Cat Herding
This one is for the GMs out there. As if holding the machinery of an entire universe in your head wasn’t enough, you’ve also got to play social planner. That means organizing a date and time for your game, sending out reminders, and rearranging your session notes when last-minute cancellations crop up. And they will crop up. And you can’t be mad about it because, as we have discussed on numerous different occasions, this shit happens.
In order to curb these issues, I find it’s best to systematize my planning efforts. This won’t work for everybody, but here’s my process.
- Make a Facebook group for the campaign.
- Schedule each session with a poll. Here’s the text I use:
NEXT SESSIONAlright gang! The deadline to vote is [date] at noon. I’ll make the game day announcement based on the responses we’ve received at that time. As always, vote for all times that you can make.
There are a couple of important things to point out here. First is the deadline. People will never vote if you don’t include a deadline. I also make sure to put that deadline a few days out from game day so that folks will have time to plan the rest of their weekend. Then there’s the “vote for multiple times” thing. My policy is to list 4-5 potential session times on Fri/Sat/Sun, then go with the option that allows the most players to play. In case of a tie, the first tie-breaker is decided in favor of the player who missed last session (because missing multiple sessions in a row sucks). The second tie-breaker is decided in favor of the player with the lower XP total (allowing them to play catch-up). - Send a confirmation. Assuming that we’ve got a quorum (generally three players in my games), I’ll send a confirmation notice in the form of a comment reply on the poll. That generally looks like so:
OFFICIAL GAME TIME: Day, Date @ XX:00 pm/am GMT.
Tagging all for visibility: @name1 @name2 @name3 etc. - Send a follow-up. People forget. Happens to me all the time. Help them to remember by sending a quick “looking forward to seeing you at the game” type message the morning of the game day.
- Give ’em 15. The first twenty minutes of sessions are always full of chitchat, so I tend not to mind a late start. If a player is 15 minutes late though, I’ll send a text. If I don’t get a response, I’ll assume that they’ve fallen into a planar rift and begin the session without ’em.
Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? It is a bit, but I think it’s part of what you sign up for when you become a GM.
That said, I also acknowledge the temptation to take the hard line: “My players are adults. I expect them to behave like adults and handle their own scheduling.” That’s certainly an easier way to play it, saving the GM a lot of hassle. But speaking for myself, I value the flexibility of a variable game time. I also prefer campaign styles that allow players to skip a session or two without bringing the campaign to a screeching halt. Neither one represents an ideal setup, where all players are always present and ready to continue the story, but it does work around real people with real time commitments.
So, in an effort to make this often-invisible part of GMing a little more visible, what do you say we share our processes down in the comments? How does your group handle scheduling, conflicts, and reminders? Tell us all about your Doodle polls, sacrosanct game times, and cat herding down in the comments!
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Clockwise from center-top:
-I’m gonna go with Khajiit, Alfiq breed
-Tabaxi
-Wemic
-Maybe a Rakshasa?
-Catfolk, obviously
The only one I can’t figure out is the one in the center, but I call bullshit on that. At our current level the GM can’t reasonably expect us to beat the DC for “identifying the race of a character polymorphed into a toy mice”!
Sometimes a toy mouse is just a toy mouse.
Also: You guesses are not 100% correct.
guessing the cat-taur is a mythically accurate Lamia?
😀
Canonically, every single one of them* could be Khajiit… Elder Scrolls Khajiit form is dependant on the phase of the moon when they are born.
Except the Wemic. Admittedly I’ve never seen a Catuar Khajiit.
Well, the purple-eyed one is almost certainly a Silvanshee, given purple isn’t a natural eye color and white stripes on black fur is their usual look. If we saw its chest, we’d probably see a white star-like mark.
I’m curious whether the Wemic comes in ‘common cat’ colors though, or only wildcat ones.
I assume the one playing with the toy mouse is called a cali-taur. If not, it should be.
In the anime, her name is Caliko.
What’s the anime?
