Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 236 - Scheduling

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

Sometimes the hardest monster to defeat in RPGs is the calendar.  It’s hard to schedule games when the real world gets in the way.  In this episode I give you some tips and some decisions you can make ahead of time to make it more likely that you’ll get to the gaming table   #pf2e #Pathfinder #gmtips #dmtips #dnd #scheduling   Resources: Reddit post from 2018 from /u/iamnotasloth:  https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/b1h1f2/how_to_fit_rpgs_into_your_schedule_as_an_adult/   Morris’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk, episode #273 https://morrus.podbean.com/e/273-the-lostigistics-of-organizing-an-rpg-game/

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Is it more important to you that these friends, these five people that you know, are the ones that you're going to be gaming with? Or is your schedule such that your gaming needs to be on a particular night within a particular time window, even if that means that two of those five people will have to drop out because they'll never be able to make it then. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 236, giving you tips I've used to help schedule RPG sessions.

I wanna thank this week's sponsor, Circles. I have a pony that only runs in circles. It's a centrifugal horse. Do you have any ideas for topics that I could cover in future episodes? If so, please send them to me on social media or via email feedback at taking20podcast.com. If you don't send me anything, you're going to have to deal with whatever topic strikes my fancy fortnight over fortnight, so send in some topics that you'd like to hear. As a reminder, there will be no episode next week. I'm changing my schedule to posting episodes every other week going forward.

I talked about that a little in previous weeks, and I'm moving to, like I said, an every other week format. So this episode is releasing, I think, on August 25th. That means episode number 237 will release on September 8th. Releasing every other week will drop my stress level significantly due to other responsibilities ramping up this month and will definitely allow me to continue making this podcast without pulling what little hair I have left out. So why is it so damn hard to get a game together? That's the million dollar question isn't it? I see it online all the time. In short my answer to that question is always it's hard to get RPG

games going because people are involved. We have lives, jobs, spouses, significant others, maybe kids and life is just messy sometimes. Sometimes our priorities have to change suddenly and what was going to be a night of adventuring in the Tenzig Wood turns to a night of having to repair a few hundred computers because Crowdstrike's bad file push shit all over your weekend. Purely hypothetically of course, it's not like that happened to me on July 19th of this year. Y2K wishes it could have been that bad.

Anywho, Jeremy's cybersecurity bitching aside, getting a game together can be difficult for so many reasons. I'm going to speak with an overly broad brush and ask for your forgiveness. Gaming is usually easier to arrange when we were younger, I mean, like when we were in college. There were fewer conflicts, we had more free time, and people were in closer proximity to each other more often. These days we have work commitments and family commitments, school,

hobbies, projects, research, and so many different things that are competing for a slice of your time. RPGs are just another thing that you may want to do, but finding time to do it can be tough. another thing that you may want to do, but finding time to do it can be tough. One of the first things you have to do is decide your priority. Is your priority playing or players? Now here's what I mean by that. If given the choice of playing an RPG, but it would be with a new or a different group than you usually play with, would you? If all you have is Sunday night for gaming but your friends can't play that night, do you try to find a game anyway? Now there's two parts to this playing versus players discussion. Firstly, before you ever start to play

or DM, decide is the schedule or the people more important to you? Is it more important to you that these friends, these five people that you know, are the ones that you're going to be gaming with? Or is your schedule such that your gaming needs to be on a particular night within a particular time window, even if that means that two of those five people will have to drop out because they'll never be able to make it then? There's no wrong answer here, by the way, and I have two groups, one with each philosophy. In one group, it's a group of people I've gamed with off and on since college. Gaming with these reprobate murder hobos is more important to me than this group

having a regular gaming night so we're a bit more sporadic. Sometimes going two Friday nights between games sometimes even three or four. But I'm in another group that is set for Saturday night come hell or high water. No matter who can or can't make it, the game is going to happen. It means that all of us at one point or another have missed a Saturday night session here and there. That being said, if you have friends that want you to run the game and they're not absolute rampaging assholes, and I hope they're not, do your best to run your first games for your friends. They'll tend to be more

