stuff'' they have to do and never be seen again.


instead, the lie like crazy, "Oh, man I'd love to get into the game! Count me in! I will be there! Game on!" and then ''suddenly'' having all sorts of ''stuff'' get in the way.

[DigoDragon]

Does it ever happen to anybody else?

Yep. I got the books around the time they came out and I have yet to ever have a 3.5 character reach 5th level. Also, only played about... four characters? Wizard, rogue, two clerics... yeah that's about it. It's been several years since the last local group disbanded, but I made a ranger for a new local group that just got together this past Saturday for the first time, so let's see if 5th time's the charm. :3

On the flip side, I have run many, many games over the years. On occasion I had to cut a campaign way short because of some family emergency or new obligation. So I've been on both sides.

[Stealth Marmot]

It would just be nice if the type of person your talking about would say ''Nope, I don't have time to play a game'' and then go off to do all the ''stuff'' they have to do and never be seen again.


instead, the lie like crazy, "Oh, man I'd love to get into the game! Count me in! I will be there! Game on!" and then ''suddenly'' having all sorts of ''stuff'' get in the way.

Life is Chaotic aligned.

[Lemunde]

You know it's obvious everyone seems to understand how hard it is to get a group together that can last longer than a couple of sessions, and yet everyone sneers at me whenever I even suggest playing solo.

[Joe the Rat]

Our campaigns end but due to our friendship and desire to play together, we always find games. I just wished the DMs would have more modest plans instead of planning sandboxes without any story progression, campaigns from 1 to max level or campaigns that have three acts, each of which takes 2 years of gaming time (due to our rare meetings).

Sounds like what you need are one-shots (and the occasional double-barrel) and plot-of-the-week games.

One-shots are just that: short, self-contained sessions. Start objective, objective met, high fives, move on (or TPK, DM notches the table, move on). You may have more than one session to wrap up, but you know once you deal with The Secret of Bone Hill, you're done with that story. Nobody shows for a game, tuck that in your pocket for later.

If you like a bit more continuity, you can go Plot-of-the-Week. Each session is tenuously linked to the others, mainly by having a common setting and/or cast of characters. Think about the early episodes of most tv series. Party arrives, stuff happens, the snarky one says something quotable, problem/monster/boyfriend of the week is properly disposed of, laugh track, end credits. Next week, same party (maybe: see Mission Impossible), different stuff. Characters progress, but there's no capstone beyond the adventure. Another advantage here is you can have different directors GMs for different episodes, giving more people a chance to run or play, and flat out switch show runners without dropping the story.

If you like continuity, you can start throwing in callbacks in the world to previous sessions, or start weaving a continuity behind the events.

But the key to all of this is pacing. You need to be able to wrap each session at a narrative/event close point. The party returns to town / leaves the dungeon / gets captured / dies / gets home from school / gets a fast track happily-ever-after narrative. Everyone is either done with their story, or ready for what adventures (and companions) await tomorrow.

[ComradeBear]

It would just be nice if the type of person your talking about would say ''Nope, I don't have time to play a game'' and then go off to do all the ''stuff'' they have to do and never be seen again.


instead, the lie like crazy, "Oh, man I'd love to get into the game! Count me in! I will be there! Game on!" and then ''suddenly'' having all sorts of ''stuff'' get in the way.

Life does not always work out as planned. I began a short campaign a few months ago and we got several sessions in. Then, without more than about 3 days of warning, I was moved into a new position and my days off completely changed. I went down from having Friday through Sunday off, to having Sundays and Tuesdays off. Hell, I'm not even getting Thanksgiving off. Most holidays I don't have off anymore. (Except Christmas Eve and Christmas day.)

I get one saturday off every 6 weeks, which is not exactly condusive to a regular gaming session. I'm currently seeking a way to play on Tuesday Evenings, but half of my players live across the pond in the UK and the Netherlands, specifically.

