Overbooked
Never have I felt more in touch with one of my characters. Having wrapped up this semester’s coursework, I decided to celebrate by hopping off last week’s cancellation wagon and back into my Starfinder campaign.
“Let’s get back to blastin!'” I wrote on the group forum. “When do you guys want to game?”
At that precise moment, my other group popped up with its own notification. We were finally booking the final match of our World Wide Wrestling campaign. Would the usual Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! work for everyone?
And not five minute after that, Laurel walked in with a text message from our other other group. Apparently our PCs were overdue for walkies, and the next D&Doggos session was in the works. No points for guessing which weekend.
On the one hand, oh no, woe is me, I have to play too many RPGs. Whatever shall I do? #humbleBrag #firstWorldGamerProblems
It’s an embarrassment of riches, sure. And if you happen to be in poor Gunslinger’s situation, I’ll understand if you don’t feel like throwing too much sympathy my way. But when you make it a point of pride not to be a flaky Fighter, coordinating between your commitments is its own special skill challenge.
Therefore, for today’s discussion question, I ask my gaming brethren for advice. What’s the best way to coordinate between multiple GMs? Is there a technological solution? And on a slightly more tangential note, what defines “too much of a good thing” for you? How much gaming is too much? Tell us all about your scheduling nightmares and ideal itineraries down in the comments!
My friend group has gotten to the point where, due to discord and travel, a few of us are in significantly different time-zones. A need for care to not drag one player into the small hours of the morning has created The Spreadsheet :tm:, which we all have with games we’re in at what times and what times they end in other time-zones. It lists our work hours and, since most of the GMs are in the EST time-zone, conversions to/from EST to make planning easier. It’s pretty much the only way we’re managing to have as many contiguous campaigns in one friend group as we do.
I don’t suppose you have a blank copy of The Spreadsheet :tm: lying around? I’d be interested in giving something like that a shot.
I don’t, but I could pretty easily make one. I’ll reply to this comment with it when I make it (which might be a couple days since I just got my vaccine.)
Cheers!
And say hey to Parasma if you see her. We hung out for a bit after my second vaccine. Super chill time. (Followed by fever. Followed by more chill.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1musSCkMeBWEqdFTi62jB-pissJTj1nDujXBs_caQj1Q/edit?usp=sharing
Relatively simple, and I’ve edited all the names out, but this is more or less what we’re working with.
Cheers! Showed it to the Starfinder group this afternoon. I’ll have to see the other GMs bite, but it could be a good idea.
Pretty much all of my games are on weekends,organised amongst the same group of friends, so this hasn’t been an issue because we use a rough-and-ready rota system, when we remember to update it.
My one other group, whilst I was still running for them pre-covid, simply ran on the same weeknight every week.
Do you ever miss out on the flexibility of scheduling for “the weekend” and then mixing around the specific time? Or is it just not worth the hassle of renegotiating every time?
The weekend games are generally pretty flexible as far as that goes, but it’s almost always best to do it on a Sunday, for us. The weeknight ones are at a local game store, with less-close friends, so we generally keep our sessions on the same day just to keep people reliable and avoid hassle.
Apart from the occasional one-off exception, I only play with one regular group, so not a problem. And the exceptions usually involve other members of that group anyway…
It kind of makes me wonder… If you were to try and do an organizing document, at what point would it just contain the weekend plans of every gamer in the hobby?
Potentially not too far. Personally I stick to the one group because I’m not really looking to play more than once a week on any regular basis — but others have more than one regular group, and no doubt others in those groups do the same.
In terms of scheduling, it’s mostly just a matter of having a routine. My group meets Tuesday nights by default — so while two of that group also have a Monday night group, there’s normally no chance of conflict. Obviously that’s not perfect because life sometimes messes with plans, but it’s a working default.
I put my foot down and place a heavy weight on it so that it shall not be moved! Monday is game night for my main group. Anything that wants to happen either needs to work around that or be sufficiently life-altering to justify me skipping game night, like a visit to the ER or something. Beyond that, i have a pretty sharp limit of only being able to keep track of one ongoing campaign at a time. I need at least part of my brain free to wander at all times or it burns out.
The problem is that I like gaming about once per week. I don’t like GMing once per week though. That’s just a bit too much for me. And nobody else in my group is about to GM that often either. That means, if I want to hit both my preferences, we’ve got to have multiple games going. And if multiple games are going, what’s the prevent a third one from starting? And I couldn’t possibly miss out on that one because FOMO. And now my brain is full of stress and flumphs.
Its a slippery slope, but the trick is to not have it be just a binary “one or more than one” thing, but rather specifically give a flat number. Your limit is two. Two is the number thou shalt play, and the number thou shalt play is two. Three shalt thou not play, nor shalt thou play one, excepting that thou then expand it to two. Four is right out!
That is much simpler. Thank you, Patsy.
*rides off into the sunset to the sound of coconuts. gets stepped on by sun*
My local group generally meets at the same time(s) each week and switches between games. Pathfinder one Sunday, D&D the next, or something to that effect. Of course, this only works if all of your games involve the same half-dozen or so gamers…
How do you work it out when one game has to cancel? Does the other game bump back a week to help make it up, or do you just deal with not playing that one game for a month?
I certainly suffered from ‘too many RPGs’ before, mostly following my new job which wrecked my sleep cycle and energy. I outright left a game in progress because of it, keeping only my weekend games. I also abandoned a PbP game I DMd when I realized it wasn’t fun for me anymore, and the players were slow at posting and the college obligations piled up.
No advice besides ‘learn when a game is causing you physical or emotional distress due to RL obligations’.
I think there comes a time in every gamer’s life when you say to yourself, “I love this hobby! I’d do it all the time every day all the time if I could!” And much like the gallon challenge, we discover to our horror that it just ain’t possible.
