What should i do as a DM when players always flake from sessions?

[Salgood]

Im a DM of close to 4 years now and have always just dealt with the fact that people will cancel on sessions especially since ive been running a family campaign for alot of that time that has people canceling before or mid session almost every other session so ive kinda gotten used to it. Now however starting two new campaigns up with two separate groups (family and friend campaigns ill just call them) and ive been putting alot of commitment into dming for both groups and homebrewing a whole world its really been frustrating having someone missing almost every friend campaign and not even being able to start the family campaign cause of constant flaking. Its just really sucked having both groups not really respect my time since i go out of my way alot to do both once per week and losing the ability to plan things the days i have dnd just for to many players to be missing to start the session. What should i do?

[Quertus]

Put ranks in Sense Motive, Diplomacy, and Profession: Psychiatrist. Find out what’s driving all this flakiness. Consider what you can do to make things better: different time / day, less frequent sessions, static vs dynamic time slot, etc.

Or maybe you need to put ranks in Search to find more reliable players.

[Mastikator]

I got this problem too. Players go sick or have to work on the weekend or whatever (one player ate glass for some reason???).

I run shorter quests, one-shots often. 5 room dungeons and the like. Focus on one or two player backstories/stuff at a time, I usually make sure two or three threads are possible and whoever can't show up has their points of interest pushed to the side. If I'm wanting a longer story then I'll put in "checkpoints".

But yeah, it grinds my gears too. (and another thing that grinds my gears, players that constantly change character, I'm sorry but every time you change character I permanently care less about your backstory and goals)

[Simons Mith]

Reorganise to have a pool of adventurers operating from a central point. e.g. they're all members of the same adventurer's guild, all have the same NPC patron etc. If you know that you're not going to get the same subset of players for consecutive sessions, you can plan for it and make allowances, by having the in-game party organised in a way that lets characters appear and vanish from session to session.

But also, be prepared to find new more reliable players. Where the unreliable players are friends, maybe they could show up occasionally as 'guest characters'.

Being reliably unreliable is rude and inconsiderate. At some point you are absolutely entitled to put your foot down. The players need to take the commitment as seriously as they might take, say a biweeky badminton game, or weekly bridge night. You also need to make sure that everyone's expectations are aligned; casual gaming is fine if everyone is happy with casual, but if one player (or GM) wants to take things seriously that causes the problems you've seen. Remember the opposite problem from back in the day - where you had one casual in a pool of reliables - the casual would get kicked out, eventually, because constantly having to cater to them disrupts the game. It's the mismatch that's the problem.

You might have to completely restructure the game; school or college-style weekly sessions simply don't work well once everyone has family commitments.

[KineticDiplomat]

There is a better than even chance that a large part of your "Family" subset does it to humor you and sees it as a mildly tolerable amusement. Much like watching a kids movie with some adult shout outs, yes, you might think it's clever, but most of the time it isn't how you'd have spent your movie if it wasn't for the kids. Cancel the family game.

Go to a low prep system for the friends game. Savage Worlds is one of the more common examples, but there are a whole host of systems these days that don't mercilessly demand hours from umpires and players ahead of the game.

Barring that, consider lowering the rate of play to make each session special, or finding different people to play with.

[Salgood]

There is a better than even chance that a large part of your "Family" subset does it to humor you and sees it as a mildly tolerable amusement. Much like watching a kids movie with some adult shout outs, yes, you might think it's clever, but most of the time it isn't how you'd have spent your movie if it wasn't for the kids. Cancel the family game.

Go to a low prep system for the friends game. Savage Worlds is one of the more common examples, but there are a whole host of systems these days that don't mercilessly demand hours from umpires and players ahead of the game.

Barring that, consider lowering the rate of play to make each session special, or finding different people to play with.

i dont know honestly my dad uncle and cousin are all veteran players ( my dad playing for 25 ish years give or take now) but yeah it does seem that way with two other family members which sucks cause we do have alot of fun when they can make it and they seem like they enjoy it idk tho ill try to talk with them appreciate the advice my dude

[Salgood]

I got this problem too. Players go sick or have to work on the weekend or whatever (one player ate glass for some reason???).

I run shorter quests, one-shots often. 5 room dungeons and the like. Focus on one or two player backstories/stuff at a time, I usually make sure two or three threads are possible and whoever can't show up has their points of interest pushed to the side. If I'm wanting a longer story then I'll put in "checkpoints".