I had to learn, accept, and report that information within about 4 days. Meaning we had our session, everything was cruising along fine, and then something came up that shifted my whole life around. And when the choice is "lose gaming for a while until your life chills out, or don't have the money to support your wife and infant" I'm gonna choose the former. Every. Single. Time. Because myself and my group have one rule that always overrides anything else we do:
Real Life Comes First.

[Garimeth]

Wow, my experience is very different from everyone else's.

My current group has been gaming for 3 years non stop. I have been DMing one consistent campaign this entire time, with another guy filling in with an old school dungeon crawl when I need more prep time or have to miss a week. On average we play twice a month, sometimes more. Every player in my game is willing or wants to DM if I need a break. I am about to deploy with the military for 6 months and at least 3 people have expressed a desire to run a game while I'm gone.

That said, it took a lot of work to build this group. I am the social glue that makes it happen. Our guys all run the gamut of single with no kids to retired with children. I put in as much time keeping people in the loop and talking to each other as I do planning my game. I carefully vet each person who is introduced into the group to make sure they will jive with us and aren't flaky. We just got back from a four day gaming vacation in VA at one person's lakehouse, and we came from all over the country - one person from as far as WA. Early this year I set up a canoe trip that half of us went on.

The big difference for us I think is that we are all friends outside of, and separate of, gaming, and I and one or two others put a lot of work into developing and maintaining these friendships, even though people have moved away or had kids or retired or what have you.

My first and best advice for finding a gaming group is to build your own by teaching your friends how to game.

[Martin Greywolf]

Honestly, unless you sat in a DM chair, you have no idea how hard it is to do just that. If you want to be any good, you need to juggle several different player tastes and still keep a pacing and fluff good enough to get a semi-cohesive story out of it. That is only possible by putting in a lot of work, and that work will at first often feel thankless, especially if players don't like adventure - they don't even have to be salty about it, just seeing that something you poured your soul into (no matter how amateurish the pouring was) be not liked hurts at least a little bit.

I now have a campaign going that the players like a whole lot, it has interesting locations, varied characters, tangled political plots and so on - the amount of research that went into it is measured in literally years. Thing is, I just so happen to be a pretty serious re-enactor (it's practically a second job to me), so I just took all I knew about 13th century Hungary and put some fresh paint on it. So yeah, if a player asks me what the government system of Monfalcone looks like, I know immediately, because Monfalcone is Venice with swapped license plates, and I know about half a dozen plots in politics, because they are plots that happened in real life (more or less - pretty sure the catholic church didn't plan to take out Mongols with a massive spell to boost conversions).

Now, with a person who doesn't practically have a Bachelor's degree in history, something like this is pretty squarely impossible. Even normal adventures take at least a week to prepare somewhat competently, between getting ideas, anticipating player actions and statting out the fights to be interesting, and that's solid five days of go-to-work-then-work-on-game.

Okay, long story short, the purpose of this rant is that yes, DMs have the highest drop out rate of all TTRPG players, but it's for a bunch of very good reasons. Like your DMs, support your DMs, give them good feedback (not only on things they need to work on, but also on things you thought were awesome). Also, if they let you (an believe me, most of them will gladly do just that), help with a thing or two - maybe you can fully develop a kingdom, perhaps you can take over the "finding a time and place for five people with jobs to meet" thing.

[BWR]

Short story: real life gets in the way.

If people sign up knowing they will flake out, then it's a problem. If people are gung-ho about a game and lose all interest after a session or two (I knew one guy who would start a new game every couple of weeks because of the 'OOO! New and shiny!" mentality and his players just learned to not get interested or invested in things) they need to recognize it as a problem.

If people are aware they have a tight schedule, are upfront about this and try to come anyway, we're cool with it. One of my friends who I've been gaming with for 20+ years got kids a number of years ago and was often a no show (to the point where we saw him half a dozen times a year or so), and when he did show up it was a couple hours late. But he did always try to come and enjoyed the hell out of the game when he could make it. We bore with it and now that the kids are older he's got more free time to game. Due to real life concerns this group still doesn't meet all that often anymore but we don't give up.