forgiving and it will be easier overall. This does give me an idea for an episode on the scaling difficulty of DMs in various situations. That's coming down the pipe soon. So the first part of playing versus players you have to decide are these the people that you want to game with and only them or is Tuesday night the only night that you have available for gaming and if you don't game that night you won't at all. In this situation you may have to open yourself up to gaming with a new group, finding new players or maybe running a game yourself that night. The second part of playing

versus players is deciding how you will handle situations where one or more of your players suddenly aren't available for the previously scheduled game session. In other words, what do you do when one of your five players can't make it? Do you reschedule? If so, you're prioritizing players over playing. Do you have your game anyway? If so, you're prioritizing playing over players. Again, neither is wrong and both are fine. You just need to determine and communicate your philosophy around the table. My games tend to have more than four players. My gosh, I don't know what I would do only having to juggle four players around

a table. I wouldn't know what to do all that extra time. My scheduling rule though is simple. If I have more than four players and four players can make it, we're gaming as scheduled. That means when my group has six players, for example, if two can't make it, we're still moving forward with gaming that night. If I'm running a group of four, then if three can make it, we're still gaming.

By the way, when players are missing from my games, I generally don't run their characters as DMPCs. For that gaming session, those PCs are busy doing other things. What other things? Well, depends on the character. The oldest example I have is what one group calls burying the horses. At the end of the first gaming session I had with this new group, the druid said he couldn't make it to the second session. The group had just discovered a civilian caravan that had been overrun by undead with dead pack animals and people beside a cave. Without thinking about the long-term ramifications when the players asked what the druid was doing and while they were going to continue into the cave to explore,

I blurted out that the druid is staying outside to bury the horses. Never mind the humanoid bodies. Nope, nope, he's burying the horses and giving them last rites. And thus, a common joke around that table was born. But the characters don't have to be burying horses. They're busy doing something else. They're running back to town. They're communing with their god or their patron or their spell book or they've caught a mild case of

Listeria and aren't available because they've got a bad case of the trots For whatever reason they aren't available for that adventuring session at the moment and are doing something else Don't get me wrong. If you want to there's nothing wrong with running a dMPC as long as they don't become this to there's nothing wrong with running a dmpc as long as they don't become this unkillable Mary Sue type character that trivializes the adventure and makes the other PCs almost unnecessary because the DM is running that character. My advice if you're going to run them as a dmpc maybe only have them do what they're specialized to do. Clerics heal, rogues pick locks and search for traps, paladins talk crap about how much holier they are than the rest of the party, and barbarians...

uh... smash things? Also, as I said, not every player has to attend every single session. Yes, it sucks when one of you can't make it because of scheduling reasons, but consider allowing the game to go on even if you're short of full complement of players. allowing the game to go on even if you're short of full complement of players. This does require communication and buy-in and as I was putting my thoughts together I found a reddit post on this very topic from 2018 with one bullet specifically about communication. Quoting that post the author says make sure everyone's on the same page that getting to play is the dream goal but the

challenge is making that work in the midst of real life. And it's going to require commitment, effort, and energy more than time, honestly. And if you're on the same page about that, the big issues of punctuality and people being willing to be responsible about scheduling fall into place.

If you aren't all on the same page, then just forget the whole thing now because it'll never work. I'll put a link to that post by the way in the resources of the episode and you can go read the complete post if you'd like. I think the ending part of that post is by quote is a little harsh, but I see the point they're trying to make. It's about priorities. Sometimes a gaming session will conflict with something else and you have to figure out what appointments and activities do you have to schedule around and what can you move so that you can game. When faced with the conflict between RPG and X which one takes priority? RPGs and a doctor's appointment? Yeah okay yeah I'm old my ass is going

to the doctor. Thankfully that one's rare because I mostly game at night or on the weekends and most doctors aren't open then. What about RPG versus dinner with the family? RPG versus a night out with friends at the club or bar or concert, theater, sex dungeon or whatever it is you like to do in your spare time. Which one gets that priority? Maybe by the way we could combine RPGs with a sex dungeon. Okay Trina I need you to put down the whip

and roll initiative. Ow, ow, ow, okay, God, save words Bon Mo, geez. Bon, Bon Mot, Bon Mo, ow, ow, put that thing down, it's your turn, Jesus. Okay, maybe combining those two isn't such a great idea. It really boils down to deciding whether RPG gaming is a hobby or one of your primary social events. And there's no wrong answer here.

