July 8, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode of 'Hello Adventurers,' The Dungeon Masters share their insights on managing player absences in tabletop RPG sessions. They discuss how to handle both planned and unexpected absences, emphasizing the importance of establishing protocols during session zero. The hosts explore practical solutions such as running prequels, side quests, or alternative activities like one-shots or board games. They also highlight the importance of mutual respect, punctuality, and the flexibility to adjust game plans according to the group's needs. Listener questions are featured, with a special focus on a voicemail from a fan named Harren. This episode serves as a valuable resource for DMs aiming to keep the game running smoothly despite player absences.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:21):
Adventurer, the podcast for role players. Hey game masters, to help level
up your game. We are yourdungeon masters. I'm Jus and Portiso,
I'm Joe McCall and I'm Jim Crocker. And today we're kind of doing a
little no. We always like doingour our mail bag episode, but this
one kind of this This goes beyonda short mail bag episode. This is
(00:43):
a whole episode in itself. Sowe got a voicemail here from Haron,
So thanks so much for calling in. But let's let's hear from Haroen real
quick and we'll talk about what we'regoing to talk about today. So Haron,
go ahead, Hello, this isHaroen from Jersey. I was hoping
to get your opinion on people missingsessions. So, right, if you
have a five person session and oneperson cancels, I usually just do it
(01:07):
the same way. We just havethem jump in the next time. They
were busy doing something and they gamelate, so that's what their character did
too. But at what point doyou feel it's worth just breaking out a
different board game or canceling with differentamounts of people, And at what point
do you try and do like somekind of side quest or something or maybe
(01:32):
try to do just a different oneshot, maybe in the same universe.
I've had DMS tried to do likea prequel thing, which always felt kind
of weird, but it did givecharacters the opportunity to do some character development.
Maybe if you're the two people whoshow up or still friends or were
friends beforehand, you can still buildup how that relationship is, how that
(01:53):
relationship got where it is. Thanksguys, big fan. Oh we're big
fans of you two harn thanks somuch. I thought he was telling us.
See he was a big fan.He is a big fan. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, they wouldn't know. Yeah that he's that thing of
offshore that's been bringing us energy andmaking people mad for some reason. Huh
so. Yeah. So the gistof it is when you got players or
(02:16):
a player or players who can't makea session, what do you do and
how much does that does that answerchange? With how many players can't make
it, you cut them out ofyour life and you never speak to them
again. Then I would have zerofriends ever ever, ever easy. Non.
I worked hard at this. Okay, God, our session would have
(02:39):
our says would be dead years ago. Yo, Yeah, because of me.
That's what I'm stopped talking about.So I'm going to open this up
by saying my answers at least,and I am sure yours as well,
are going to change with how manyplayers are you expecting? How many players
are in your game currently. Andthis kind of change is a little bit
(03:00):
because you know that's going to affectyou know, one player is gonna be
taking up a smaller percentage of yourtable. So in a six player game,
like like we're playing right now,Joe, you know, one player
missing is like okay, that playeris just kind of that that character is
just, i know, off lookingaround for something and while the other five
are doing stuff. In a sixplayer game, if one player says they
(03:21):
can't show up, that's what Icall a relief. Three actually like players
only because I couldn't bring myself tosay no to that sixth person right,
So where we're at. But yeahslike six player game, one player defa
we like having Zach. I don'tknow Zach, so I got no beef
(03:42):
with Zach. I just had aname somebody. Yeah, I think Zach
is the most recent addition to ourgame. But so you know, going
from six person game to a fiveplayer games, Okay, yeah, we
can. It's actually a little easierto balance now, and we can still
continue your canonical game, have themlevel up with you also, and then
just kind of say like, okaythat that player is like or the character
is is back at wherever we leftthem looking for stuff, Like I'm going
(04:05):
to make the argument that that isnot the first question, okay, And
I think the first question is isthis an absence you knew about in advance
or didn't I and I think thatthat's where it starts. And then from
there, Okay, you look atthe table and how many players and stuff
like this and everything, because youroptions are going to be different, you
(04:28):
know, and and one is goingto require you to, you know,
kind of have a protocol in placeto deal with that unexpected situation, and
the other one someone says, hey, I won't be here in two weeks.
You know, you can have adiscussion with everybody about what's going to
happen, and you've got some time. But the yeah, I think that
first question is is you know,like did somebody just know show or do
(04:51):
you know that you know? Theirsisters getting married in a month, and
so they're not going to be therefor that session sure, and so okay,
so that sounds like session zero stuff. So I think that is I
think, and I think that's oneof the things that setting that protocol for
that that we got to get intohere, is that is that this is
stuff that should be laid down inadvance and and and not a like it's
(05:15):
not a question you should be askingday of Oh, should someone didn't show
up, what do we do?Yeah, like you should have probably have
that down, you know, andknow what's going on, all right,
So let's say that this is adiscussion to be had at session zero.