[Vitruviansquid]

Consider this:

The average DnD game assumes about 5 players, give or take one, and one DM. Most other RPGs are about the same. That's six people.

If you feel that you and your friends are all very consistent to miss one session every on and a half months of your weekly game... 6 people each missing one session out of every one and a half months is still averaging almost one person gone every session.

[Darth Ultron]

Life does not always work out as planned.

It's not ''life'' it is ''people''. Short of something like ''my house exploded'' a person can choose to show up and play a game. The problem is people saying (lying) that they want to play the game and then not living up to that. People that can spend 16 hours playing Call of Duty XI:More Awesome 'Splosions but then are like ''dude, I can't make it to the game."

[Mr Beer]

I've gamed pretty steadily between every 2 and every 4 weeks for the last 20 years, with a couple of really low key years where hardly any gaming got done. People have come and gone over that period, there's one other guy and me from the original group.

However, I do 75%+ of the GM-ing and provide a place to game; I've also actively recruited online when numbers dropped below critical mass. So effectively, I do the lion's share of the work and if I didn't, it wouldn't happen.

So that's the price I pay to game, it's worth it to me, but that's also why groups come and go.

[TheIronGolem]

It's not ''life'' it is ''people''. Short of something like ''my house exploded'' a person can choose to show up and play a game. The problem is people saying (lying) that they want to play the game and then not living up to that. People that can spend 16 hours playing Call of Duty XI:More Awesome 'Splosions but then are like ''dude, I can't make it to the game."

Newsflash: Nobody has ever pretended they wanted to play D&D with you. Ever.

Not a single person in your life has ever thought "I don't want to play D&D at all, but boy howdy it sounds like fun to tell this guy I do, because I clearly have nothing better to do with my time than to mess with him!". It isn't about you, so stop trying to make it about you. People have lives, and gaming will never (and should never) be the most important thing in it.

And get some perspective while you're at it. It doesn't take "my house exploded" for missing a game to be a reasonable thing to do. It takes "my spouse is sick and I need to take care of the kids" or "I just got off from a sudden double shift and I'm way too tired to play elfgames now", or any of a host of other things that happen to people all the time. People sometimes miss games for the same reason they miss parties or outings to the movies, and it's never because they're hatching some kind of sinister plot to jilt you at the DM's screen.

Cripes, you are being so That Guy right now.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Just about everyone on Earth can probably find a four hour segment to do a thing in if they really want to. That doesn't mean that four hour segment will always fall at the same time, sometimes unexpected things happen. If you can't be relatively sure that you can make that time slot most weeks, barring emergencies, then you should probably consider not playing, though.

That said, a lot of the time "I'm too busy to play this week." is code for "This game isn't interesting enough to me to make it a priority."

[ComradeBear]

It's not ''life'' it is ''people''. Short of something like ''my house exploded'' a person can choose to show up and play a game. The problem is people saying (lying) that they want to play the game and then not living up to that. People that can spend 16 hours playing Call of Duty XI:More Awesome 'Splosions but then are like ''dude, I can't make it to the game."

You really need to get your priorities in order if you're going to infer to someone that they should choose RPGs over providing for their family.

I frequently tell people (truthfully) that I want to play more trpgs, but my current schedule is not good for that activity. My days off are Sundays (days in which I'm busy with other obligations) and some other weekday between Tuesday and Thursday, when most people don't have time in the evening for a game, and certainly don't have time in the morning. I want to play, but my current schedule is not condusive. And if I avoid working on Saturdays, since I'm in a commission-based car sales job, I literally lose money. I get maybe 30 minutes to myself per day that I don't have off. If that much. And I use it on schoolwork.

Making blanket assumptions about other people's lives and calling them liars for having a desire they can't currently fill is behavior reserved for the kind of people we refer to using a word usually used for Donkeys. Don't be that kind of person.

[Jay R]

I promise you that as you and your friends get older, and have more control over your lives, ...