As for playing time, we have a set date – Monday evenings at 8pm. We usually wait a bit in case some people are running late, but never later than 8:30. I like that better because it’s easier to plan for. Once I get a job, having a single evening that I can’t work will be a lot easier to manage than a random day of the week that I won’t know about 2 weeks in advance. If a bunch of people can’t make it, we sometimes don’t play or we’ll do a small side quest that has no impact on the regular game. If it’s just one or two players that can’t join that day, then the game usually goes on as normal. Though that does depend on where we left off last session and who’s missing.
Well, we just play on a set date every (two) weeks/month/four weeks.
Everybody knows when this will be, because it is in their schedule. And if, and when people are not there, their character is within the “character Bag of Holding”. They get no loot/Glory/XP/whatnot, but they also do not get wounded or killed or whatever. In at least one Call of Cthulhu campaign that was actually benificial, as the one player that was not there when the rest of the party had a TPK, that player was able to gather a new group, and continue with the investigation….
Do you ever run into a situation where you couldn’t game at the normal game time, but shifting by a few hours or by a day could make the difference?
Yes, but very rarely. As most of the games I participate in are scheduled like this, it is considered bad form to skip the agreed time and date.
I’ve started DMing a new group, and while most are new players, there is one D&D veteran, who’s former DM had a very clever solution: split things up across the players. One would handle scheduling, another would write up the recap, etc. That player handled scheduling in his last campaign, and as such has, after each session, put up a facebook event for the next session (we’re able to play fairly regularly). At the end of each session, we’ll have a quick chat to see if everyone’s available for same time next week; if not, we’ll have a chat and reschedule. Things do come up, with less than 7 days notice, of course; if there’s enough time, then I’ll send out a massed text to see whether X or Y works as a possible time, then make the change.
My Strange Aeons game recently ended, but the group had voted for a set game time in that one. With that kind of setup, the recurring Facebook event was an excellent tool. Generating reminders automatically is a big help!
At the moment my group is quite lucky; none of us have kids, only a couple of us partners (mine has her own hobbies, so is very accommodating of my gaming time), and nearly all of us are 9-5 weekday workers, so weekends are traditionally free for everyone apart from the two guys who work at the hospital (and neither of them are currently the ones with partners). So I usually get the two shift workers to let me know their schedules (which is easy as they have them usually two months in advance) and the rest of us just sort ourselves out to meet in the points where their days off match.
And that make its rare enough, I shudder to think what happens if and when kids get thrown into the mix.
Good on ya for taking the shift guys into account. I appreciate that you adapted your system to the particular needs of the people in your group.
This answer can vary a lot depending on the number of players, and the reliability of a schedule. Back in high school, we had schedules quite prone to sudden change; however, groups were small, and so losing even one player was a big deal. As such, I (the DM) would send forth messages to schedule next weeks session, and if a player couldn’t make it, we’d do everything in our power to reschedule, or if that proved impossible, run a one-shot/s until the player became available. However, the groups I’m in are now much larger, and more stable; next session being at a set date is taken for granted, and if a player calls up only a day or two before next session saying they can’t make the session, well, then they can’t make the session.
I take a page from the airlines. If you overbook, it’s more likely that you’ll have enough people. In other words, I like having slightly more people in my groups than the ideal number for a session. I view 4-5 as the ideal number, so I try to have 6-7 people in a game. It’s not quite enough that I can’t deal with a full house, but it tends to hit that 4-5 player sweet spot more often than not.
The issue was, though, that we didn’t have enough players. very once in a while, the group would swell to 4-5 players, after inviting some new ones, but then some of the new players would drop off, either having lost interest, or only being interested in it as a once-in-a-while hobby, rather than weekly. Even when we found a 4th player who managed to become a regular, the fates then conspired to have one of the other three leave, for various reasons.
Hmm.
Well, Magus is a Catfolk.
Our purple eyed feline with the black fur and grey stribes feel like a Silvanshee.
For the six-limbed lady playing with a mouse doll I’m guessing Lamia, specifically a non-matriarch what with being in the meeting of cat-like races, instead of the snake-like equivalent.