And the reminder that you are allowedto have a session zero mid campaign.
(05:35):
So if this is the time tostart thinking of these protocols, whether you've
been playing for you know, twoweeks or two years, you can you
can always set down those protocols andget a game plan in place. So
let's let's help hower and come upwith a game plan. And I think
the other thing that I want tothat I want to call out is that
people's, especially if you're an adult, people's schedules change during the year,
(05:59):
and so one thing that might makea lot of sense is to say,
you know, like September to Juneduring the school year. Here's our policy
for for how we handle it,you know whatever, except Christmas and New
Years, and then we do ita different way during the summer or something
like that, because a lot,you know, we're gonna have a lot
more absences or whatever. And andthis doesn't have to be like a one
(06:23):
size fits all all the time.You can revisit it. Yeah, And
it is that you always do atemperature check every couple of months or whatever,
or even every month if you're playingthat often. And say hey,
or just like you're buying into yourinsurance at work, any any life change,
you're allowed to change your insuranceitating eventor whatever it is. So what
is this but game insurance? Allright? And so anybody has any sort
(06:45):
of life change, No, andsay hey we're hey, we're pregnant,
Hey we got engaged. Hey Istarted school. Hey I got a new
job, Hey I lost the job. You know, all that kind of
stuff can change your your schedule.And I think we've had all of those
things happened too. I think I'vehad all those things happen just to me,
like Balder's Gate guys. Sorry,oh yeah, I can see you
later. Things are going really wellwith me and shadow Heart right now,
(07:06):
So I need to concentrate it.I get that game, maybe I don't.
It's really good, it's so sogood. If I have one of
the options I was going to givewhere if too many players cancel, just
play with balder Skate for that nightuntil I want to stay home. So
with that aside, so I'm goingto kind of like fear this towards like
(07:27):
my preferences. Yeah sure, Andobviously everybody chime in with your own preferences
and we can make adjustments therein.And this is not for us to say,
hey, haren this is the correctanswer. This is like, these
are the kind of things that gointo my decision making process, and I
invite you to also consider the samethings for you and your table and come
(07:49):
up with a solution that works foryou. Guys. So the first thing
I says, so, let's I'lllet I'll let Joe kind of handle the
game that I'm playing with him,because Joe is dming a table of six
players. I just two days agofrom the time of this recording, had
my session zero for a game thatI'm gonna start dming for four players.
And this is the kind of thingthat we and that by session zero,
(08:13):
I mean it was entirely character creationand we didn't really get into anything else.
But this is kind of thing thatwe'll have to talk about with them
as well. And you know,Jim, you've had how many tables over
the years, So we'll go asyour preferences, and then of course I'll
kind of gear this towards my publicone shots as well, because I have
very different answers for those. Andin fact, if I seem distracted of
all this, because my discord isblowing up, because I might have to
(08:35):
cancel the game tonight. So thisis very very relevant right now in the
moment. There we go. SoJill, let's let's start with let's start
with you with with the larger table. What kind of things are you considering,
Like, what are some of thefactors that would make you kind of
change your answer? Yeah, soour game is a little bit different than
(08:58):
most games, because I feel likemost games are going to be playing once
a week or once every other week. We play once a month, so
lucky if we're lucky. And butpart of it is our schedule, the
way we schedule it, and andso we Basically, we'll play a game
and we'll start discussing it kind ofat the end of that game, and
then and then we'll take we havea discord, and we take our discussion
(09:18):
usually there and say, okay,you know what dates. You know,
these are the dates that are lookinggood. Hey, this is the holiday.
So we have this month, wehave Father's Day coming up, and
you know that's that's a day forme to half of our tables or fathers.
Yeah, just bend my kids andand you know, we have some
other dads some that are celebrating thatfor the first time this year, and
(09:41):
so that's kind of a big deal. And I don't want to I don't
want D and D hanging over youknow, somebody's head to say, hey,
you gotta you know, you gotto get here because we've made this
commitment to each other and and I'mbusy. So so there are months sometimes,
especially when there's holidays involved, thatwe just don't play that month,
and that stinks, but you know, we just you know, come ready
(10:01):
to play the next time. Sothat's number one is usually we're scheduling a
few weeks out and everybody kind ofunderstands it, like, hey, listen.
Once we put that, we allagree this is the day we're playing,
Like we've made this commitment and youreally got to play if you say
you're going to play the other partof that is we can move on probably
without two to three. I wouldsay three is like pretty rough. Usually
(10:24):
it's not going to happen. Threeis kind of a stretch, but doable.