... this problem gets worse.

[quinron]

I promise you that as you and your friends get older, and have more control over your lives, ...

... this problem gets worse.

That's the aggravating part. I just graduated from college, where I had to shut down my last game because people were spending all their free time drinking, watching TV, and playing video games, and then they missed the game to do homework or balance their accounts or something.

I'm totally fine with people missing for sudden occurrences or emergencies. But when it's something that you've had plenty of time to do and you just put it off until game night, I feel insulted.

[Solaris]

I promise you that as you and your friends get older, and have more control over your lives, ...

... this problem gets worse.

I know, right?
If it weren't for PbP having a success rate that makes homeopathic medicine look stellar, I'd probably have given up on gaming in real time altogether.

[Jay R]

I'm currently in three active games, and running a fourth.

And this Saturday I get to play for the first time since June.

[radthemad4]

Life happens sometimes unfortunately and DMing, while fun, takes free time which isn't always plentiful. You can always apply to more games, and reuse characters from dead games in other games (after rebuilding them to account for different house rules, settings, etc. of course).

[D+1]

Your kidding right? :confused:
When I was in high school and even for some years afterward I did not have anything in my life to compete with an ALL-DAY game of D&D every Saturday like clockwork. We'd start at noon (or even 11:00) and play until midnight (or sometimes as late as 4:00am Sunday morning). Most of the players in our group were similar. After HS summer was a problem season when most of my D&D games would fizzle out because players wanted to go swimming, waterskiing, or otherwise enjoying the outdoors, in addition to having OTHER interests they wanted to devote time to (and that doesn't even begin to take into account TV, movies, video games and other forms of entertainment). In the dead of winter that's typically less of a problem, yet it never completely goes away. Myself I LIVED for D&D, much more so than anyone else I gamed with, and was obviously very disappointed on those infrequent occasions when even _I_ had to miss the game for some reason, much less when others couldn't show up. But in any case, as we all got older we began accumulating other responsibilities - work, spouses, things needing to be done around the house, errands to run, vacations out of town or just visits with other friends and family, and of course all the same things that drew people away from playing D&D all day that were still there - OTHER interests that compete for time in your life.

If you AND everyone you game with actually has even a half-day on a weekend to play D&D, or even just... 4 hours on some other weekday to squeeze in some gaming, you're freakin' lucky. The best I can generally hope for these days is one Saturday a month where schedules can finally merge for gaming.

It's just an awful reality of life.

[Bartmanhomer]

Life happens sometimes unfortunately and DMing, while fun, takes free time which isn't always plentiful. You can always apply to more games, and reuse characters from dead games in other games (after rebuilding them to account for different house rules, settings, etc. of course).

You're the second DM I was talking about earlier in this thread.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It should also be noted that, while gaming is a fun passtime, it can be a really tiring one, especially for those who (like me) are more on the introverted side of things. You have to socialize with people who may or may not be close friends, you have to engage closely (despite the complete absence of logical/narrative structure and often prolonged downtime periods), you might have to deal with complicated mechanics or in-game situations... it's fun, but it's not exactly relaxing. There are plenty of times when I've been too tired from work or school or something to game properly without drifting off; the guy who plays video games instead might be feeling the same way.

[radthemad4]

You're the second DM I was talking about earlier in this thread.I never said I wasn't. Also, I just posted in the IC thread and it's your turn, so go take your surprise round standard action!


It should also be noted that, while gaming is a fun passtime, it can be a really tiring one, especially for those who (like me) are more on the introverted side of things. You have to socialize with people who may or may not be close friends, you have to engage closely (despite the complete absence of logical/narrative structure and often prolonged downtime periods), you might have to deal with complicated mechanics or in-game situations... it's fun, but it's not exactly relaxing. There are plenty of times when I've been too tired from work or school or something to game properly without drifting off; the guy who plays video games instead might be feeling the same way.I feel you. Sometimes after a long day of work I'm too tired to deal with lots of numbers and prefer to do less thought intensive things like video gaming.