The tiger clad in strings, could be a Rakshasha, or possibly a weretiger. To tell we’d need to see their hands. I’m guessing Rakshasha on the meta basis that “were-[cat]” might be considered unfair since it could be used for any of them except the Lamia, even if Weretiger specifically has more pondus from being in the 3.5 monster manual and the 2nd bestiary.
The spotted individual currently redecorating the curtains would probably be a Tabaxi. I’m a bit hesitant through what with them not being in Pathfinder unlike the other guesses, what with Catfolk having the “PC cat humanoid” spot. Still I don’t have any better guess, so Tabaxi it is.
The one on the curtains has to be Tabaxi… they’ve got quite a distinctive look, cat-like legs, long thin limbs, and crouched like they’re not quite committed to being bipedal.
The one the left could just be an actual tiger… an awakened animal.
+12,150 XP! Well done on the rakshasa/weretiger taxonomy.
Wot, no tibbits?
I am reading your comment in Mel Brooks’s voice, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!
Why would I? I’m flattered!
Never had the scheduling problems you describe… it’s always just Tuesday night every week, and has been for years. Sure, we occasionally have to skip a week or change days to work around people’s lives, but the default is there… in the absence of any arrangement to the contrary, that’s what we’re doing.
What’s the mechanism for rescheduling your standard game time?
Email. If someone can’t make Tuesday one week, we have a quick discussion to see if everyone can do Wednesday or Thursday. If so, no problem — otherwise either fall back to board games with whomever can make it, or take a break for the week if we don’t have the numbers…
Usually, board gaming is what happens when something comes up at short notice… if someone is sick, or stuck working late, or has family issues needing their attention, that sort of thing. Given a week’s warning, it’s usually not a problem for everyone to adjust…
Regularity is probably the key… the fact that gaming night is simply what we do every week, same day, same time. So it’s not like we’re having to agree on a schedule every time… it’s more like a recurring appointment in the calendar.
And because it’s so regular, those around us (like other friends or family members) know not to schedule anything else that day if they can help it…
I guess the key is a group that can all agree to prioritize the game. I’m beginning to wonder if I need to revisit this point with my longest-running group. It has been a few years….
For Discord-played RPGs, we’ve made good use of the emoji response feature to do quick & dirty polls or group votes
@PCs calls them to attention to the poll in question, then you put an emoji next to each ‘poll’ option. The other players then simply respond to the post with the emojis in question (you can see who posted which emoji).
Example: https://imgur.com/MPLpqIS
It’s also a good idea to have an links-only or PCs-only google docs sheet that anyone can edit, to track stuff like loot, or use it as a calendar for stuff like downtime.
My Roll20 groups have recently taken to Discord rather than Google Hangouts for voice. I might have to float that voting idea.
We play on Mondays. If one or two people cant make it, their character is busy that session. If more than that cant make it, we play board games that night. Its not the most exciting system, but its been pretty effective.
I will go above and beyond on the planning side if it means I get to avoid another five-hour session of Talisman.
Catfolk
Silvanshee
Tabaxi
Lamia
Tiger Skinwalker
Hmmm…. Can explain why that’s a skinwalker instead of a rakshasa or a weretiger?
Rakshasa (LE) wouldn’t be caught dead doing something as trivial as playing with yarn or cat-smiling, or would actually listen to the meeting. And a weretiger (NE) would rip Magus and the others apart or try to enslave them.
Actually, any reason why the tiger-head one isn’t just an actual, ordinary tiger (or a druid wildshaped into one)?
Some systems have weretigers as N, though. I could 100% see that kind of creature going into a complete flurry of attacking the ball of yarn, then being too uncaring to bother removing the string from his face.
Game Day is sacrosanct. Those heathens that miss Game Day are offered as sacrifice to the Dork Gods that reign over this most Holy of days.
A just system. An appropriate avatar.
Poor Magus. She really needs a laser pointer and a spray bottle, instead of that gavel.
I think you’ve just invented a magic item. “Gavel of Cat-Herding” is kind of like an orb of dragonkind, but for felines.
It’s more likely to be a laser pointer, or a can opener.
