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Sunday, September 15, 2013

How Often Does Your Group Game?

My RPG group of friends generally plays every Saturday Night via G+ / Roll20, but recently we've had some cancelled nights - the most recent being last night, when I canceled the session due to events on my end.

Still, attempting to get 30 to 50 y/o somethings together on a weekly basis, in face or virtually, is set up for failure. We are no longer college students with responsibilities we can blow off - we now have "adult" responsibilities - it sucks ;)

So, I'm thinking to change things around a bit. I'll run 2 DCC sessions a month, and we'll leave the other Saturday nights open for open gaming - I could run a side game, one of the others could try running something, maybe a game or two of Drinking Quest.

Open game nights would be just that - no harm, no foul if you can't make it (which is why I was asking about RPGs suitable for small groups and easily picked up). It might relieve some of the coordination stress (although admittedly, emergencies come up, as I well know) of folks blocking out every Saturday Night on their calendar.

So, how often does your group get together? Do you use something like "open game nights" to break things up?
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16 comments:

  1. Andy BartlettSeptember 15, 2013 at 2:43 PM

    It ought to be every Tuesday, but other stuff intervenes. I haven't played online, so it requires getting everyone round our dining table.

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  2. SimonSeptember 15, 2013 at 2:45 PM

    My 4e D&D tabletop game is fortnightly. The 1e AD&D online game I GM is weekly. The Labyrinth Lord tabletop game I play in is monthly. Previously I had another 4e game on the alternate fortnight and another monthly game, Pathfinder Beginner Box.

    My policy for tabletop games is to run consistently, never cancel, and not worry if some players can't make it. My 4e game has 6 players, recently down from 7, but I'd run with 3.

    My aproach in online games is fairly similar, but I use text chat and can fit in child care, dinner etc in and around the game. The main thing there is to get home well before the game is due to start, pour a quick glass of Balvenie and I'm good. :) Taking a fairly chilled approach to the actual session, but not cancelling sessions, seems to work best. I only have 3 players in my AD&D campaign now, we started with 6 in late 2011. I'll run with a minimum of 2.

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    Replies
    1. SimonSeptember 15, 2013 at 2:48 PM

      Generally I find short week night games are easier than weekend games. I run the 4e game fortnightly Mondays 7pm-10pm and the online 1e game weekly Wednesdays, also ca 7pm-10pm. I wouldn't be doing anything much with that time otherwise.

      Delete
  3. Gothridge ManorSeptember 15, 2013 at 2:51 PM

    Every Monday night with the occasional cancellation, but overall we are steady with meeting.

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  4. Simon ForsterSeptember 15, 2013 at 2:58 PM

    I manage to play every Monday night, on-line, with age ranges from 30-something to 60-something. My other group plays every other Sunday.

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  5. Doctor FuturitySeptember 15, 2013 at 3:24 PM

    I've kept up a weekly Wednesday group for five years now; we usually skip one week in every six or so, but it's remarkably consistent. My Saturday night group is much, much less consistent and is averaging once a month right now with an ideal bi-weekly target that never gets met anymore.

    On the Wednesday group, I figure out long ago that as long as I can make it, everyone else will show. It's kept at the local game shop, has a set start and end, and remains tightly focused; it ends up attracting 8-10 players a week. If I stopped showing though it would die immediately, no one else is crazy enough to take up the mantle of GM!

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  6. Tom DoolanSeptember 15, 2013 at 3:25 PM

    Every other Friday night, with occasional interruptions. Mainly due to us all being 40-somethings with kids to consider.

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  7. DNAphilSeptember 15, 2013 at 4:35 PM

    Our group plays two different games, run by two different GMs every other week. This way we game every week, but GMs get two weeks to prep.

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  8. Anthony SimeoneSeptember 15, 2013 at 4:53 PM

    We try to meet every Wednesday, but absences can vary (with me being probably the most absent). On nights I am there and ready to run a session, that's when my campaigns move ahead. On nights I am not ready to run something, or on nights when I am not there, there are one or two other peeps who run stuff. I have been frustrated with the slow rate of advancement of late for characters, due to adult sucky responsibilities. That's one of the things I hope to look for in a game system: i.e. an advancement system for characters played by busy adults who don't want to wade through years' worth of typical D&D XP points to get to do cool stuff. It's that and other issues I have that have caused me to have a recent spate of manic commenting over at BX Blackrazor, with regard to JB's efforts to create an RPG.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Keith DaviesSeptember 15, 2013 at 5:29 PM

    To be fair, summer's a bitch to arrange things regularly on weekends to start with, and there's been some personal tumult for a few of us. Yeah, we need to get back on track, but I don't think any of the cancellations was unreasonable -- it's been a shit summer, basically.

    What was our hit rate last summer? I seem to recall there were a few gaps there, too... not as many as this summer, but as I said it's been a weird summer.

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  10. Tim KnightSeptember 15, 2013 at 5:34 PM

    Once a month for us - but we've got it down to a system now (first Tuesday of every month), so we can plan months in advance and it's going well at present. Obviously, I'd love to play more frequently but I realise everyone else has jobs and family commitments to work around.

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  11. Digital OrcSeptember 15, 2013 at 7:42 PM

    Every Monday religiously.

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  12. AnonymousSeptember 15, 2013 at 8:57 PM

    Wednesday nights, cancelling once in a while for DM illness, major holidays, occasional emergencies. I've been DMing almost every session for four years now, but we have had some interludes where other DMed or we did one-shot games, or even boardgames. Weekends are way too committed for us, most have kids and/or wives.

    ReplyDelete
  13. AnonymousSeptember 16, 2013 at 1:28 AM

    Our group plays every Saturday, with an alternating schedule that rotates DMing between myself and another guy, so we only have to DM every other week. He is running a Pathfinder game in Golarion and I am running a homebrew setting with mostly Pathfinder rules. We are a group of 30 to 50 somethings, and we do take weekends off here and there as needed. It works pretty well having that 2 week break between DMing duties.

    ReplyDelete
  14. JDJarvisSeptember 16, 2013 at 7:02 AM

    We are a group of 17 to 63 year olds and we meet almost weekly.Probably get in 40+ sessions a year.

    ReplyDelete

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