I’ve heard rumors of an elusive, mythical creature: gaming groups that actually meet on a consistent, reliable schedule over a period of years. The legend says that they always meet on the same day, at the same time, and usually at the same place. I’m not sure such a thing actually exists, but I’m more than a little envious if it does. Every gaming group I’ve been part of since the end of college has difficulty with that whole ‘regular game night’ thing. I’ve been lucky with my current group as far as longevity goes, but we’ve had difficulty keeping a regular schedule each month.
In the beginning, when everything was fresh and new, we were getting together every Friday without fail. Then, steadily, ‘real life’ crept in. There was work, both old and new, sometimes with conflicting schedules. There were kids for some of us and various other obligations for everyone. Eventually, apathy also crept in and it could be a couple of months before we got together to play. On top of this, we were having issues keeping a single campaign going for any length of time. Something had to be done if the gaming group was to survive. I had fought hard enough to find a good group of players that I wasn’t about to let it die. I stepped in and became the group’s Event Planner.
It’s a job that anyone in the group can pick up and run with, but many players will look to their GM for organization and guidance on the group’s schedule. As it turns out, sometimes the organization a GM has to do goes beyond just the game prep. Occasionally, the job is going to fall into your lap and you’ll end up in charge. It’s not always easy, but it’s sometimes necessary to ensure the health of a gaming group.
It’s not for nothing that several friends often refer to the duty of organizing gamers as ‘herding cats’. Luckily for all of us GMs and organizational types, there are plenty of ways to manage a group’s planning:
Google is about as ubiquitous as can be in this digital age, so it’s highly likely that most of your players have a Google account. This gives access to Google Calendar which is a pretty handy app to use, both personally and for groups. It’s pretty easy to set up a calendar and share it with other people via their Google account. In addition to being able to put events down in the calendar, you can also put reminders in them to send people e-mails a certain amount of time ahead of an event.
I’ve been part of a couple of groups that have used Google Calendar to keep track of game nights and potential conflicts. For my current group, I try and put down potential game dates far enough in advance that we can accommodate any conflicts that come up. People with access can put in their own events as well. I always make sure to include any gaming conventions on the schedule so even the folks that aren’t as addicted to them as I am have a chance to attend.
E-mail Chains
Not everyone is that into Google (don’t tell them, they’ll be heartbroken), but even the most Luddite of Luddites should still have an e-mail address. Even if die hard grognards would prefer carrier pigeon, you can probably talk them into checking their e-mail once in a while. An e-mail chain can be used to discuss potential dates, determine who’s hosting, or even just remind everyone that a previously agreed upon date is coming up.
Even with using Google Calendar, my group still needs the occasional reminder of the dates we’ve decided to play. The e-mail chain lets us talk about plans for that specific night in a pretty easy to use format. We decide everything from what we’re doing for dinner, to who’s hosting the game that night, to who’s actually running something that night.
Facebook offers another pretty slick alternative to coordinating via their groups feature. It’s quite simple to set up a group, make it private and invite only the members of your gaming group. The group allows easy communication between everyone and also gives the opportunity to share outside links or other information. Of course, the drawback is that it’s Facebook. Not everyone is a fan and the way Facebook feeds info to its users can be fairly arcane. Alternatively you could use Google+ and I’m sure there’s even a way to use Twitter (Twitter scares me, though, so I don’t know for sure).
While my current group doesn’t use a Facebook group, I have some extended groups of con friends that use Facebook groups to good effect, helping coordinate our occasional meet-ups or making our con schedules work for maximum socialization.
Each gaming group is going to be different, so make sure to find the method that fits for your group. Never let the gaming fade into apathy! Do you have any suggestions on other methods to use?
We used to use Email chains exclusively until about a month ago, when one of our players introduced us to doodle.com, which we’ve found to be the perfect tool for scheduling sessions on a weekly basis.
I’ll have to check that one out. It seems like a pretty cool tool.