My priorities have adjusted as I've gotten older and my son has as well. When he was two, RPGs in person were exceedingly rare, almost never happened. Mostly we played online and this was back before Discord. We used Skype and Ventrilo to chat if i remember right and we would use cameras to see the board and play together there was no online dice rolling everybody rolled dice at their house and we trusted no one was cheating now my son is a late teenager and he can drive himself places now i even have him in one of my gaming

groups to make sure i can schedule some time with him he's a busy young man but it the positive is is that it gives me a little bit more time for gaming. His volleyball games, his banquets and the like, yeah, okay, I'm not missing those. Sometimes I have work responsibilities. I can't move them and RPGs have to be scheduled around them. But games with the sports teams I follow, don't get me wrong, I love my football, I love my soccer. I'll catch the highlights later. I'd rather game than watch those live. I've slotted RPGs into my important scale and you and your players will have to do the same and communicate it with one another. Even with good communication and everyone on board, getting an RPG gaming session going is all about

logistics. By the way, I am barely going to touch on the logistics of gaming, so I'm gonna link to a podcast episode from a podcast called Morris's Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk. It's episode 273 where they start talking about it almost exactly one hour into the episode. Links in the resources, go give that a listen for more in-depth discussion among three DMs about the logistics challenges of gaming.

In short, logistics boils down to what are you playing, who's playing with you, where are you playing, when are you playing, and what's everybody bringing? This could be an episode all its own, but I'll boil my thoughts down to don't dump everything on the DM to figure out. Everyone chip in on food, drinks, et cetera, and maybe share hosting responsibilities. Work together to make the game possible. Get there early, help set up, or stay late and help tear down, that kind of thing.

Again, good communication means that everyone knows what they need to bring. They all share responsibilities, so no one has to provide the main course week over week while one cheap bastard only has to bring drinks every week You know, I'm starting to think 236 episodes in and I think this entire podcast could be renamed. Don't be an asshole Also, don't be an asshole moving on try to schedule at least one session at advance

By the way before the current session ends try to get the next session scheduled. Having your next session on the calendar lets everyone plan ahead. Maybe you're one of those groups who schedules games every week or two weeks like a metronome, but you may also have to make the decision to prioritize players over playing so you need to poll your group to figure out when is best for most of the players. I'll admit I'm not perfect at this. If a session stretches very very late, a lot of times I'm just trying to get everyone home at a decent hour and I'll let everyone get away without getting the next session scheduled. Every time I've let that happen I've had a harder time getting that next session on the calendar, so

learn from my mistakes and get your next session scheduled before you break for the night. I'm still speaking in broad brushes, but in my experience, especially if you're beyond college and for the lack of a better way of saying it, working in the real world, it's easier to schedule shorter campaigns, shorter sessions, and smaller groups. Shorter campaigns means less of a time commitment by your players. I've found it's easier to get players around a table for a quick six-session adventure than to get people around the table for a two-year

marathon adventure. It doesn't mean you can't do it. You can, but the players have to realize that they may be chasing Strahd for three years as opposed to a two-month saving of the town of Sandpoint from a goblin incursion. Same with shorter gaming sessions. These days I'm generally up by 5am and responding to work stuff by 6. You want to have a session that's 2 and a half hours long at night? Yeah, okay, I could probably squeeze that in on a weeknight. But if you want to game for 6 hours? Ehhh, that's going to be a lot harder.