No matter how disciplined they seem, never put a catlike race near a source of stimuli. They will go from zero to zoomies just like that.
Again, another cautionary tale from my miqo’te.
Damn. I knew I forgot a cat-like race.
I think you can get a pass since they’re exclusively Square-Enix’s and have never been officially published for tabletop games.
Magus is a Catfolk if I’m not mistaken.
Tiger on the foreground is probably a Rakshasa. Seeing his/her hands would help confirm this.
In the center we’ve got a Lamia (yup, they aren’t always snakes)
And to the right I’d guess a Tabaxi.
As for the cat in the middle with purple eyes… I’ll admit I’m drawing a blank, if it’s not a regular cat or a familiar.
As for scheduling, well, at first we’ve tried Doodle. Doesn’t work way. We’ve had to deal with irregular sessions, until we did two things :
1) Set up session time to always be the same every weak (first we did Friday, we’ve since moved to Sunday, but the point is it must be regular)
2) Kicked every flaky players from the group and replaced them with reliable ones.
Works like a charm. For us, at least.
In the script, I asked for Laurel to draw a skinwalker, a weretiger, and a rakshasa. She ran out of room. She also didn’t tell me which one she actually wound up drawing.
So we have a set time and night which basically was the result of a long round table discussion about what nights work. For most if us , it was our second or third, but still viable option.
Our first option would’ve been Saturday night, but one of our players has himself a game with some OTHER group on that night.
It was a group effort to find our time though. No one person decreed that game time SHALT BE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF START UNTO END. In this regard, we do expect a certain amount of ‘be an adult’ behavior, but like… Dropping a text takes no one any time at all. We know things happen. Ideally let us know things happened.
Was the long round-table discussion a Session Zero thing, or did it slowly get resolved over multiple days and conversations?
Nah, it was pretty quick and orderly. I’d like to say how used a spreadsheet and coordinate it that way, but it was really more like a general shout out “Ok, what nights can people do stuff?”
Since most of us work full time, we immediately limited it to those couple nights that no one has to be up early…and that other night. And for various reasons, after we looked at everyone’s considerations, there was only the one night that worked. So, we agreed that at least until such time as we get sick of it (or whatever), we have a scheduled weekly activity in that time slot. It’s worked well for two years now.
It was a nice change of pace for my recent Strange Aeons game to settle on “Sunday at 1:00 every other week.” Took a lot of the work out of it. Of course, that game was two couple plus a single, which is kind of like organizing only 3 people. That mess gets harder when you have large parties I think.
I’ll generally send out a group text asking when people are available, and we’ll go from there (in practice, it’s usually weekend evenings which have worked for everybody). Then I’ll send out a reminder the day before just to make sure nobody’s had anything come up.
Unfortunately, Coronavirus is kinda making meeting in person not a good idea right now. One of these days I should get around to figuring out how Roll20 or something works and see if we can’t manage to do that.
I’ve got a couple of buddies going through the Roll20 growing pains right now. That’s worked out well for me since one of ’em sent me a cheat sheet for shortcuts. That mess is essential!
…Do you have a link to that cheat sheet?
only the first 20 minutes are chit chat? which planet do you play on?
in the RotR group where I‘m a player it’s me who gets the Doodlesset up and sends reminders per mail. Telephone confirmation in case of no answer on whatsap is left to the DM.
You know that XKCD where… You know what? It’s just easier to link it.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/preferred_chat_system.png
It do be like that sometimes.
Magus is obviously a Catfolk, I’m going to guess someone is a Rakshasa, I think the one in the center is a Pathfinder Lamia, maybe someone’s a Tabaxi, and that’s all the guesses I have.
+100 XP for the effort!
Our DM: Hey guys what do you say about [date]?
We: Okay.
Me: I will bring the lore.
Player #1: I will bring the food.
Player #2: I will bring the transport.
Player #3: I will bring the taxes.
Me: The taxes? o_O
Player #3: Ups, sorry, wrong chat 😛
Player #3: What i need to take?