But in those instances, I justmoved the story along. So if
there's not a major story beat that'sgoing to be taking place in the session
the following week, or if it'snowhere near a major story beat, I'll
usually play on with up to twoto three players missing. If there is
(10:48):
a major story beat, I kindof make that known, like, hey,
I really would like to get asmany of you guys together as I
can because something big is going iscoming, or this is a important this
is an important session, but we'restill For example, we had like two
whole sessions that was like an extendeddungeon crawl, right where like, no,
we can continue a crawl without anymajor story stuff happening. Yeah yeah,
(11:11):
yeah, but if there's major storystuff, I kind of want everybody
there just just so you can experiencethat but we have again just because of
our age and everything, we havelike a player that's taking care of a
parent that that needs you know,kind of a constant companion and they need
to be there for their parent,and that that trumps any anything, right,
(11:33):
that trumps any any D and Dgame or game or social outing it
whatsoever. So for that player,usually I think we've just been like,
yeah, he's there, he's there, he's leveling up and he's off doing
his own things, or yeah,just we just don't. We don't include
them in the action, but asfar as from the storytelling place, they
(11:56):
are there and have experienced everything thatthe party has. The other way that
I've heard, I think it wasactually you that that told me about this
is like there's different mechanics that youcan kind of put in place, like
oh, they went off on aboat or they went on a side quest
or whatever, and you can theboat the boat method is something I'll talk
about, Yeah, like that's that'sall. You can do, all those
(12:18):
things. But for us, it'sjust they're there. You're just not going
to hear from that character this week, or maybe you are, but nothing
major. And I mean that's prettymuch how we deal with absences, like,
out of six people, we veryrarely have three missing. And most
of the time people aren't canceling lastminute unless it's me. It's usually me
(12:41):
if if it's a last minute cancelation, and in those cases we just say
Jason has run a one shot forus, or we call it board game
night, and you know, Ithink we all for the most part,
give as much notice as we possiblycan, so it's at least a few
hours. It's not like a lastminute, last minute just but before I
(13:03):
chimed on that part of it,we had a player that was unavailable that
night, and uh, He's like, no, me know if anything big
happens. And there was one pointwhere like he's he's our rogue and we
just need like a lock of pictureor something. I'm like, I'm like,
oh, he's still with us,right, You're like, yeah,
I guess he's kind of just hangingout the pack, like hey man,
I'm just kind of grabb him bythe scruff of his neck. But here
picked this lock. Yeah, andwe called the player or I think I
(13:24):
texted him and I was like Iwas like roll D twenty for me.
Yeah. Yeah, He's like whyI'm like, just just do it.
The next day, He's like,I was so scared. Yeah, he
was. He was at like hewas at an outing that he had to
he could not miss. Yeah,but we could still have side job work.
Yeah yeah, and right, Yeah, so he did. He rolled,
He rolled the D twenty while hewas at his event, and he
(13:46):
ended up succeeding if I if memoryserves, But we never told him why
why. Yeah, I'm gonna tellhim why. You gotta we gotta make
him, make him sweat. Itold him later. But we got one
in the sweat for a little bit. Yeah, I make I make a
regret messing the session. Yeah,it's it's not life and death. But
if somebody has taken their time outof their schedule and and made an effort
(14:11):
to you know, post a greatnight, put together a game for players,
and they've made a commitment to you, it is it is your responsibility
I think to like give as muchnotice as you possibly can. But but
things happen, right, But youhave to give have respect for the other
people that you're playing with because usuallythey're at least in our in our game,
(14:37):
like we're all friends, are connectedin some way, like they're friend.
They're a good friend of your friend, right, and so we try
to I think I think the importantthing there is mutual respect. Yeah,
I think that's the biggest thing.But and that's how we deal with absences.
Yeah, Now, because we havea player who is, you know,
(14:58):
a in taking care of a parent, it's it's difficult for us to
even have all six for our playerspresent at any given time. And that's
the other part is that we playsome of our players are that's one of
the hardest. That's that is reallytough. We are we are a hybrid
table. We have a dungeon masterand sometimes two or three players in person
(15:22):
and a couple of players who liveover an hour away and don't want you
know, and even once a monththat's a big trip. So we have
some players that are online, someplayers that are in person, and that
makes some of that dynamic a littlebit difficult. Like if if Joe can't
make a session that's our dungeon master, then like you know, I could
run a one shot. But likeif we have players that are kind of
all over the place and now we'redoing something that's that's not cannon and different
(15:43):
characters, it's like you know,they're just like that, we'll just take
the night off. Yeah, Andit's also like there's a different consideration if
everybody's just there online. Then ifyou know, people have driven to your
house and brought pizza and all thatkind of stuff and everything, that's that's
another thing that's kind of like beforeyou decide what to do, you got
to like, you know, didwe know that? Like like if you
(16:04):
show up and then just somebody textsyou saying I just got in a car
accident or you know, we hada medical emergency or something like that,
then you know that then that createsa different situation if there's people sitting there
in your house already, and thenif you're lock, you know, then
if you can all just go dosomething else. Because it's an online game.