Our campaign has met around 65 times and we’re on our second calendar year now. A private Facebook group is the glue that keeps us on task and communicating well together. I’ve learned how to co-opt the innate features to create a campaign blog of sorts. It’s not as slick as Obsidian Portal, but the utilitarian interface of a Facebook group serves our purposes.
Since I use Evernote for most of my campaign management, it’s easy enough to just drop a note into a File or Album on FB, depending on the type of content.
Also, the inertia of working through Pathfinder’s Jade Regent helps to keep us playing. There’s a sense of “Let’s see this thing out” in our group.
I know a Facebook group is a godsend to my out-of-town gaming friends and coordinating cons and other such events.
Doodle: http://doodle.com/en/
I love it. Not for luddites I guess, but it lets you keep track of when everyone is available and suggest alternate meeting times.
You are the second to advocate that. I’m definitely going to have to check it out.
I recommend meetup.com. I started a meetup group about a year ago called Over the Hill Gamers. Meetup takes care of all of the organizational issues — scheduling, sending out email reminders, communication between player and gm, etc. Players can go out to the site to check out when sessions are and sign up for them. I also implemented an attendance policy that basically lets people know that reliability is important so don’t be a no show or cancel out at the last minute. People who are consistently unreliable are just not invited back. The other nice thing about meetup is that we get a constant stream of interested new gamers. The end result is that I’ve gone from playing only infrequently with my past group to now playing weekly with a reliable, available, fun group of people. I haven’t had this much fun gaming since high school — a very long time ago.
High School and College were the bonanza of gaming for me. 🙂 And that was also a very long time ago.
My gaming group has been playing regularly (save for a few months here and there) for a little over five years now. When we started out, I made the mistake of trying to herd everyone’s schedules early on and it was a nightmare. To the point that scheduling games quickly became the primary reason I was ready to end our campaign.
Turns out, adults are busy people (who knew?). Trying to make things work with complicated schedules might work if your group is a bunch of super communicative, responsible, consistent individuals, but assuming they’re not all equally awesome at being organized, this will eventually break down. Finding a player that communicates quickly, thoroughly and well in advance of gaming nights AND has a consistent work schedule and never has to pick up odd shifts at the last minute AND plans other events with gaming in mind AND doesn’t have anything else that could crop up last minute on a regular basis is hard to find. Finding 4-8 of them is exponentially more difficult.
What I ended up doing after our first year or two of this, was to stop accommodating anyone but myself. With rare exception, I picked a schedule that I could stick to consistently (every other week on Saturday evenings, in my case). That choice was informed by other players’ schedules, but making it consistent means everyone always knew when it was going to happen. Player A knew the date would never shift because Player B planned a movie night that night so the game got rescheduled to another night that Player A had something else planned on already because we weren’t supposed to be gaming that night.
Sometimes that means a player is shit out of luck. They can’t make it because of work, surprise events, choosing to do something else on the same night, etc. In some campaigns (fortunately not mine, but in another that I play in and gave similar advice to the GM struggling with scheduling issues there), that means a player with a wildly fluctuating schedule might miss a lot of games, or be effectively cut out of game entirely.
Any downsides to the rigid schedule are VASTLY exceeded by the upside and the reduced stress. I can’t recommend it nearly enough. Of course, if the GM is the one with the wildly fluctuating schedule who can’t make a single night consistently…
Besides having a consistent schedule, I also make use of all three of the methods you mentioned above as well as texting. Theoretically, the players should be able to know we will meet every other week, but you’d be surprised how many people forget! Some people are also quicker and more consistent about using one method of scheduling than others, so I’ve settled on using multiple methods of communicating the same messages. Its redundant for the most “responsible” members of the group, but I’ve reduced the “I forgot game was tonight!” issue to less than 5% of the time, so it’s working well enough.
My method is to schedule games months in advance (which I can do since I have a rigid, every other week schedule). I then send out a list of those dates by email AND post them to Google Calandar (which also sends them emails). At the end of game, I TELL everyone when the next game will be. I often send an after game email and post to a Facebook group created for the game in the following day or two which thanks them for playing, comments on what is coming up next and reiterates the date. A few days out, I send another email, post to the group and send a mass text to the group reminding them of the upcoming game. The day of I usually send another text to the group to remind them of game that night.