Me: The booze 😀
DM: No booze!!! Not this time!!! And why you insist on that? You don’t even drink!!!
Me: But it’s funny when you got drunk and accept my crazy ideas. Like that time in which…
All the rest of them: Don’t. Speak. Of. That.
Me: I didn’t say anything… yet.
DM: So all of you know what you have to bring, when is the game and where?
US: Yep. Don’t worry.
DM: Okay, thanks.
Player #2: Where it was the game again?
Player #1: What i needed to bring?
Me: When it was the game?
DM:
Me: Oh, right, thanks 🙂
Normal group chat 😀
Oh dear. I seem to have developed a throbbing headache.
Oh, don’t worry, we can be far worse than that. More than herding cats sometimes our DM job is more like herding… well… tabletop rpg players 🙂
Going with Pathfinder races, there’s also the Were-beast Descended (I refuse to call them by their game name), where you could have a Were-Tiger descended.
It’s been missing since 3E, but Tibbits could join the crew. They’re small monstrous humanoids that can shapechange into a house cat. They’re also called catweres, and they are descended from wizard’s familiars.
There’s also the hengeyokai from 3E’s Oriental Adventures (I believe these actually made it to 4e). There’s a variety of animal shapes though each individual has a specific form. They can change into hybrid forms and full animal forms, but are 0 level adjustment because their options are small (or smaller) 1hd animals.
Man, 3.5 had a lot of races to choose from.
As for the cat-herding, at the table I use my big voice to garner attention. But when setting up the game time, I can’t do that over chatrooms. So any confidence in tone doesn’t translate and people find ways to make excuses like “I thought that was just a suggestion” (even if that day was a suggestion, why not reply to it?).
Now I’m moving across country (I the GM) and the wizard player is getting a lot of travel dates, so we might go online for it, but that style of gameplay needs dedicated prep time in ways that don’t quite work for in-person play.
The best way to get an in-person game is to just emphasize urgency and stress relief, and then immediately everyone’s schedules open up (oh stress relief? I could use some of that!).
Nice! I forgot about the tibbits.
I am also considerably less worried about skinwalkers now that I live far away from the Rocky Mountain west.
As for the tone of voice, that lack of physical presence is easily my least favorite thing about virtual gaming.
I went with this method for my online campaign:
There’s a Google calendar where anyone can block out their “busy” days.
At the end of every session, I look at that calendar and suggest when our next game day might be. Anyone who hasn’t filled in the calendar (some don’t) pipes up with their schedule.
As a group, we agree when the next game is, whereupon I schedule an event in the Google calendar and also in Roll20, since that’s our VTT.
Anyone who doesn’t attend the session AND doesn’t fill in the calendar doesn’t get a say in when we play next.
Do you have a deadline in that process? Or is it always right after session?
The session is the same time every week. If you don’t make it, the session happens without you. The inflexibility of the game has forced everyone else to flex to meet it rather than the game being pulled in numerous directions. We had only one cancelled session, and that was because we were blindsided by the plague and couldn’t get our discord stuff coordinated on time.
The one on the right is a Tabaxi. Does that mean that Eldritch Knight isn’t a Tabaxi? What is she then, an apefolk (Human) with prosthetic ears?
Damn… I really need to update the cast page. :/
Ok hmm. I’m gonna guess…
going in clockwise order starting at 12…
#1: Cleric (Polymorphed)
#2: Wizard (Alter Self)
#2.5: Skitters (inside a Scabby plush)
#3: Lumberjack Explosion (wearing an invisible Hat of Disguise)
#4: Fighter (got a mounted tiger head stuck onto his head)
#5: Thief (in a Magus Disguise)
How’d I do boss? =D
Damn. And here I was so sure that no one would get them all….
Trick question: All five of them are actually changelings and/or mimics
Look, that’s metagame knowledge. You have to roll Insight if you want your character to know that.
Magus is known to be a generic catfolk. The wemic is obvious, there’s just one cat-centaur race in D&D/PF. The tabaxi is also quite clear. The housecat-looking one could be a tibbet. The tiger’s got to be a rakshasa.
