Episode Transcript
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>> Clint Scheirer (00:00):
What is, "The number one problem repeated Time and
again in all tabletop RPG communities?
The problem that keeps folks from getting together and
playing the Games that they love. Maybe youre saying this
problem in your head right now because youve
experienced the struggle yourself. The number one
obstacle is scheduling your Games. Is there a
(00:20):
solution? Lets find out. Welcome to Claim
to Game. We help tabletop gamers have a great time with
friends to experience amazing stories. It can be
overwhelming to start and run great Games. Lets
make it easier for you to play any Game you want to
have fun with your friends. Im Clint Scheirer. Ive helped
thousands of students in my career find their way to better
(00:41):
themselves and better their game. With more than 10
years experience coaching, teaching and developing easy
to follow learning plans, I know I can help you too.
Its time for you to make your claim to Game.
(01:22):
Hello and welcome back to episode
29, Season 2 of Claimed a Game Still a
predominantly educational fun Podcast in which I am
daring to coin the word fun educational.
It's like D20. Wayne the Rock Johnson giving you
a big old high five and by doing so
you smell what hes been cooking. In our
(01:42):
Time together we are going to hit on the biggest
obstacle when trying to start and run great tabletop
Games. I spoke about this lightly back in episode
25 when you heard about the art of giving a
cool pitch to your friends and potential gamers to bring
them together for your group to play the Game of your
choice. Now were talking about scheduling in
tip #2 in the art of the cool pitch was giving your potential
(02:05):
players a Time commitment up
front. When youre going to play, how often will
your group assemble? How long will each Game be?
This question comes up on Reddit all the Time
as well as in facebook groups. In fact, one person
stated scheduling Games to actually get
to the playing part is hands down my biggest
struggle. Even if you tell your players the Time
(02:27):
commitment, the frequency of play and the schedule
upro front, that doesnt mean that they will
always show up to the Game. I've run plenty of
groups now being 10 years into this hobby and individual
players canceling often last minute is
inevitable. It may not happen all the Time but
eventually it will happen. And why?
Well it's because life is real man like things come
(02:49):
up. And not all players give your game the commitment
it deserves. So what do you do? I reached out
with a call for help to those who have gone this way
before. My friends on the R RPG
subreddit. They shared some really
excellent strategies, many of which have common
themes. These strategies they have found
successful and helpful when trying to schedule their
(03:12):
Games to keep their sanity and get the best
results. And what results are they looking for
to have continuing Games that are not
constantly having to be rescheduled or
cancel due to lack of player commitment or buy
in. Now before we dig in, I want you to remember
all of these successful Game scheduling strategies and
(03:32):
I'GOT you covered. I created a Game scheduling
checklist. You can download this for Free. It's a Free
PDF. Just click on the link in the show notes. Because
I hear this all the Time in the RPG community. They
say I can't get my game scheduled. They keep
getting canceled, people don't show up.
And it can be really hard. So you can use
this checklist to make sure that you are doing everything in your
(03:54):
power to get your game scheduled and make them happen
successfully. Strategy number one. Tactic
number one and this came up more than anything in
the 80 plus comments that showed up when
I asked for this call to help. And it is
consistency. Even if all
your players don't show up, still play
(04:15):
something. Now some groups will decide on what
is called a quorum. A set number of people
that you believe need to be present in order to play
the normal scheduled Game. And if you go below
that number you still play to keep
consistency. It just may not be your normal
storyline or your normal Game. Play a board
Game or play a one shot side
(04:37):
Quest adventure using your same characters but
just a different story that you come up with. Or maybe
have preannned for just such an occasion.
Or you could run a completely different rules like
one page RPG. An example of this was that
I was running a Pathfinder 2E 2e adventure path
Abomination Vault and I had four
players to go through that adventure path. And one night we
(05:00):
had a scheduled Game and only one of my four
players showed up. his name is Matt. Shout out
to Matt. You're a great dude Matt Houston. Awesome
guy. and we didn't just decide
not to play. We decided we were gonna play Honey
Heist. Honey Heist by Grant Howitt. Now if you've been a
listener of the Pod for any length of Time you that I've gone through
(05:20):
Goblin Quest by Grant Howitt. in great detail.