I will say, luckily that thegentleman that hosts our games physically,
(16:26):
even though I'm the GM, wehave our games at Jason's house and it
is filled with board games. Soif that ever happened, no shortage of
other things. Two player game,one player games, twelve player game,
like whatever you need that is atabletop game, sheez and has it.
Yeah, everything from like the warerolls two Rooms in a boom. Yeah,
we get we get eighty players.I can get eighty player games going
(16:48):
if I needed to. I don'twant to do that by the wa Yeah,
bring you over seventy eight of yourfriends. We'll play. You'll play
t Rooms in a boom. HelloAdventurers, just been in here to remind
you guys that we're actively looking forsubmissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets
reported every month. Send us yourburning D and D questions the Helloadventurers Podcast
(17:08):
at gmail dot com, or sendus a voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot
com slash voice. Don't forget tobegin your message with Hello DMS. You
can't wait to get your questions totalk about them on the show. Send
us your questions today. That's HelloadventurersPodcast at gmail dot com, or you
the voice doing at helloadventurers podcast dotcom slash voice. Now let's get back
(17:32):
to the show. So, andthat's something good that you mentioned, Jim,
So like, let's hit the caraccident. So let's take the day
of cancelation, the last minute cancelationin good faiths Yeah, is going to
be very different than just the noshow and this is another thing to consider
where like what happens then is thesame player unable to know just let's let's
(17:55):
let's say you're both in good faithand not when it's the one is to
repeat, repeat offender. Of course, if it's in good faith, you
have to consider what the what theactual situation is. You know, a
player taking care of taking care ofanother one, that's that's I think fully
excusable indefinitely. But like now theplayer that's just like you know, car
(18:15):
broke down. I got into anotherargument with my mom. Yeah, I'm
sick, kids sick. Everyone elseis sick. Someone's sick every week.
Well, I mean, and Ijoked about like I just downloaded Balder's Gate.
But there is some of that thatcan go on where somebody decides on
the day of that there's something elsegoing on. It's just more interesting than
the game. Sure, yeah,and you know and then that that precipitates,
(18:38):
see my girlfriend, my girlfriend willlet me come over. You find
out the girlfriend's shadow herd, whichyou no based but yeah, sure,
what if that happens a couple oftimes? You know my es So yeah,
there you go. But if thathappens a couple of times, then
then you have a discussion about it. But for the most part, I
think you want to assume that you'vegot you know, in the indie game
space, when we talk about safetytool with open door is one of the
(19:02):
things we talk about, and youjust kind of want to assume that if
everybody's there and you you know thatthat if people can't make it, it's
because something happened in their lives andthey may or may not want to talk
about it, right, And thatif you're going to have a policy about
if you miss X number of sessionsin X number of weeks, that that
(19:22):
like you can it's totally cool foryou to have what amounts to like a
no fault divorce, right sure,you know, where like it's you know,
we know it's no one's fault.It's not you know, nobody's angry,
nobody's upset. But you know,but like if you miss more than
three sessions in a row, clearlysomething's not working out somewhere and we're gonna
(19:45):
we're gonna part ways and you know, either find another player or whatever,
or you know, but to haveall that stuff in place that you know
what's going on with it and likethe most common reason for that, I'm
going to assume is going to bescheduling su where like somebody, somebody just
cannot you know, maybe their schedulechange and they didn't realize it was going
(20:07):
to be as long term of achange as they thought. And like you
know now for schedule reasons, theyjust missed session after session of your session.
And this is when, like Isaid before, you kind of just
take a temperature checks check everyone,no checking out everybody? Is your schedule
still going to work for this time? And you know, are we still
still in this? We're gonna We'regoing to have another episode about session zeros
and temperature checks because that's something thatJoe and I are going to work on.
(20:30):
There's also there's also the possibility thatyou are your friend is flaky.
And here's the thing. You probablyknow that your friend is flaky, So
don't invite that friend to be partof your D and D game or or
treat their character as a drop incharacter, understanding that they may or not
be there, you know, thepresuming they're not going to be, and
(20:51):
then when they are, it's alittle extra bonus they you know, they've
got some extra help in the fightwhatever. I did actually have that rule
a little bit with Walter Wilson.With our friend Walter Yeah, who I
said to him, I said,hey, you know, I know you
want to play d ind and I'dlove to have you be at my table,
but I know work sometimes because atthe time, I think he was
(21:11):
working at a liquor store. Okay, He's like, yeah, I don't
know. Sometimes I can and sometimesI can. You know, I'd feel
bad, I'd feel bad committing tothe game and then like having to cancel.
