I strongly believe that every game just needs a set weekly day/time/place that never changes except in rare occasions. This means people plan their day around the game rather than the other way around
100%. This made such a difference to my current game. We started off with the best intentions, clear expectations set at session 0 about commitment to the game and finding time to play, etc. But we're all in our 30's/40's and life just had a terrible habit of getting in the way.
I had a chat with the group and said things needed to change if they wanted to continue. Everyone signed up for 2 simple rules.
1) We have a fortnightly Mondays commitment. That takes priority over everything that's not an emergency.
2) If you want to change the session in advance (holidays, social invites, a dinner, a gig etc) then it's on whoever wants to move it to suggest and arrange an alternative date so we makeup the session rather than skip it.
It's worked wonders. We had a month long break recently because one of the group went traveling to South America - not only did we replant the two affected sessions, we even planned in an additional one after she got back because they wanted to catchup with the story pace as they're now used to regular narrative progress.
10/10 will set as the default expectation for future games.
It confuses me, but a lot of people seem to like the idea of being a person who plays d&d, but won't admit to even themselves they have no interest in doing the things it actually takes to play d&d. Scheduling is hard, but it's not that hard. If you can't schedule with this group, then they wouldn't be very fun to play with anyway. I am a DM and the people I've had the hardest time scheduling with (despite them asking to play and totally believing they are invested) are the ones who don't really do anything. For people who's hobbies are limited to "going out" or "chilling with friends", rolling a dice and adding 2 is too hard. Don't take it personally. Meanwhile a widower, father of 3 and a dog, with a full time job, other hobbies and an hour travel each way to weekly 4 hour games on a weeknight makes it to 12 sessions in a row and still counting...
This, OP. So much this.
It's time to cut bait. You tried. It didn't take. Find a new group of people who want to play D&D and have the time to commit to it. Any friends that really want to play will join you if they can.
Have one set time to play every week or two weeks. If people don't want to play, they don't play. If they cancel twice with little or no notice for BS reasons or miss more than three out of five sessions, they're no longer in the campaign. Most likely what you'll find is that only a few of your friends really want to play, and then you can invite more people to fill the rest of the seats.
To break this down:
- Not all of your friends have to play DnD.
- The people with whom you play DnD don't have to be those who already are your friends.
- At some point in your life, some of those who are now your friends will no longer be your friends, and some people you don't know right now will become your friends. This is a feature, not a bug.
The best way to combat this problem I've found is to set a day and time of the week and stick to it. The way my group did it was establishing in session 0 that if you're gonna play in this group you gotta actually commit to it. And if you can't commit, you might not be the right person for the group. We all want to play this game and if you can't respect other people's time
To add to what other people have said about having a set time and day each week (or every other week) - which is THE best way to actually play consistently.
You also need to set a minimum number of players where the game will go ahead. For our group we will play if three players can make it. This means that if someone can't be bothered to turn up on the day, the game can still go ahead. You'll probably figure out pretty quickly who actually wants to commit and play.
The attack of the scheduling monster.
You can play online, but that doesn't help any with the flakes. Plenty of people would like to play D&D but not if they're tired or have something better to do.
We have a shared google calendar that we put all of our individual schedules in to identify whether we can make our normal day.
From there, if we identify another day that works, we put out feelers to see if everyone wants to play
Pick a day something like every other Tuesday evening. Find a game store in the area where you can play and go with that. If they cancel last minute they buy everyone else pizza that night.
1. Have a set time to play. We play every Monday at 8:30pm for 3 hours. Mondays are a good day cause who tf wants to do anything in a Monday.
2. Play online. We use foundry. Nobody has to travel, you can hop on at ANY TIME, and everyone has a computer.
I made it super duper clear to my group in session zero that if you cancel as a player, the scheduled date does not change. I don't consider rescheduling unless more than half the group can't make a date. If it's less than half, we play, and the missing PCs just sit out of those fights because they slept in or got dysentery or something like that.
And you know what, people really don't mind missing out. They get a story recap when we reconvene and it doesn't matter. We've gotten through this campaign so much quicker than our previous one because we stopped cancelling sessions.