I'm a big fan of his work and Honey Heist is just
so darn easy to run. I didn't even need to think about it.
I even had a fan made module on
Foundry VTT which made it very easy for me to
just create a character for Matt and go off
to the Races. I even had a pre made map where I had played this
(05:40):
Game before. Honey Heist is definitely in
my emergency box of one page.
Easy rules like RPGs that I pull out for
just such an occasion. Consistency is
key. And I remember one Time I was supposed to play an
RPG as follows, "A player with another group. I think we were playing the
Fantasy Flight Starforged Wars RPG and we didn't have enough
(06:00):
players so we couldn't move forward with the Game.
So the GM had us play a board Game. We actually
used online software through Board Game
arena and it was a blast. It was so much fun. And
this also made the Game still feel
familiar because I was with most of the people that play
that Game, just not everybody. It was the same time that we
usually met and so it was familiar, but
(06:23):
it also shook up that predictability. My
brain just for this one night, started to
associate this group, where normally I would be Playing Star
Wars, with a new experience. So then the
next time that we met, where we did actually go back and
play the Game, I actually was even more
appreciative of the Game that we had been playing because I had
a little bit of a break. I got to see some of my fellow
(06:45):
players in GM in a different light and it really just
livenedd up. And put more energy, back into what
we did. And so I am so glad that we were
consistent that no matter what
we played, even if everybody didn't
show up. Another member of the Reddit community said
it also rewards the players that do show
up. Right? How, how sad is it when you look
(07:08):
forward to. Think of it like Christmas, right? You wake up in the morning,
whether you celebrate Christmas or not, just think of a really
amazing holiday that you look
forward to and you wake up in the morning and all
of a sudden you see on the news or, or somebody sends
you a message and it says, oh, sorry, the holiday's canceled.
That's how it feels when you are looking forward,
(07:29):
at least to me, to playing an RPG Game and
then you end up not playing. You set aside the Time, maybe
you look forward to tackling a problem in the Game
or, or living out your character and then it's such
a letdown when you don't get to do it. So you know,
play consistently whether it's the actual game that you play
or not. You want to reward the players that do show
(07:49):
up. And do care.
The second big strategy or
pattern that the community came up with when trying
to schedule Games really fits
into consistency. So maybe I should call this
strategy 1.5 but it's related to
the frequency, the duration, the
day of the week and the Time of your Game. And
(08:11):
some people, you know, I think I tried to do this especially when
I first started out. I wanted to always cater
to every one of my players schedules.
So we would use tools like doodle or
we'use tools with online scheduling to try
to find the right fit, the right time. And maybe
that's good when you first start out, when you're first trying to
(08:31):
figure out what is that day, what is that Time, when are you,
when are you going to play? U other
GMs and other players really were like nope, I'm the
one that sets the day and the time based on my availability.
And then other people are willing to come in and out of that, that
Time. But whether you start out asking for
feedback or you're the one setting up the
(08:52):
Time, what was consistent across all
answers was that you always play same
day, same Time, no matter who
shows up. Right? That was what we talked about in strategy
number one. You play no matter what and you play
the same Time, same day, same Time of the
week. because what that does is it creates
in the mind of your players U
(09:14):
that spot, that island, I was just watching,
I was just watching with my kids inside out. And it was
showing the different emotions living in the little girl's brain
and how the little girl had different islands for things. So she
had her hockey island and she had her island for
goofing around and the island for family. And
you know, it creates an island. Doing this,
(09:35):
having the same day, same Time, duration and frequency
of your Game creates an island in your
players brains saying this is when
we do this. And so keeping to
that Time, whatever you decide it's going to
be, is crucial. And you play no matter
what, no matter who shows up, as long as there is one other person
(09:55):
in you, keep at it, keep up the
consistency with your frequency, duration, day of
the week and Time. Now many GMs
from Reddit when they were talking about duration, how long
do you play? It depends on how often you
play. I think that two to four hours seem
to be the sweet spot. Seem to be what most
(10:15):
people's sessions are when they have a reoccurring
Game that happens maybe on a weekly or a
monthly basis. And keeping to that Time
range between two to four hours seemed to be what works
best and increased the chances of people still
staying engaged but not burning out.
