Quote from: Emperor Norton;755916Eh, mine is more that if you have 5 adults that all have schedules that allow you to schedule the same time every week, without fail, you have much nicer daily schedules than my group does.

One has a variable schedule at work, two of my players have near opposite M-F schedules (one is 9a-5p, the other is 3p-10a) so our games are on the weekends, another has an autistic son and has to miss games occasionally due to that. I'm actually the one person who has a really super flexible schedule (I work from home and have tasks and deadlines rather than set hours), and even I have to bow out of games occasionally if a big project deadline is coming up.

Yeah, not everyone's group looks like mine, that is no doubt. But it isn't through lack of desire to play, and it isn't due to lack of commitment. Its just that work and family come first, and the specific commitments we have to work and family are a lot harder to plan around than some people's are.

I clear a date, say Monday nights, and say "I'm running this game fortnightly on Mondays 7pm-10pm. Who wants to play?" Then people who can meet that schedule sign up to play that game, and people who can't, don't. Players occasionally have to miss sessions, that's ok if they let me know in advance.
As GM I don't cancel* sessions. My wife is responsible for childcare on Monday nights and Thursday nights, just like I am on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. I give the game the same priority I do work, I plan around it, I'll make sure my work deadlines don't stop me running the game. So only a serious (eg) medical emergency would stop it.

*I once recently provisionally scheduled an extra game on a Tuesday (Monday the pub was shut for Bank Holiday) and had to cancel that. Never cancelled a regular scheduled Monday session in 3.5 years of my current game.

Edit: Actually this Monday I had a massive work deadline, had to work till 6.55pm, and was 15 minutes late to my 7pm game. First time that's ever happened.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;755921If you have a game group of 5, you'll regularly get 3 of them showing up.

When they are young and have not much else to do, they're disorganised so miss sessions. When they're older and busy, they're organised but busy, so miss sessions. So whatever the age of the players, whatever their lifestyles, people will miss sessions.

This is why you have more people in your game group than you actually want, it's rare they'll all show up each time.

If you have 2 players, when one's absent things are a bit intimate.
3, the one absent is too often the one tying the other 2 together, and it's easy to end up with just 1 person there.
4 players is good, at least 2 will show up.
5 players is better, at least 3 will show up, though it might be different ones each week, there'll usually be at least 1 player's worth of overlap between sessions giving you some continuity, and if all 5 come it'll still work well.
6+ players gives you a lot of slack for missing players, but it's big enough that if everyone shows up this week it's pretty busy, and players may feel disengaged so that when you have just 3 next week, things are a bit flat.

This is why I've long found 5 to be a good number to have in a game group and then stick to the rule of - the game must go on. We play with whoever shows up.

This is true, although my players are a bit more reliable - with 5 players we have 5 there maybe 60% of the time. I expect to run with 3+, and I might run with 2 depending on the game. Until recently I had 7 players and that was too many for high level 4e when everyone turns up, around half the time. I like 5 players for most campaigns; my Pathfinder one has 4 and we always get at least 3 show, so that's fine.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;755916But it isn't through lack of desire to play, and it isn't due to lack of commitment. Its just that work and family come first, and the specific commitments we have to work and family are a lot harder to plan around than some people's are.

I don't think it's a bad thing that your gaming is a lower priority than your work and family. But it is possible to set them all as equivalent commitments - obviously if your child is in a serious accident then you'll have to cancel your game, but there are plenty of regular family commitments that aren't inherently more important. Your child's leisure activities and your own leisure activities have much the same inherent importance afaics, and if you have a wife/partner then you can block off days when she is responsible, just as there are days when you're responsible. On Mondays my wife is responsible for childcare; if she can't fulfil her commitment for some reason then she hires a babysitter (with my money).

Quote from: Emperor Norton;755916Eh, mine is more that if you have 5 adults that all have schedules that allow you to schedule the same time every week, without fail, you have much nicer daily schedules than my group does.

One has a variable schedule at work, two of my players have near opposite M-F schedules (one is 9a-5p, the other is 3p-10a) so our games are on the weekends, another has an autistic son and has to miss games occasionally due to that. I'm actually the one person who has a really super flexible schedule (I work from home and have tasks and deadlines rather than set hours), and even I have to bow out of games occasionally if a big project deadline is coming up.

Yeah, not everyone's group looks like mine, that is no doubt. But it isn't through lack of desire to play, and it isn't due to lack of commitment. Its just that work and family come first, and the specific commitments we have to work and family are a lot harder to plan around than some people's are.

Yes, I agree with that.

Hell, I have trouble even taking vacation days because about half the time I get pulled into an emergency and/or regular work because of illness or whatever, and my team is perpetually understaffed because it's cheaper that way.

So when I hear people who get together at the same time weekly for years for something, whether it an RPG or for a night at the bar having drinks and watching the game, that's a foreign thing to me.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;755958Yes, I agree with that.

Hell, I have trouble even taking vacation days because about half the time I get pulled into an emergency and/or regular work because of illness or whatever, and my team is perpetually understaffed because it's cheaper that way.

So when I hear people who get together at the same time weekly for years for something, whether it an RPG or for a night at the bar having drinks and watching the game, that's a foreign thing to me.

I'm thinking it could be a public sector/private sector thing - 9-5 jobs in the private sector are getting pretty rare these days. Public sector jobs tend to be a lot more stable I think, and either less demanding, or at least the high-demand periods are more predictable.

Yeah, I think the issue isn't so much a gamer finding a night every week to play RPGs, but getting five adults to find the same night every week to play RPGs.

Quote from: Haffrung;756088Yeah, I think the issue isn't so much a gamer finding a night every week to play RPGs, but getting five adults to find the same night every week to play RPGs.

I don't know.  I know people who have card gaming get togethers where the four people involved haven't missed a single card game night in 20 years.

I know people who always get together on Sundays during NFL season and watch football all day, without fail.

I've known people who got together every Saturday morning to play football or baseball during the summer.

They didn't have any problem committing.  It's only gamers who mysteriously have "emergencies" and more pressing engagements on game nights.  It tells me they really don't want to be gaming, and that gaming is just something they do to fill time until they can do something they actually want to do.

I guess that's a gamer to me.  You game because you want to.  You game because you find it important enough to spend your time on regardless of other options.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;755921If you have a game group of 5, you'll regularly get 3 of them showing up.

When they are young and have not much else to do, they're disorganised so miss sessions. When they're older and busy, they're organised but busy, so miss sessions. So whatever the age of the players, whatever their lifestyles, people will miss sessions.

This is why you have more people in your game group than you actually want, it's rare they'll all show up each time.

If you have 2 players, when one's absent things are a bit intimate.
3, the one absent is too often the one tying the other 2 together, and it's easy to end up with just 1 person there.
4 players is good, at least 2 will show up.
5 players is better, at least 3 will show up, though it might be different ones each week, there'll usually be at least 1 player's worth of overlap between sessions giving you some continuity, and if all 5 come it'll still work well.
6+ players gives you a lot of slack for missing players, but it's big enough that if everyone shows up this week it's pretty busy, and players may feel disengaged so that when you have just 3 next week, things are a bit flat.

This is why I've long found 5 to be a good number to have in a game group and then stick to the rule of - the game must go on. We play with whoever shows up.

I have generally found this to be the case.

Quote from: Gabriel2;756095I don't know.  I know people who have card gaming get togethers where the four people involved haven't missed a single card game night in 20 years.

I know people who always get together on Sundays during NFL season and watch football all day, without fail.

I've known people who got together every Saturday morning to play football or baseball during the summer.

They didn't have any problem committing.  It's only gamers who mysteriously have "emergencies" and more pressing engagements on game nights.  It tells me they really don't want to be gaming, and that gaming is just something they do to fill time until they can do something they actually want to do.

I guess that's a gamer to me.  You game because you want to.  You game because you find it important enough to spend your time on regardless of other options.

I have seen the behavior in pretty much every hobby or activity I have been involved in. There are people who show up regularly and those who are less consistent (for a wide variety of reasons). If you are part of that core group of consistent attendees the best thing to do is not make the activity itself contingent on the presence of the inconsistent people. If it is a competetive activity that is a bit different. Since the inconsistent people will hurt your performance come game day.

At the end of the day, while I would like for everybody to make it to the game, it is just a game, and i don't want people putting strain on their work or marriage to attend if something they need to attend to comes up. I'll have fun whether it is six people or four people. I know some guys for example who have jobs where they may suddenly have to write a proposal on game night and it is a choice between attending or not completing a major project. It can come up on occassion and I am not going to lecture someone who can't make it for that kind of reason.

... Its amazing that people don't realize that not everyone does a M-F 9-5 job. Yeah, if everyone in your group is a 9-5er, or has a consistent schedule that leaves a specific time open, its not that hard to have a consistent event every week.

Not everyone has that. Some people's schedules are different every week, sometimes you have multiple players with very conflicting schedules that makes hunting a time they are all off really difficult.

Even my schedule, which is usually very flexible, has times where not only is it not, but I work ridiculous numbers of hours in one week. I literally worked 40 hours straight once during a product release (I work in online marketing). And you know, I can't tell them to change the release date of a multimillion dollar product because I have a D&D game.

(Hell, even my games with my kids are on hold for the next couple of weeks because of summer camps, and that is the easiest of games to get organized)

I'm currently on hiatus. It was about 6 weeks since my last game. Until I get settled (sometime in August), I probably won't have a regular game.

I almost exclusively GM. Rarely, I will play, usually to try out a new game, or at a convention for fun, or with a couple GMs I enjoy playing with.

My hope is to start up a group sometime in Aug - Sept with a setting of my own creation.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;756122I have seen the behavior in pretty much every hobby or activity I have been involved in. There are people who show up regularly and those who are less consistent (for a wide variety of reasons)

I'm a personal trainer, and people have payments for the sessions going out regularly. If they fail to show without notice, they just lose the session - and thus the money. It's exactly equivalent to buying a pizza, standing there with your money in hand, and then when they're about to give you the pizza, you just drop the money on the floor and walk away without a pizza.

Clients in general will fail to show for sessions 1 in 6 times. But that's the overall rate, in practice if you've 10 clients, 3-4 will show up even with a broken arm and a fever, 3-4 will be there only 1 time in 3 (these tend to quit after a couple of months), and the other 2-3 are there the average 5 times in 6.

As well, in both this and my previous career I've been involved in hiring people, and about 1 in 4 people simply don't show up to their job interview. And 1 in 4 people who get hired don't show up to sign up. In both cases they're never heard from again.

So I also don't think this is something only gamers do. Even when they'll actually lose money or a job opportunity (ie chance to make money), they still flake out. And what you find is that this is an individual character trait, the person who flakes out on rpg sessions is late to work, forgets to do the shopping, and so on. Some people just have their shit together, some don't.

I'm only ordinarily well-organised, I make 5 sessions in 6, unless I'm hosting then it's 6/6

Quote from: Gabriel2;756095I don't know.  I know people who have card gaming get togethers where the four people involved haven't missed a single card game night in 20 years.

I know people who always get together on Sundays during NFL season and watch football all day, without fail.

I've known people who got together every Saturday morning to play football or baseball during the summer.

They didn't have any problem committing.  It's only gamers who mysteriously have "emergencies" and more pressing engagements on game nights.  It tells me they really don't want to be gaming, and that gaming is just something they do to fill time until they can do something they actually want to do.

I guess that's a gamer to me.  You game because you want to.  You game because you find it important enough to spend your time on regardless of other options.

do you think there is a degree of spousal approval here?

I mean poker night, football night, baseball games are all more generally socially acceptable than "playing elves with your geeky friends" so if you have to cancel something the more political thing is elf night?

I don't have that problem. I never ever miss a session and by that I mean in the last 35 years if I said I was going to be at a session I would be there.
 
Here in Sing we play bi weekly on Sundays because work sucks up all the free time M-F til about 11pm til midnight most nights. In a year I think we have cancelled 3 or 4 sessions because of people being out of the country or away. I have 4 regular players all of whom were new to RPGs a year ago. A few other players have come and gone.

i play in a (more or less) weekly warhammer game plagued by cancellations and delays and i judge weekly (more than less) DCC game that will soon be plagued by scheduling conflict with a pathfinder campaign two of my players are involved with. pf GM is back from a prolonged trip and i presume they will be trying to catch up. i'll have to think something up for the rest of us to do. but yes, it is quite rare for me not to chuck dice at least once a week.

Quote from: Gabriel2;756095I don't know.  I know people who have card gaming get togethers where the four people involved haven't missed a single card game night in 20 years.

I know people who always get together on Sundays during NFL season and watch football all day, without fail.

I've known people who got together every Saturday morning to play football or baseball during the summer.

They didn't have any problem committing.  It's only gamers who mysteriously have "emergencies" and more pressing engagements on game nights.  It tells me they really don't want to be gaming, and that gaming is just something they do to fill time until they can do something they actually want to do.

I guess that's a gamer to me.  You game because you want to.  You game because you find it important enough to spend your time on regardless of other options.

Yeah I'm not giving mad respect to anyone who prioritizes the Jets vs the Packers or bridge or D&D over their kids first soccer game.  What you call commitment I call lame.

Sure I'll miss an event of my family's on occasion but I'll miss or be late to a game more often.