But yeah, it grinds my gears too. (and another thing that grinds my gears, players that constantly change character, I'm sorry but every time you change character I permanently care less about your backstory and goals)

Yeah thats what ive been doing to avoid constant one shots only issue rn is that the two party members that just got put into the limelight ended up heading out of town leading to me resorting back to one shots still great advice tho and ill definetly try and give each character something to work with every session so we can just pick back up on whoevers there atleast as much as i can for the most part barring situations like this where the session was left on a cliff hanger lol

[Salgood]

Reorganise to have a pool of adventurers operating from a central point. e.g. they're all members of the same adventurer's guild, all have the same NPC patron etc. If you know that you're not going to get the same subset of players for consecutive sessions, you can plan for it and make allowances, by having the in-game party organised in a way that lets characters appear and vanish from session to session.

But also, be prepared to find new more reliable players. Where the unreliable players are friends, maybe they could show up occasionally as 'guest characters'.

Being reliably unreliable is rude and inconsiderate. At some point you are absolutely entitled to put your foot down. The players need to take the commitment as seriously as they might take, say a biweeky badminton game, or weekly bridge night. You also need to make sure that everyone's expectations are aligned; casual gaming is fine if everyone is happy with casual, but if one player (or GM) wants to take things seriously that causes the problems you've seen. Remember the opposite problem from back in the day - where you had one casual in a pool of reliables - the casual would get kicked out, eventually, because constantly having to cater to them disrupts the game. It's the mismatch that's the problem.

You might have to completely restructure the game; school or college-style weekly sessions simply don't work well once everyone has family commitments.

With what im planning for this one shot i have today i think i could definetly set up an adventurers league type thing where people could come in and out of that honestly sounds really fun allowing for not to grand story type missions whenever we have flakers i really like this advice thanks alot man. I also definetly will try and have a talk with the players im being more leinent with the friend campaign because theres alot of new players and were pretty fresh into it but will have a talk with the family campaign players sine this has been an issue for months just more annoying now that its starting to happen with a freshly started group aswell lol

[Mastikator]

Another thing you could do is ask if someone else wants to DM, just for a single dungeon/quest, tell them it's not that hard, that it doesn't take that much time or effort, tell them they can do it, tell them sweet lies. Sometimes people need to walk in your shoes before they can empathize.

[Jay R]

In school, we could all pretty much establish that we could all show up every Saturday afternoon, or every Tuesday evening. As adults, we can't do that. We have to schedule each session individually.

My game is all adults, with families and complex schedules. At each session, we all get out our schedules on our phones and go weekend by weekend until we can all find an available time that all six of us can play. Then we add the game to our schedules.

In the last thirteenth months, we've had thirteen sessions. Sometimes they are two weeks apart; sometimes as much as two months. But every player has attended every game.

[MoiMagnus]

Im a DM of close to 4 years now and have always just dealt with the fact that people will cancel on sessions especially since ive been running a family campaign for alot of that time that has people canceling before or mid session almost every other session so ive kinda gotten used to it. Now however starting two new campaigns up with two separate groups (family and friend campaigns ill just call them) and ive been putting alot of commitment into dming for both groups and homebrewing a whole world its really been frustrating having someone missing almost every friend campaign and not even being able to start the family campaign cause of constant flaking. Its just really sucked having both groups not really respect my time since i go out of my way alot to do both once per week and losing the ability to plan things the days i have dnd just for to many players to be missing to start the session. What should i do?

Assuming you're dealing with mature enough peoples, that's the moment where you need to say to them something along the line of:

"You see, I'm getting a little frustrated recently. I'm putting a lot of work for those campaign, both in term of number of hours, and in emotional investments. But we just don't manage to play enough to be worth it. So at some point, you guys need to make a choice:

(1) As a GM, I stop doing preparation. I come, hands in the pocket, expecting to run a campaign where not much get done as I'm just improvising and reacting on your ideas. And if things go stale we'll just get some cards and boardgames.
(2) We're getting serious. Each of you is honest and determine if they're willing to commit to the campaign. If you're not, you'll be playing NPCs or sidekicks the session where you're present, but the main characters will be the regular players."

[Lord Torath]

In school, we could all pretty much establish that we could all show up every Saturday afternoon, or every Tuesday evening. As adults, we can't do that. We have to schedule each session individually.

My game is all adults, with families and complex schedules. At each session, we all get out our schedules on our phones and go weekend by weekend until we can all find an available time that all six of us can play. Then we add the game to our schedules.

In the last thirteenth months, we've had thirteen sessions. Sometimes they are two weeks apart; sometimes as much as two months. But every player has attended every game.This is exceedingly true. My nephew's been running a game for his sister, my kids, and me for about two years now, and I think we've had 10 sessions. Life happens, and as you get older, it seems to happen more often. Of course, it's really been happening all along, but as you get older, you're responsible for handling more of it.