A whole bunch of effort… but it works. Now that I write it all out, it seems like there has to be an app that would automate this entire process for me. 😉
It does amaze me how often people can forget stuff like a regularly scheduled game night. It’s one of the reasons why I stepped up to organize my group.
And you’re right. There’s got to be an app for that. 🙂
I’ll second that regular, standing meetings are better than trying to find times that meet everyone’s schedule week to week.
My group tried the standing meeting, and it worked in the beginning, but after a few years, it began getting stale and we were missing more often than we were hitting when it came to actually gaming.
It’s awesome when it works, though.
I’ve had more luck with a fixed night like the Bishop and Christopher mention above, though when you do have to cancel it’s annoying to increase the delay between sessions to a month.
The predictability makes it easier to plan more than a few weeks out for all of the other things in life; people respect, “That’s my meetup night” and understand it’s like “bowling league night”. So, sometimes, other events get rescheduled around gaming, instead of gaming always getting the scraps that are left.
I totally agree with fixed, regular times. They either work for people or they don’t. We play every Sunday from 10am to 2:30. It works great for our regulars but there are people who will never be able to make it at that time. For them we have every other Thursday night!
Having multiple games is fantastic. I think it helps out a lot in larger groups too, since having too many players can drag a game out.
I also do a “fixed” schedule, but I’ll move the fixed schedule if someone can no longer meet any of the games and another night works just as well for the other players.
To make this work for me, I have too many players. Some make every game, some show up now and then, and most make most of the games. I never have to cancel a game due to lack of players, because I view 3 players as a quorum. I have 6 players, but rarely see more than 5 at one time. 4 or 5 is the usual turnout.
Different systems might work with a different number of minimum and maximum number of players. 3 – 6 works fine for me with most games.
We use a Yahoo group. I have our game on the group calendar, and everyone gets “Nag mail” 3 and 1 days before the game as a reminder to RSVP and show up.
Besides the calendar with reminder emails, a Yahoo group has a forum for players to discuss the campaign and do write ups of the previous adventure (for xp!). Write ups help those to missed the game stay in the loop. There are places for pictures and links, also useful.
I’ve tried Google Groups, but they don’t connect with Google Calendars. Go figure.
I’ve tried Meetup, and they charge the organizer $72 every six months. I will say they do great SEO and lots of people find you when they search for games in your area. It also has forums and places for pictures and what not. If your group wants to spring for it, it’s a great tool.
I found if I threatened to quit Meetup over cost, they lowered the price to $36 for six months. I then found out the same trick didn’t work twice. 🙂
Another thought on a fixed schedule is to have a slightly larger group than you’d like, knowing that you will almost NEVER have all of them at the same table. I prefer 3-4 players, and right now there are seven people in the group. We just can’t get all seven, but at least the campaign moves forward.
Another option is to do more “Planet of the Week” or “Dungeon of the Week” type stories, but I find long term campaigning is actually easier on me as GM. One story can lead into another, and sometimes things drag on for a few weeks as players take longer than I thought or find interesting side ideas. They actually do a lot of the work for me.
My problem with that, as a GM, is wanting to have a consistent story for the PCs and running into issues when certain players can’t make it for certain games. If you plan to have background elements from Character X’s background, not having that player at the table diminishes your returns significantly. Sometimes it’s okay, but othertimes, it’s like hitting a wall.
The GM for my group’s last campaign would make backup options, and we tried to give him notice about our absences. This would let him change elements before they were introduced so that it fit the group of PCs in that session.
I’ve had a regular group, meeting weekly (and for a while twice weekly), in one configuration or another for about14 years. This year has easily been the worst schedule-wise. Key, I think, is to be friends first, gaming buddies second. Friends do more than game together, game group members are held together by a game. But that’s my experience.