And I was like, well,I'll tell you what, if you
ever, can you get the guestspot, you know, like you know,
so I did have a kind ofan open door policy for do a
(21:33):
wizard who was casting Blink and itwent awry, And you can do so
much fun, so many fun thingswith that. But that's also a thing
where if you kind of have inmind that you've got a kind of like
an open chair like all the time, then you know whatever, like like
a buddy who lives on the WestCoast who's home to visit his parents for
a weekend, you know, youcan have them drop into the game because
(21:56):
you're kind of always ready to havesomebody drop in something like that, you
know whatever, your cousin's in townand they want they want to get down
in the game. One of theother things that I wanted to kind of
piggyback on this is that this isall a lot easier if you're disciplined about
making sure your sessions start on timeand end on time, giving you know,
(22:19):
leading by example and showing some commitmentto yeah, commitment to commitment,
yeah, and making sure that youknow that you're clear about like session starts
at seven, and we like dicehit the table at ten after something like
that, you know, or youknow or or Dice hit the table at
(22:40):
seven, which means you hear anytime before that getting ready and stuff,
and you know, dice hit thetable at seven, you know, last
roll ten o'clock and you know,and then your wrap it because if it's
one of the things that can makepeople question what's going on is you know,
if you're willing to wait forty minutesfor someone to show up, that's
(23:00):
going to cause problems on the frontend. And it's gonna you know,
for the people that were there ontime, that's you know, not valuing
their time and their commitment and andif if you let it run over too
much at the end, then peoplestart to get you know, you know,
am I going to be here forthree hours tonight or four and a
half and I don't. And ifyou don't know, that can make it
tougher to commit to showing up aswe're awful where our table is awful at
(23:23):
both of those things. Yeah,starting, I think is something we should
work on better. And ending Ifeel like that's something where we are consistent,
just like, oh, we're donealready, one one more, one
more, Like I think like we'realways like, oh, we'll do it
for thirty more minutes, and thenI look down and it's been an hour
and a half and I go,oh no. And that was one of
the great things about when I ranin the store, right like we started
(23:45):
at the time the event started,yep, because people paid to start playing
at seven and it ended at ninebecause that's when the store closed. Well,
I should start selling the players,it was I should start closing.
But that made sure people showed upon time. And we were really clear
about like, yeah, like,you know, you got to be there
(24:06):
before seven if you want to getseated. Yeah, and maybe maybe if
you walk in a couple of minuteslate, you might still get a table,
yeah, I think, But ifit's seven to fifteen, you're not.
We're not going to I'm not goingto see you. Yeah. The
other thing that you said that Ihad actually made the light bulb go off,
that I really liked was that yousaid, like, bring pizza,
because we do that wrong too.We like, for like an hour game,
we're like're ordering in the middle ofthe game is death? That'side.
(24:30):
Yeah, And I know we're dumb, and I know we're dumb every time
we do it. It's good toknow that you're deaf. Yeah, at
least you know there's a level,there's a level of stupid where you don't
you're too stupid to know you're stupid. I know, I'm so dumb,
like like, but like at thesame time, like why didn't I think
of that? Why didn't I thinkabout bringing the pizza, especially because you
(24:52):
don't know and like like if youorder door dash or whatever and it's like
you could be here anytime between thirtyand ninety minutes, then like you know,
everybody's kind of watching the door andit's just stress. The other part
is it should be pizza because theyhave a special right by Jason's house.
It's thirteen dollars Sicilian pie every Mondayor Sunday and Monday. One of the
best Sicilians ever. It's a reallygood one of the I don't even like
(25:15):
Sicilian pie. Yeah, delicious.You get pizza and Jersey get Sicilian.
That's that's how that's how I disagreethat one. Yeah, I disagree.