I wish I could tell you it will get better. (It might. It's conceivable that it will get better. But I wouldn't hold my breath) My recommendation would be to run a family campaign with the two who can regularly show up, and have a standing invitation for the others who can't make it as often. They can jump in when they can make it, and when they can't you and the others still get to play. You can decide with them what happens to their PCs when they can't make a session. Maybe they disappear into "hammer space". Maybe they retreat to the cavern entrance and guard the wagon. Maybe the other players get to run them. Maybe you run them as NPCs.

For your friend group, I'd suggest scheduling the next session at the end of the current one. You might not be able to play as often as you want, but that's probably something you're just going to have to get used to going forward. And even then, you will still get the occasional emergency that keeps a player or two from making a session. It sucks, but there's not really that much you can do about it.

[gbaji]

My recommendation is to either put your foot down, and work out scheduling with strong requirements (ie: Everyone buys in to the next game session, puts it on their calendar, commits to it, etc), or you need to avoid having detailed character related stories.

This ties into a few threads on this forum about how or whether to detail backstory for characters and interweave them into the planned adventures. Doing this works great if you have a good sized number of players and they are all committed and are present for every game session. But if you don't have that, then you can get around it by focusing on the adventure/plot instead, and the characters are just who shows up this week to deal with whatever nefarious plots are afoot.

It kinda also depends on what kind of stories/adventures the players are interested in. But my first guess would be that if you have players who are not showing up regularly for game night, then they probably actually don't care that much about the game relating to their own PCs personal history/development. So just don't bother with that. You should be able to scale any encounters for any given game session to which characters are actually present and just move forward with that.

I tend to focus more on the "adventure to stop the current bbeg's evil plot" stuff anyway, so this sort of thing is less impactful. And if it's power/balance that is the concern, then you can have someone else play someone's character if they can't show up (or the GM plays it as an NPC). The only time that just having characters not be present for a given game session is a real problem is if you are in the middle of a dungeon crawl type scenario. Anything else, you can just handwave that they were there, but didn't do anything signifcant, or were on the other side of town buying supplies, or were out watering the goats, or whatever.

But if this is a more broad "I don't feel like my players are as interested in playing as I'd like", then that's maybe something you just need to sit down and talk to them about. The answer to that question could be just about anything.

[RazorChain]

I usually fill up my groups with 6 players because one or two are not going to make it for the next session.

That is my experience running games for almost 35 years for multiple groups.

There often is the unreliable one in the group. You can never predict if they show up or be late
Then there is Mr./Ms. Busy. They are volunteering in a soup kitchen this wednesday, attending rotary group meeting on the thursday and going kayaking in the weekend
Then you have the disinterested one. They come to game if nothing better shows up on their schedule.

And then you have the rest who have their lives to live and can't always prioritize gaming.

[Tanarii]

Never expect Family and Friend games to go past 4 sessions before falling apart. Design them as one-shots, and specify in advance how many sessions you expect them to take.

Also state in advance how a missing person will be handled. In regards to meta (character advancement) and continuity (in-universe presence). I'd also recommend letting them know how many folks can cancel before you scrub the session.

Last resort, stop running friends and family and design an open table persistent world, run it at multiple game stores for a very large group of players (recommend at least 15), and once it is off the ground make the players responsible for planning a session goal and pulling together the characters for it then scheduling the time. :smallamused:

[GameMaster_Phil]

Simons Mith and Tanarii are right on the money here. What you want is an open table. Google West Marches D&D or megadungeon for the general structure. Do not bother about micromanaging or arguing about peoples time, planning or priorities. You will lose that battle. Put yourself into a position where you don't have to worry about peoples time, planning or priorities. Here is what I recommend in addition to the open table:

Set a minimum amount of players you will run for. I play Pathfinder 1e and I set 3 players minimum and then allow them to add 1 or 2 NPCs for the session. Set a game date for yourself and don't ask other people for their calendars. Publish it to your players. If you get 3 people to commit on that date, great. If not, set another date sometime later.

Structure all sessions so that you can add or remove characters at will between sessions: "All sessions must end in Town-upon-Megadungeon". If you bake that into your campaign, you avoid frustration.

All characters start at level 1 when joining, if a character is not playing it will get no XP. No catch-up money, no gear, nothing. Plan your game for a group with different character levels.