[Bartmanhomer]

I never said I wasn't. Also, I just posted in the IC thread and it's your turn, so go take your surprise round standard action!

I feel you. Sometimes after a long day of work I'm too tired to deal with lots of numbers and prefer to do less thought intensive things like video gaming.

I did. Well at least you're still active. :smile:

[RazorChain]

I promise you that as you and your friends get older, and have more control over your lives, ...

... this problem gets worse.

And then it gets better again. I'm reaching that point. The kids grow up

[RedWarlock]

Everyone's situation is different, I have somewhat the inverse situation.

Our gaming friends are a loose collection of people between the ages of 25 and 45. Me and my boyfriend are both in our early 30s, and we usually have plenty of time for the game, but we're also self-employed and have control of our work schedules. There are two ongoing Sunday games we're involved in, an afternoon Star Wars game, and an evening long-term game that is currently *trying* to wrap up an ongoing post-apocalyptic Mutants and Masterminds game, run by my BF. (If he ever gets to finish, I planned on taking over as GM again and running playtests of my extensive homebrew system.)

One player is always available, he's a single 40's warehouse worker, in the evening game. He and I go a long ways back, from another longterm sunday evening game group that reliably ran like clockwork for literally 40 years, long before either of us joined. (We split off due to system disagreements, but we're still all friends.) That group is a mix of young and old, with a backbone of older and semi-retired players.

Three younger players in the evening game are more difficult to schedule for; two are a couple (so always together), dealing with his ex and custody of his kid. (unfortunately, our place for the evening game isn't really kid-suitable, so whenever he has her, they're both no-go.) The other younger player had been fine for a long while, but recently got a job with bad hours that has kept him from gaming for a couple months now.

In the other game, we've had to cancel a handful of times, but they're pretty reliable. Late 20's GM and a mid-30's player, but it's a small group. (the GM's GF had been playing for a while, but her recent absence hasn't inhibited the game otherwise.)

[Aegis J Hyena]

Late to the party but I know your pain. Have had entire GROUPS of people (7 or 8) sign up and NOT ONE SHOWS. Not once, not twice, but three times with no response. Finally I got responses ranging from "I'ma do something else" to "nervous breakdown, institutionalized" to "you're a furry? get lost, bent, and set on fire".

[Pugwampy]

The most important thing in you should do for yourself is to find happiness .

The fond memories of a great day in la la land where the dice keeps chugging out a 20 will last you a lifetime and warm you when your spirits are low and life sucks .

Your job , nagging girlfriend and college exams are short term irritants that scam you into thinking they are important but they leech your time and happyness .

What if this is your only chance and there is nothing beyond this life .

Everyday you spent making someone or something else happy at the cost of your time and happyness is a crime to yourself . Those irritants wont go away , they will come back for more donations from your veins .
And thats before you do get sick which is a real excuse for skipping on Mr DM .

There is a time and place for everything but it should be moulded around DND / Happyness . Take back your time and happyness now is the best time . You might be road kill tomorrow .

[Anonymouswizard]

I've been on both sides of the coin. I was once in a group where someone really wanted to run D&D, but worked so much that she never had the time to prep anything. There was about a 66% chance that we'd show up and there'd be no game (eventually we got her dad, who plays in the group, to run Tunnels and Trolls when she couldn't do D&D, which worked because everyone enjoys an occasional old school game).

Actually I'm technically still part of that group, but as it's term time I can't get to it (which everyone understands).

I also once ran a group which began well, but then people started cancelling literally an hour before the session. Even if they knew several days beforehand I would never know in enough time to prep something balanced (why the encounters were always so easy). Nothing is more annoying than not knowing someone can't make it until about an hour beforehand, unless it's something they can't know earlier (such as a particularly exhausting shift, a sudden fibro-flare [the one I see by far the most], or suddenly having to take care of their kid).