But this, if you're in Tom'sRiver and you're anywhere near me, is
thirty seven. That's the Sicilian toget. Okay, sponsor us, Yeah,
give us, give us pizza forour game. Well, we'll keep
talking about you can just it caneven not be free. Generally say sell
(25:40):
us a pizza. That's the worst, the worst sponsorship it could have possibly
asked for, a Joe. Youwill keep them for advertising your product if
you just sell it to us,like, oh, I guess so,
it's gonna be a coupon money on. But making sure that your schedule is
locked in, including when you takemeal breaks and you know, bio breaks
and stuff like that. All ofthat helps keep things consistent in a way
(26:03):
that makes people more likely to attendbecause they understand what they're getting into and
it's reliable, and that's that's hugeyelly, and again like leading by that
example, but he listen, Iwas here on time. We all started
on time. I need need everyoneon the same page for that. Yeah,
it's funny because this now it's ina good way. I think it's
bleeding into table etiquette, yes,which is this whole thing is table Yeah,
(26:26):
yeah, yeah, yeah, AndI think a lot of it does
come down to that because the morerespect that there is at the table and
for your group, I think thatright, you're going to have less of
these like yeah, I'm not goingto make it this week, you know,
and that's going to help help youidentify the ones that are just like
it's just D and D whatever andlike and if that's not the level of
(26:49):
commitment that you want at your table. If that if that's the level of
commitment that you want and this isjust like a way to hang out,
that's that's a totally fine, youknow. The blase attitude is is totally
totally totally fine. Like I'm notI'm not I'm not dissing those types of
players, but that's not your table. And you've got one that's there,
and that's how they think of this. It's like, all right, well
this is now that's one identifiable.So that's why I think session zero,
zero point five, whatever you wantto do there, those check ins,
(27:12):
those are super important and to moreof what Jim said too, like the
safety tools of of that, likesetting an expectation. Yeah, right,
setting an expectation early and often,like is the best medicine for a well
run meeting of any kind? Rightis I was a manager. I managed
(27:34):
a group of you know, nineor ten people, and that's something that
was super important in that managing thoserelationships as well. It was like,
hey, listen, there's going tobe an expectation we're going to meet when
we have meetings. We're going tomeet these times per month and at these
times and it's not different anything elsemeets. We want to touch on with
(27:57):
this. I mean, maybe thequestion is there is a little side question
here, and that is how areyou going to handle mechanically the characters that
don't show up for those sessions?You know, do you do progression?
How do you do xpeed? Andyou know, like if you've got someone
who just has a job that meansthey miss one session a month or something
(28:18):
like that because they've got a staffmeeting they have to attend. You know,
is their character going to advance twentyfive percent more slowly than everybody else?
Or and how do you handle that? Because people are going to have
those questions, you know, becausewe're talking about D and D where that
stuff's important. You want to makesure that's another session zero thing is not
just what do we do how dowe handle it? But if you play
(28:41):
and your character's not there, howdo we handle the rewards and the advancement
and all that stuff, And justmake sure you have that down and everybody
understands how that works. There's noright or wrong way to do it.
Necessarily, I know how I wouldhandle it. You can do it however
you want. Just make sure everybodyknows what's going on with it when they
do that. Yeah, a lotof it relies on what kind of game
(29:02):
you played, too, Like wedo a milestone ye progression, so everybody's
just at the same time. Yeah, and that seems to be a huge
five E thing too, where likethe game seems to be like pushing people
towards doing a milestone thing, andthat's that's that's a different topic really,
but keeping that at milestone and justlike you know, you can figure out
(29:22):
story wise what's going on with thosecharacters. And I promised I would come
back to the boat thing before Ireally was playing. When I was just
you know, as we mentioned inthe the Broadway episode, I was just
a fan of the culture and enjoyedhearing my friends play. I had a
bunch of friends that were playing verycasually where everyone had the whatever, it's
just D and D attitude, andthat's and again totally cool. They all
(29:45):
have blast where like nobody was expectedto commit to showing up every week and
it's just like, hey, listen, we're going to meet with this guy's
house and if there's enough to play, we're going to play. And whoever's
not there is on the boat.And like they kind of just like had
this centralized location where there was aboat that was docked and your character is
just on the boat doing boat stuff. You know, you're swabbing a poop
(30:07):
deck whatever it is, while theother players are out having an adventure.
And and that worked for them onsomething that's a little bit more like overarching
story wise, you guys can figureall that out and you guys can figure
it out on the day of ifyou need to, like when we had
our Roague missing and say, okay, he's there, he's with us.
He's just being really quiet today,you know. And when I need to
(30:27):
he's a sneaky boy. Yeah,when he needs to pick a lock,
I just don't meet me. Thebarbarian just picks up the the halfling and
just and just holds him at thedoor. He doesn't have to talk for
that. So, like, youknow, that's that's up to you,
guys. And it seems like thereal answer to this is that and like
everything and it's just almost it's almosteven like boring to keep saying it.
(30:48):
Talk to your players, but there'sa lot of things to consider, and
that's like, you know, ifthey are going to have like an off
story thing to be doing, that'ssomething and you discussed as you need to,
but heard it sounds like you hadlike a lot of options there and
it's all they're all good options.Yeah, And then the question was,
you know, the question on thesurface was at what point do you do
(31:11):
this? And I'm not going togive you like you know, when there
are two players missing, do this. I'm not going to give you,
like the flow chart for your table, that's for your table. But you
guys can absolutely have a mid campaignsession zero or zero point one as Joe
and I like to call it.Yeah, and you guys can make that
flow chart whenever you want. Yeah, it's a lot. Like it's a
(31:33):
lot like smoke and a brisket.How do you know when it's done?