Allow people to have multiple characters (but only play one of them per session), so maybe the veterans can level up their backup instead of their level 10 main character when one of the flaky players decides to show up. But tell your players to organise themselves what they want to do during the session (which dungeon to clear, which monster lair to attack etc.) and what characters compose the group. It's their job. Tell them to decide what they want to do 3-7 days (your choice) before the session and stick to it, so you can prepare a better game. Be not afraid of setting deadlines.

The tradeoff of all this is, that it is not possible to play a deep character-focused story-arc type of game. It is more of an emergent story type.

[KorvinStarmast]

Last resort, stop running friends and family and design an open table persistent world, run it at multiple game stores for a very large group of players (recommend at least 15), and once it is off the ground make the players responsible for planning a session goal and pulling together the characters for it then scheduling the time. :smallamused: Emergent stories are a lot less work for a DM. Our friends and family group has been playing since 2014 on line, but we have a large group (7 or 8, but now 5) and almost never do all players show up.

Also, for GameMaster Phil: good advice.
My suggestion for in person dead lines for commitment for a weekly open table game is 48 hours prior. Also, by the time of commitment, the players need to tell you what they want to do. In the old days before email and discord and text, coordinating that was a bit of a pain. Nowadays, the tools are there to have a rough idea of "here's what we'll do" for the DM before the session starts.

I have a current DM who has, for the last six years, posted an RSVP on a forum; if you respond by 48 hours prior, you get 5% XP bonus if you play. Whomever does not show up gets no XP.

[Pex]

First, it doesn't hurt to examine your DMing style. It could be you're not doing anything wrong and a player just doesn't care for your style. You're mutually incompatible, go separate ways, and everyone is happy. Today there are videos on the internet on what to do and what not to as a DM. You're just making sure you aren't being the nightmare DM players complain about.

Let's presume you aren't such a DM. Everything is cool on your part. You're doing everything right. All is well.

Secondly, do not cancel a game session just because one player cannot make it. If you only play when everyone can play you'll never play. The campaign will die. Play the game. Real life happens. Not everyone can make every session. Even if you want to play every week maybe playing every other week is better. This gives people room to schedule around games. If you play on Fridays people might have to do other stuff on a Friday. If you play every other Friday they can do Friday stuff on non-game nights.

Thirdly, people who want to play will play. I had a player on vacation join in a session sitting at the airport in Australia waiting for his flight home. He's on vacation again in Australia playing. Sometimes a player can't play a session. All legit, real life is happening he can't make a session or two. All good. Play without him. He'll play when his current life interference goes away in a week or two. However, if this is constantly happening the player doesn't really want to play. Let him go. Don't count on him being there. If he's ghosting you let him. You're not doing anything wrong. For whatever reason he isn't liking the game/you or finds something else more important/fun. Keep playing with everyone else.

[gbaji]

Secondly, do not cancel a game session just because one player cannot make it. If you only play when everyone can play you'll never play. The campaign will die. Play the game. Real life happens. Not everyone can make every session. Even if you want to play every week maybe playing every other week is better. This gives people room to schedule around games. If you play on Fridays people might have to do other stuff on a Friday. If you play every other Friday they can do Friday stuff on non-game nights.

This. We have a regular weekly game. We do occasionaly cancel, but that's usually because multiple people have some sort of event/thing going on (about 2/3rds of this group are all involved in another social activity together which occasionally conflicts witih our game night). As a general rule, if just one player can't make it, we just continue, and make do.

I would also strongly suggest that even if too many players can't make a session to continue the current RPG, just play something else for that session. Gaming is a social activity. Yeah. We've got our regular campaign going on, but we like to get together for other stuff to (occasional barbeques in the summer too). Pull out Talisman, or Arkham, or Wizards, or Munckin, or whatever, and spend the evening playing that instead. Heck. I sometimes look forward to getting the text from our host saying "We're down two players, and we're about to enter the <major combat of DOOM(tm)>, up for board games instead?".

[SunsetWaraxe]

One idea is to figure out why people are being flakey. Are they actually busy or are they just not wanting to play? Not much you can do about the former. Adulting is lame and often wrecks havoc on schedules (especially once players have kids & families of their own). You can, however, do a lot about the latter, once you find out why they do not feel motivated to play every week. Altering how you run adventures to better suit the players' varied interests is a sure fire way to fix this issue. :smallsmile:

For myself, I typically run an in-person campaign with 6 players and a DM. I have told my players, so long as I can get 3 players to show up, I will DM. So, do not worry about 1 or 2 people missing out. That is just life, sometimes. :smallsmile:

Another idea would be to end both campaigns and then switch to a West Marches style campaign. You will DM for whoever shows up on the day(s) when you play. With a large pool of players, you will likely have a full table each time you play.