Honorable mentions go to the paka just off panel, and the sphinx who didn’t bother to come because she knew it’d be a waste of her time.
What about the Rakasta? They live on the Isle of Dread and use Smilodons as mounts.
Samurai swords seem redundant when you’ve got claws and smilodons.
Well, yes, but they look so frickin’ cool.
Do they though?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-return-of-jeremy
Published versions of Wemics only come in “lion-centaur”, mostly based on normal lions although there is a mountain lion subrace.
So is the Calico Wemic a homebrew, a halfbreed between a wemic and another catlike race with the coat patterns of domestic cats, or just an ordinary wemic who went overboard when dyeing her fur?
Oho! This one’s for me, huh?! As you’ve probably figured, I enjoy GMing more than playing. Despite being pretty strict about HOW things are done, I try to be very flexible in my personality? Seems to work pretty well for me.
First, a bunch of hard rules; I try to avoid overpowering GMPCs; the players are there to see their characters, whether those are epic heroes or folks just trying to get by. My players may be people I like, or people I’d have a hard time with, but they are ultimately human beings, and even as misanthropic as I am, I always try to show them empathy and understanding. (Yes, I know that doesn’t square with my zero-tolerance policy of That Guys, but I’ll defend that. You cannot tolerate or accept intolerance.)
Outside of that, one of my big things is budgeting time to cool down. A lot of my players use this time to cool down, so I have a good thirty-minutes or so pre-session that can be used for players to weigh in (to me, or each other; generally me, though) about any problems they might be having. I like to try to figure out ways to help with kids, if present, family, if overbearing, gas or travel fees when necessary – all that. I feel like the GM, as host, is responsible for pitching in for those – for long-term players, at least.
After session as well, usually. I also insist on cooking for folks, but more than just that, I’ve taught a lot of my players to cook! Most of the recent crop had been told they couldn’t, were shit at it, all sorts of – ugly, cruel garbage. And then when they couldn’t make stuff, it became an internalised prophecy.
I learned to cook out of necessity, I was entirely alone a lot, growing up, but I love the heck out of it. One of my most meaningful gaming memories was a player – turned good friend – admitting that he’d always thought he was a failure because he couldn’t even make breakfast for dinner… Even though he’d dreamt about being a chef. He isn’t a chef now; he didn’t need to be. He is an EXCEPTIONAL cook, I’d say far better than I am, just needed some confidence.
And there’s nothing so fun as making sugar cookies in the shape of (badly cut!) random encounters. Sorry, aha, I just love cooking, baking…
Structure-wise, it’s mostly all in my head rather than written down.
If I had to define it, though…
I): Set a date for gaming. Make sure all players have a contact e-mail they can shoot me at if they can’t make it. Make sure they understand that if they /can’t/ for whatever reason, their character will still be treated with respect. Life is, and will always be, more important than games.
II): Figure out life details for the players. See if anything can be done to make the regular meeting easier for them. This goes double and halfsies for e-gaming groups, since there’s less to take care of, but peoples’ needs are different, and sometimes doing something from the comfort of your own monitor can be a stressor, itself.
III): Check on their stressors! This one is just me, but I view my players as my responsibility. They don’t need to reciprocate that, mind, but a GM should look after anyone who is humouring their authoritarian tendencies, bahaha!
IV): Re-read notes. I usually storyboard the entire campaign before it starts. The storyboard is not a ‘bible,’ but a page or two of rough ideas of where things’ll go, that can be easily torn down or edited as things naturally diverge. I take only shorthand notes, so that there’s usually only a paragraph or two added per session, and I add linebreaks/dating so that the most recent stuff is clearly priority. It’s just about jogging my memory, mostly.
V): Make ‘feelies’, whether inserts or the like, or just a nice atmosphere. I also use music a lot, since music is another passion. (Though – check with your players! Some players get nervous or overwhelmed by musical ambience, even instrumentals, and to any other headache sufferers out there – I get it. It’s a bonus, not a necessity!)
VI): Get the dice honed, make some black coffee, get ready to have a good time!