My current group is much better. Via the medium of actually talking to each other we fall into the following routine every year:
Awesome GM: hey guys, I know that you're back at uni and I want to run a game, here are the details.
Us: awesome, looking forward to it.
AGM: when do people want to meet? My wife and I can't do weekends.
Us: Mondays/Wednesdays/Whateverday isn't good for me. We eventually settle on Tuesday or Thursday, likely the latter, as the day where nobody has major commitments.

Then we game every week with a missed session about once a month, but whoever can't make it always informs the others a couple of days in advance so we have time to make other plans. It's by far the most enjoyable group, because it just works out (it doesn't hurt that while we are friends outside of the game).

So my advice for making a group work? Full it full of STEM people who like each other. Just be prepared for them to actually work out how strong you need to be to life the city or whatever crazy thing you plan to do.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah. Welcome to adulthood, I guess. People have to manage their priorities and gaming, as a leisure activity, has to be lower on the totem pole than work and family (and probably a bunch of other things). That's life. The responsible thing to do would be to accept that people can't see the future, they can't always know when something will interrupt their free time, and they usually can't put you before everything else in their life. Try understanding things from someone else's point of view before you go complaining about it on the Internet.

[PotatoGolem]

Try smaller groups- when it's only 3-4 people, it's generally easier to find a time that everyone's free. We've managed to get a game session at least twice a month for over a year in two-man campaigns, despite the three people being a new dad, a guy who was finishing his degree/getting a new job/moving across the state, and an attorney. Worked much better than my older, larger groups

[propheticsteel]

maybe you'd have better luck with 5e DMs?

[Chromat]

To me it's about honesty.

My guess is that everybody's time is equally important. If i make an agreement to DM than time of my players is important as mine. If i cannot honor that agreement than i change the agreement but in a clean way. With clear arguments. I cannot do that because of xyz is more improtant to me.

But as i found where is the will there is the way. I managed to DM through both of my kids first years.

For me it's about respect and clean communication.

[Professor Chimp]

Life gets busy when the loads of free time you have in high school and college fall away and responsibilities like work, family or whatever mount. Fact of life, I guess.

In my current game, which has been ongoing for about 2,5 years now, I've had 11 players come and go. Some couldn't because of work or had kids to worry about. A few moved abroad. Two dropped out because they ended up not liking tabletop rpgs as much as they thought they would. One just stopped coming with no warning. The remaining two are committed and would like to play weekly, but even so, other priorities pop up that delay sessions by 2-3 weeks. I consider this exceptionally successful.

Most groups and campaign I've been a part of never made it past lv5. We often tried getting together again, but things didn't work out, or people lost interest. In one case the games got suddenly cut short when the DM (and older brother of one of our current group's players) committed suicide. That .. certainly didn't help.

[Bartmanhomer]

maybe you'd have better luck with 5e DMs?

What's the differences? :confused:

[ComaVision]

What's the differences? :confused:

Simpler game, simpler to DM, and it's current. It's, presumably, less likely that the DM is going to burn out and there are probably more of them.

[MrStabby]

Simpler game, simpler to DM, and it's current. It's, presumably, less likely that the DM is going to burn out and there are probably more of them.

The more of them part is probably true but i don't know how much simpler helps.

I find DMing takes as much time as I give it. If I have more time more NPCs get backstories, as do magic items etc. and encounters get more complex. When I play 5th my worlds are better and everything connects more and caries more world information/lore simply because i have time for it.

[ComaVision]

The more of them part is probably true but i don't know how much simpler helps.

I find DMing takes as much time as I give it. If I have more time more NPCs get backstories, as do magic items etc. and encounters get more complex. When I play 5th my worlds are better and everything connects more and caries more world information/lore simply because i have time for it.

I play D&D 3.5 and the major barrier for new DMs, in my experience, is they don't feel they know the rules well enough.

[GungHo]

Listen, not all of us have that much free time.