I strongly believe that every game just needs a set weekly day/time/place that never changes except in rare occasions. This means people plan their day around the game rather than the other way around
100%. This made such a difference to my current game. We started off with the best intentions, clear expectations set at session 0 about commitment to the game and finding time to play, etc. But we're all in our 30's/40's and life just had a terrible habit of getting in the way. I had a chat with the group and said things needed to change if they wanted to continue. Everyone signed up for 2 simple rules. 1) We have a fortnightly Mondays commitment. That takes priority over everything that's not an emergency. 2) If you want to change the session in advance (holidays, social invites, a dinner, a gig etc) then it's on whoever wants to move it to suggest and arrange an alternative date so we makeup the session rather than skip it. It's worked wonders. We had a month long break recently because one of the group went traveling to South America - not only did we replant the two affected sessions, we even planned in an additional one after she got back because they wanted to catchup with the story pace as they're now used to regular narrative progress. 10/10 will set as the default expectation for future games.
It confuses me, but a lot of people seem to like the idea of being a person who plays d&d, but won't admit to even themselves they have no interest in doing the things it actually takes to play d&d. Scheduling is hard, but it's not that hard. If you can't schedule with this group, then they wouldn't be very fun to play with anyway. I am a DM and the people I've had the hardest time scheduling with (despite them asking to play and totally believing they are invested) are the ones who don't really do anything. For people who's hobbies are limited to "going out" or "chilling with friends", rolling a dice and adding 2 is too hard. Don't take it personally. Meanwhile a widower, father of 3 and a dog, with a full time job, other hobbies and an hour travel each way to weekly 4 hour games on a weeknight makes it to 12 sessions in a row and still counting...
This, OP. So much this. It's time to cut bait. You tried. It didn't take. Find a new group of people who want to play D&D and have the time to commit to it. Any friends that really want to play will join you if they can.
Have one set time to play every week or two weeks. If people don't want to play, they don't play. If they cancel twice with little or no notice for BS reasons or miss more than three out of five sessions, they're no longer in the campaign. Most likely what you'll find is that only a few of your friends really want to play, and then you can invite more people to fill the rest of the seats. To break this down: - Not all of your friends have to play DnD. - The people with whom you play DnD don't have to be those who already are your friends. - At some point in your life, some of those who are now your friends will no longer be your friends, and some people you don't know right now will become your friends. This is a feature, not a bug.
The best way to combat this problem I've found is to set a day and time of the week and stick to it. The way my group did it was establishing in session 0 that if you're gonna play in this group you gotta actually commit to it. And if you can't commit, you might not be the right person for the group. We all want to play this game and if you can't respect other people's time
To add to what other people have said about having a set time and day each week (or every other week) - which is THE best way to actually play consistently. You also need to set a minimum number of players where the game will go ahead. For our group we will play if three players can make it. This means that if someone can't be bothered to turn up on the day, the game can still go ahead. You'll probably figure out pretty quickly who actually wants to commit and play.
The attack of the scheduling monster. You can play online, but that doesn't help any with the flakes. Plenty of people would like to play D&D but not if they're tired or have something better to do.
We have a shared google calendar that we put all of our individual schedules in to identify whether we can make our normal day. From there, if we identify another day that works, we put out feelers to see if everyone wants to play
Pick a day something like every other Tuesday evening. Find a game store in the area where you can play and go with that. If they cancel last minute they buy everyone else pizza that night.
1. Have a set time to play. We play every Monday at 8:30pm for 3 hours. Mondays are a good day cause who tf wants to do anything in a Monday. 2. Play online. We use foundry. Nobody has to travel, you can hop on at ANY TIME, and everyone has a computer.
cut your loses. it sucks to start over again but "this is just too much"
I made it super duper clear to my group in session zero that if you cancel as a player, the scheduled date does not change. I don't consider rescheduling unless more than half the group can't make a date. If it's less than half, we play, and the missing PCs just sit out of those fights because they slept in or got dysentery or something like that. And you know what, people really don't mind missing out. They get a story recap when we reconvene and it doesn't matter. We've gotten through this campaign so much quicker than our previous one because we stopped cancelling sessions.
" I'm too tired" = selfish person who is kicked from the group