Depends on how it feels done whenit's done. Yeah, try asking it
you're done yet? Yeah, atour particular table, since we play at
my house, if there's two orthree people over and that's all it's and
like we're it does not have toplay a D and D. We'll play
you, We'll play one of myboard games and still eat the pizza that
Joe definitely brought. Yeah, I'vegot to start now. I love that.
(31:57):
Where like I have like warm upgames that we play while we're waiting
for people to come to the table, mostly D and D stuff. I
have a Rock Paper Wizard which isa ton of fun. And what's the
dungeon mayhem? I think it's calledyea also a ton of is that a
preconstructed deck card game? But it'smade it's made by Wizard's like it's just
(32:19):
a little casual game, and like, maybe that's what we do tonight.
I have plenty of one shots readyto go that that I keep prepared with
Minis to set aside for them,that I keep prepared for the for the
game store and breweries. So ifwe have enough for a one shot and
there's not enough for a canonical campaign, or if the DM can't make it
and I can and I can dM for the night, that's another option.
I actually really like your prequel idea. And I couldn't tell if Jim
(32:43):
was making a face about the prequelthing or not, But but I've played
in a prequel canonical one shot onD and D four O four which I
haven't decided if that interview is comingout next week or last week, so
go back and listen to it orwait a week, whichever I decide.
But prequels are fun. You doprequels, You can do dream sequences,
(33:04):
you can do you can do thething where like if currently what you're doing
is rescuing some farmers that got capturedby goblins, you can play the union
going back and show the farmers gettingcaptured, you know, like like you
can almost use it like a retcona little bit. That's what we did.
We did you can do. Yeah, we did a prequel one shot
(33:25):
for like in their story there waslike the event. It was something like
really really bad that happened that peoplealluded to, but like no one really
told exactly what happened. We playedout what happened and we were the bad
guys. Yeah, so you wantto save the farmers. That was not
what we did. Yeah, youcan play the goblins who capture the farmers.
Yeah, that's cool. I castFireball, right, it was awful.
(33:47):
But just the one player like uhlike silently messaged the d M and
he's like, I have the opportunityto create a time paradox right now.
He's like, please don't. Idon't know how to handle that, So
just make sure you're not creating anyparadoxes. And by killing your big bad
while he's a baby, you can, like you know you can, and
(34:09):
then you know, maybe it's worseor this is the reveal that that's that's
not the real big bad. Thisis the the guy who took his place.
Well it would be really great aboutthat though. Is the player that
missed that session coming back and belike, wait a minute, what did
I miss? No? No,no, you shot Gary Hitler. He
was gonna win no Bell Prize.Dary was a good guy. He gott
(34:30):
to art school. So but Ilike the ideas that you're laid out and
they're all totally viable options. Sothe question about like when do you do
this, when do you do that? That is up for your players and
you and I will chime in onthat if you invite me to play,
and that's that's kind of that's kindof my thing. Any other any of
(34:51):
the major things you want to dropon this, No, he covered this
pretty thoroughly. I covered everything Iwant to talk about, so hear,
I think so much for listening.I will I think I've we got we
got some mutual friends, and Ithink I promised to run one shot for
you guys, so looking forward tothat. You know what, I Am
going to say. One thing pleasethat we didn't really cover, and that
is that every now and then sometimesit's okay to take a week off.
(35:14):
That's fine too. There's nothing wrongwith that. You can totally do that.
And if you know, and ifeverybody's going like I don't know about
this, week, take a weekoff, take a breather, you know,
play some video games, go youknow, go for a walk outside,
and then pick it up next weekwhen everybody's freshing him. That that's
totally cool too, Like just becausejust because someone's there doesn't mean you like
have to come up with an alternateactivity. It is okay, every now
(35:37):
and then, it takes sure,Yeah, well we do that pretty often.
It's a little too often, butit's yeah, keep us us going
on, us playing much more infrequentlyas than most tables. Lets us do
that. It's like, hey,next week instead where we're like, we're
not really losing anything, but yeah, totally fine as well. And it's
going to come as a shock toa lot of listeners, but there's other
things to do then play D andD. It's true, we just lost
(35:59):
ten subscribers. Okay, you cango to the theater and watch a show
about Dada. You can go backan episode or possibly two, depending on
how I feel. Listen to Jim'ssynopsis on that go outside, slow down,
Joe, all right, relax,Okay, we speak like, that's
cool if that's what you want todo. But yeah, dude, thanks
so much for sending you a question, you can send yours in that you
(36:20):
can need the email us at HelloAdventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, or
you can leave a voicemail just likeKaren did at Hello Adventurers Podcast dot com
slash voice that'll bring you to alittle web page you can do right from
your phone without actually having a dialanything. It's literally one button. It
cannot be any easier. Because welove to hear your questions. Will we
try to do a mail back showwhere we enter them a bunch of these,
but this particular question warranted its ownepisode. So and if you got
(36:45):
something that is that's that deep andthat also, we will set up an
episode for that as well. Ithink it's going to wrap it up right.