Between jobs, families, dark rituals, making sure we get enough sleep, properly disposing of the bodies, and spending time with the spouse, we just don't always have the proper time to spend on hobbling in a way that will preserve that precious balance of "Unable to escape" but "Alive enough to roll dice".
It's the dark rituals that really take the time. 1d6+2 hours every time.


It's not ''life'' it is ''people''. Short of something like ''my house exploded'' a person can choose to show up and play a game. The problem is people saying (lying) that they want to play the game and then not living up to that. People that can spend 16 hours playing Call of Duty XI:More Awesome 'Splosions but then are like ''dude, I can't make it to the game."
For me, it's usually "my wife exploded". If you don't get that, you're welcome to come sleep next to her, but she's got knives and stuff.

With all seriousness, though, it's a lot easier to spend 16 hours playing CoD (though I'd hit myself with a hammer) than it is playing 6 hours of tabletop, because 16 hours of CoD has one thing that 6 hours of tabletop doesn't have... I can save my game, and it doesn't bother a single damn person in the world. If I'm in a match, I can suicide and log off, and walk the dog and the kid. If I'm playing single player, I can pause and talk to my wife and tell her that yes, I will help clean the bathrooms. Tabletop, though, requires my full, undivided attention, and if I'm not giving it that, I am ruining the game for 5 other people who are staring at me thinking "here he goes again". Furthermore, my time is also at risk of the guy across the table having a similar problem and his wife calling or his work calling or whatever.


You're the second DM I was talking about earlier in this thread.
Oh, you're doing PbP? So, that's another problem on top of the problem that already exists. PbP people don't really exist. That empathy thing about staring across the table and knowing that I'm wasting that person's time is out the window. You're not going to ever be a priority, even if you get along on IRC, snapchat, whatsapp, LINE or whatever it is you kids use.

[Stealth Marmot]

It's the dark rituals that really take the time. 1d6+2 hours every time.


My fault for taking "Skill Focus: Knowledge (Everything unimportant)" instead of "Improved Dark Ritual" which cuts the time to 1d3 hours.

[Grod_The_Giant]

My fault for taking "Skill Focus: Knowledge (Everything unimportant)" instead of "Improved Dark Ritual" which cuts the time to 1d3 hours.
On the plus side, Skill Focus (anything inconsequential) is the prerequisite for posting here.

[Bartmanhomer]

It's the dark rituals that really take the time. 1d6+2 hours every time.


For me, it's usually "my wife exploded". If you don't get that, you're welcome to come sleep next to her, but she's got knives and stuff.

With all seriousness, though, it's a lot easier to spend 16 hours playing CoD (though I'd hit myself with a hammer) than it is playing 6 hours of tabletop, because 16 hours of CoD has one thing that 6 hours of tabletop doesn't have... I can save my game, and it doesn't bother a single damn person in the world. If I'm in a match, I can suicide and log off, and walk the dog and the kid. If I'm playing single player, I can pause and talk to my wife and tell her that yes, I will help clean the bathrooms. Tabletop, though, requires my full, undivided attention, and if I'm not giving it that, I am ruining the game for 5 other people who are staring at me thinking "here he goes again". Furthermore, my time is also at risk of the guy across the table having a similar problem and his wife calling or his work calling or whatever.


Oh, you're doing PbP? So, that's another problem on top of the problem that already exists. PbP people don't really exist. That empathy thing about staring across the table and knowing that I'm wasting that person's time is out the window. You're not going to ever be a priority, even if you get along on IRC, snapchat, whatsapp, LINE or whatever it is you kids use. Yeah I'm playing PbP post in this forum. But at least this current DM is more active.

[tomandtish]

Listen, not all of us have that much free time.

Between ... dark rituals, ... properly disposing of the bodies, and spending time with the spouse, we just don't always have the proper time to spend on hobbling in a way that will preserve that precious balance of "Unable to escape" but "Alive enough to roll dice".

If you consolidate and do a good job with the first two, you don't have to worry about the third anymore. Opened up all sorts of free time for me! :smalltongue: