“Mature” Gamers, Part 2 is a Save My Game column about running games for 30+ year-old gamers, and it’s full of solid advice.
My current group (ages 25-35) uses suggestion #2 (alternating games), and I’ve put #1 (“Less often doesn’t have to mean less gaming”) to good use myself.
It’s a good article– something I don’t say about many “Save my Game” articles. We also alternate games (though more for variety), and I got the “virtual party” accepted– for experience, if nothing else.
Recaps are a popular topic on your forums– I’m taking them for the campaign we’re currently running, for exactly that reason. The only comment that I’m not so sure I agree with is #1– mostly because we’re local. I do know that you can pick a system with a lot more “accomplishment” or a more strongly episodic system, if you’re willing to deviate from standard D&D.
Thanks for linking to it.
I have been using virtual party/virtual advancement since college. Generally, with a reasonable group, we run non-present PCs as NPCs (if the group is very large, we sometimes don’t do this). Recently, in my D&D (well Arcana Unearthed/Evolved) games, I’ve just given everyone the same XP. All along, I’ve been ready to pump up XP and treasure of anyone who falls way behind (if we’re not NPCing their character for some reason).
Frank
Something you might thing about writing about are games with mixed groups. For example, in the game I’m running, one of the people has never played an RPG before, two of them have very limited experience, and the last player is at least 10 years older than any of them and has dice older than I am.
Scott: Yep, Save My Game isn’t usually my cup of tea, either — I was surprised at how solid this one was.
Frank: The last game I ran that had frequent absences, we had other players run absent PCs. With full disclosure of stats and a social contract that specified little/no in-character secrecy, it worked pretty well. Very similar to what you did, although a bit different.
Ian: Good suggestion! It sounds like you have some excellent insight into that one yourself, though — would you mind shooting me an email so we can chat about it?
(martin(at)treasuretables(dot)org)