Recently, I came to a rather easy answer to both of the above posited questions.
How much of a good thing is too much? Well, obviously that is a personal question, and had you asked me a few years ago I would have said “NO SUCH THING!”, but after having had three games a week at one point and hearing about people “struggling” to maintain their schedule of 6 games a week… I found that anything more than two games a week (as a player! not even as a DM) and I am overwhelmed.
There is just too much to think about when you have everything else in your life and two fictional characters you care about going through life and death situations constantly (am I also talking of real life? Maybe?). Trying to have it all, a game a day or what have you, even a game every other day and sometimes Y, gets complicated from a schedule format and from an emotional stand point.
at least for me.
Speaking of scheduling, the question of how to keep one is the easiest answer, yet very few do it for many and varied reasons: Keep a schedule!
Play on the same day (or even pick a couple “standard” days that you keep free for the occasion). The group I am in has been a mostly Saturday but sometimes Friday or Sunday group for the past year and a half now and that has been the most sane thing I think anyone could do. Agree on a set day, a mostly set time (some time around or just after noon usually), and stick to it. If you never stick to a schedule, then you run into the usual headache of “when do we game again?” and that eventually leads to “never” (always a sad time).
Of course all of the above assumes a long form campaign style of game and not just a bunch of one shots, but that is another aspect of the hobby we all have to find for ourselves. Which do you prefer? I know which one I enjoy most.
When I was the only game in town, it made sense to hold a general vote every week. “We know we’re gaming this weekend, but what time works for the most people? Vote on this poll and we’ll go with the most popular.” When my buddies began to use the same strategy for the same weekends, the model broke down in a hurry.
I think that a mix might be useful: One game gets an hard-and-fast time, then others can remain fluid and schedule around that.
I would say this strategy is probably best, you just have to pick the game that is “most important” to you.
For me, it has become this one game because as it turns out, I am happy with one game – maybe two, but that second game always seems to fall through 🙁
The best way I found is to find a particular day of the week and stick with it for each group (I’ve been juggling three groups, and it’s worked so far). While ideally I prefer to game weekly with each group, for convenience of the DM/GMs every other week is also good, since that allows them more time to prep and provides more of a cushion if it needs to be rescheduled into the next week.
So wait… All three GMs do every other week? Meaning you have some weekends with 2 and some with 1 game?
Oh! Two of them are actually weekly and the third is every other week. I phrased that unclearly previously.
So I actually will have up to three games in a week 🙂
Man, the one time Cavalier Fighter isn’t engaging in PVP she’s causing other people to do PVP.
She’s a troublemaker.
Was PVP intended to be a theme for her when you introduced her, or did it just sort of happen?
I will refer you to Roland Barthes, where everything’s made up and the authors are dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author
ah, nostalgica…
t‘is now 10isch years ago that I had to decide which of my 3 circles of players to commit my weekend to.
At first I prioritized the group that played the least often, in the hope to increase the frequency of that group and „it’s not my fault“ is a nice thought.
But it got canceled too often on the last minute, due to one of the other players or DM, so instead of playing D&D I didn’t that weekend.
Now (theoretically) it’s first come first serve:
If two groups have a possible gaming night confirmation within 3 days, which ever group plays more often gets my time. I even send out reminders to the group that played more often after my shift in priorities.
Practically, since our host is player in one group and DM in the other I have no such dilemma.
ok, so it’s not actually „first come, first play“ the way I wrote it there.
In practice the „group of dropouts“ was also the last with enough players to commit for a session.
I think it came up before: One DM and 6 players and we met whenever 4 players agreed on day.
Which apparently lead to some players feeling that any form of commitment beforehand or even showing up that evening was not required. On the worst day we played with only 3 players present which burned through the complete stash of scrolls when my Cleric had to play tank, artillery and healer at the same time for the end of AP book encounter.
That DM and all players are on my D&D blacklist now.
I guess that achieving quorum doesn’t always achieve quorum. That’s the downside of being too accommodating I guess: people begin to take advantage.
Tech-wise, I mean… Google Calendars is fantastic, but so is Google sheets.
Both require set up to be group wide resources. Probably the easiest way to handle it is to punch each invite you get on your calendar, and when you see it’s a problem, screenshot that bad boy and start a group text with the GM’s of all the game’s you’re supposed to be at and ask them who can deal with your absence the best.
In the event that it’s your game, as the head of the table, you should try to be there first. It’s not always great, and it’s not always fair, but we accepted that when we made the encounters.
But seriously, who is Cavalier? I don’t remember seeing her before and she oos not on the cast page.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/setting-up-the-charge
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unconventional
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/taking-10
Ooh yeeeah, now I remember.
Though it’s not always possible, the absolute best coordination strategy is to give each campaign a set day and set time. Figuring out when that should be obviously causes some finagling, but once it is established, people build schedules around that time, which is vastly more effective than trying to find a time that fits with everyone’s schedules.
This does help a lot with digital games, where the investment needed to get to the session is substantially lowered (since you don’t physically have to travel). I’ve also found it is useful in games with a fair number of players (5 or so), because then you can afford to lose a player or two to unavoidable commitments. (My groups are good about sharing PC sheets, so we generally play the missing player’s character, keeping our strength up.) I used to have a channel on the group Discord server where I would announce the time and date of the next session, and I eventually just stopped doing it, because we all knew.
As for maximum load, I think GMing two campaigns and playing in a third is probably my limit. I could maybe play in a fourth, but since it’s really hard to do two sessions a day, I’ve already taken up half of the week, which should be enough. (Oh, I guess I’m always plotting a future campaign of some sort, so I guess I should count that too. Run 2, Play 1, Plan 1.)