I'll probably have to clear a full day on the weekend to attend, and that can be difficult. Of course, if your group is smaller, say four to five people, it's a lot easier to get something scheduled than when you have, say, eight to nine people around the gaming table. The logistics and permutations just explode in complexity with large groups. I strongly recommend that you try anything to make a gaming session a regular occurrence. I know it's not possible for every group. One member is in school some nights

and may have to get pulled in for group projects on different nights. Another member works shift work and their schedule varies week to week. Still, do what you can to make your sessions very regular or at least as regular as you can. Every Saturday night, every third Sunday night, every full moon because you're all werewolves and want to play while you're in wolf form.

No judgment here, by the way. I'll say if being a werewolf helps you get into shape, then I already have insomnia and I'm usually up anyway, so... I might be willing to get bitten by a wolf like Hantrop if I really thought about it. How the hell did I get here? Oh right, werewolves. Also, if you can have a regular gaming session, make your, hey are you going to make it this week verification or check in regular as well. I have a Saturday night game and Thursday tends to be the verification, Discord post or email.

My group expects it so that's when I check. They know they need to make a decision whether they'll make it Saturday by Thursday night Because I'm gonna come asking Everybody's still on for Saturday. Yeah, good. Yeah. Oh, you can't make it. We've got five players. So we're still gonna game We'll miss you. Love you. We'll fill you in what happened next time Another tip if you're doing shorter sessions three hours or less weeknights can be easier to schedule I know I know, I know you're tired from work and school and running errands and getting your kids to sports and church and but provided all

the players buy in to a weeknight schedule, I've had more luck with attendance for those games than I have for Friday, Saturday and Sunday games. More shit just happens on the weekends because we got to go here, we got to do this, we got to travel to see family clean out the garage or whatever and that tends to always happen on the weekends it's not fair but another tip DM preferences should be the main driving force for scheduling I know in an ideal world everybody has an equal vote but unless you have multiple people who like to and want to DM, without your DM being available, you don't have a game. Once decided, dates, start times, and end times should be fixed

and sacrosanct. They are set. They are decided law. We all agreed that gaming is happening on Friday night from 7 30 to 10 30 p.m. That means when you get together, show up on time, start on time, end on time, period. Trust me. The very first time your group says, oh, you know, well, this is fun, we're having a good time, we can go a little bit longer, and the game lasts until 11.30, congratulations. Your three hour game session just became a four hour session

and that will likely happen more often than not. A few weeks ago, I was determined to end the session when the combat ended. There was one baddie left and it had one hit point. We went 15 minutes long because the dice around the table went ice cold. No one could hit this thing. All I could do at the end was apologize. I should have ended the night with the creature on one hit point, built up the threat of this thing that they was gonna kill them all so quickly

whenever we started gaming again. And then as soon as the next session started, probably somebody could kill it within six seconds. It would've been funny, but I developed tunnel vision and I learned a lesson there. Last tip I wanna give you, the GM doesn't and shouldn't have to do everything. Put one of your players in charge

of scheduling and logistics. I am Jor-El, master of scheduling. God, I love Futurama. Let one of your players be in charge of setting the next session and working out who's doing what. The location, who brings what material and food, the date and time. There is no law that says the DM has to do all of the work to get the next session scheduled.

Ask one of your players to help with that, and if you're a player, please consider stepping up to assist. There's already enough work being a GM, and if you can take this off our plate, that would be fantastic. The scheduling monster can be a jabberwocky on meth and steroids and tough as hell to try to snicker snack and take its head. However, with clear communications, deciding your priorities, scheduling sessions at least one in advance, players stepping up to assist, I'd be willing to bet that you'd schedule games more often and you and your players would have fun doing it.

Hey, do you like this podcast? If so, please consider posting an episode to social media or telling a friend about it. Tune in in two weeks when I'm gonna talk about the big difference between DMing a one-shot versus an ongoing campaign because they have a different focus from behind the screen. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Circles. I have a second pun about Circles,

but I don't think I'm going to say it. It has no point. This has been episode 236, giving you tips about scheduling your sessions. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.