However, if the Game was going to be more than
five hours long, then
(10:38):
the frequency would change. So for
Games that would maybe be 12 hours long or
8 hours long, or even just greater than 5 hours
long, some folks would do it. Just once a year
or one to four times a year during a special
gaming occasion. One of my fondest
memories was playing a
D&D5E adaptation of a
(10:59):
classic D20 & D adventure called White Plume Mountain.
My brother in law ran the one shot. It
started at 12 noon. We ate some pizza for lunch
and then maybe after About a half hour, 45 minutes,
we started playing. And we played late into the evening till
about 7 or 8 o'clock at night. And it was so
much fun. But I got to be honest, my stamina
(11:20):
to do that every week or even every month would not
be very high. One suggestion that I
really loved that a Redditor provided was
when you're giving your cool pitch, have a
set number of sessions for your
campaign. How long will it run between this date
and that date? So an example might be
(11:40):
I'm going to start running this on
December 17th and it's going to be
a total of eight sessions that you will participate
in once a week until eight
weeks from now. And it's going to be at this time
for this many hours and that's when we're going toa be able to
complete the adventure. I hadn't even
considered that there was a middle ground between a
(12:02):
one shot adventure that you play for two to three hours, just one
night and a forever campaign where you just
keep playing until your players get bored and you decide
to no longer play, which could go on for years.
The third strategy came up not quite as frequently,
but still important, using
calendars, reminders, scheduling tools
and scheduling apps. I've used scheduling tools
(12:24):
and apps and here's my opinion on this.
A they are useful if people
look at them. B they are
useful if they include some sort of
automated reminders where people see the date and
Time after it's already been set and already been
selected. some suggestions from gamers have been
to use pinned messages and group chats on
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channels like Discord or other communication
portals. I even saw one player who
when I asked for strategies they had created
and shared this very, very generously, a basic
Excel document spreadsheet. And
in the spreadsheet the players would code, color
code the days and the times that they were available, which
(13:06):
allowed him to choose what day and Time that they would
play, between their different sessions. But here's
my main point. Use these scheduling apps
initially as needed. But don't forget
the main advice that a majority of the
community has been giving and that
is set a date and a time and remain
consistent. It's the consistency that creates the
(13:29):
habit of showing up. Being present
and more often produces more opportunities for
getting together and having fun with your friends.
The fourth common strategy here that came
up. And I absolutely love this
and this is my opinion and others may disagree with
me, but real life is more
(13:49):
important than any Game and
I love tabletop RPG'but here's the deal.
If you have kids, your kids are going to get
sick. Bedtime won't go smoothly as you
expect it. For those without
kids, you may get a work obligation that gets
in the way of your scheduled Game, or you are needed by a family
(14:09):
member or a friend to be present during a time
when normally youd be playing your game. Whatever the
situation. Remember, as the GM
is, "The person scheduling the Game or even as the player,
remind yourself that we are all human. No Game
is perfect and if somebody cares enough to want to truly be in
your game, you can pay it forward and try to work
(14:30):
with them. try to help catch them up if they do
miss a session or two. Now if they are frequent flyers of always
missing then that might be a tough conversation where you just
gotta say hey, like do you still want to play? Should I be finding
another person to be that seat at the table?
It's okay if you if that's the situation, but having
that conversation is really important. Be
(14:50):
flexible and don't be a schedule
Nazi. No Game for you. Join us
next time as we find the best ways to have great times with
friends and experience amazing stories through Tabletop
role playing. And dont forget to help you out, Ive
created the Game Scheduling Checklist. You
can download this Free PDF by clicking on the link in the show Notes. I
(15:10):
hear it all the Time from the community that
scheduling Games can be so hard. So use
this checklist to make sure you do everything you need to
do to get your Games scheduled and
played successfully. And may you keep having
fun as we continue to make our claim to Game.