Yeah. Cool, So, Jim, Joe, thanks for hanging out
with me, Thanks for having me, and thank you for listening to Hello
Adventurers. We are your host JasonTiso, Jim Crocker and Joe McCall,
producer, editor and engineer Jason Portisoand used by Nick Spurrier, Artworth,
(37:05):
Battison Broderick. You can reach outto us with any feedbackward suggestions by emailing
Helloa Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Helloadventures is a JTP audio production Goodbye Adventures,
Adventurer, the podcast for role players. Hey game masters, to help level
up your game. We are yourdungeon masters. I'm Jus and Portiso,
I'm Joe McCall and I'm Jim Crocker. And today we're kind of doing a
little no. We always like doingour our mail bag episode, but this
one kind of this This goes beyonda short mail bag episode. This is
(00:43):
a whole episode in itself. Sowe got a voicemail here from Haron,
So thanks so much for calling in. But let's let's hear from Haroen real
quick and we'll talk about what we'regoing to talk about today. So Haron,
go ahead, Hello, this isHaroen from Jersey. I was hoping
to get your opinion on people missingsessions. So, right, if you
have a five person session and oneperson cancels, I usually just do it
(01:07):
the same way. We just havethem jump in the next time. They
were busy doing something and they gamelate, so that's what their character did
too. But at what point doyou feel it's worth just breaking out a
different board game or canceling with differentamounts of people, And at what point
do you try and do like somekind of side quest or something or maybe
(01:32):
try to do just a different oneshot, maybe in the same universe.
I've had DMS tried to do likea prequel thing, which always felt kind
of weird, but it did givecharacters the opportunity to do some character development.
Maybe if you're the two people whoshow up or still friends or were
friends beforehand, you can still buildup how that relationship is, how that
(01:53):
relationship got where it is. Thanksguys, big fan. Oh we're big
fans of you two harn thanks somuch. I thought he was telling us.
See he was a big fan.He is a big fan. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, they wouldn't know. Yeah that he's that thing of
offshore that's been bringing us energy andmaking people mad for some reason. Huh
so. Yeah. So the gistof it is when you got players or
(02:16):
a player or players who can't makea session, what do you do and
how much does that does that answerchange? With how many players can't make
it, you cut them out ofyour life and you never speak to them
again. Then I would have zerofriends ever ever, ever easy. Non.
I worked hard at this. Okay, God, our session would have
(02:39):
our says would be dead years ago. Yo, Yeah, because of me.
That's what I'm stopped talking about.So I'm going to open this up
by saying my answers at least,and I am sure yours as well,
are going to change with how manyplayers are you expecting? How many players
are in your game currently. Andthis kind of change is a little bit
(03:00):
because you know that's going to affectyou know, one player is gonna be
taking up a smaller percentage of yourtable. So in a six player game,
like like we're playing right now,Joe, you know, one player
missing is like okay, that playeris just kind of that that character is
just, i know, off lookingaround for something and while the other five
are doing stuff. In a sixplayer game, if one player says they
(03:21):
can't show up, that's what Icall a relief. Three actually like players
only because I couldn't bring myself tosay no to that sixth person right,
So where we're at. But yeahslike six player game, one player defa
we like having Zach. I don'tknow Zach, so I got no beef
(03:42):
with Zach. I just had aname somebody. Yeah, I think Zach
is the most recent addition to ourgame. But so you know, going
from six person game to a fiveplayer games, Okay, yeah, we
can. It's actually a little easierto balance now, and we can still
continue your canonical game, have themlevel up with you also, and then
just kind of say like, okaythat that player is like or the character
is is back at wherever we leftthem looking for stuff, Like I'm going
(04:05):
to make the argument that that isnot the first question, okay, And
I think the first question is isthis an absence you knew about in advance
or didn't I and I think thatthat's where it starts. And then from
there, Okay, you look atthe table and how many players and stuff
like this and everything, because youroptions are going to be different, you
(04:28):
know, and and one is goingto require you to, you know,
kind of have a protocol in placeto deal with that unexpected situation, and
the other one someone says, hey, I won't be here in two weeks.
You know, you can have adiscussion with everybody about what's going to
happen, and you've got some time. But the yeah, I think that
first question is is you know,like did somebody just know show or do
(04:51):
you know that you know? Theirsisters getting married in a month, and
so they're not going to be therefor that session sure, and so okay,
so that sounds like session zero stuff. So I think that is I
think, and I think that's oneof the things that setting that protocol for
that that we got to get intohere, is that is that this is
stuff that should be laid down inadvance and and and not a like it's
(05:15):
not a question you should be askingday of Oh, should someone didn't show
up, what do we do?Yeah, like you should have probably have
that down, you know, andknow what's going on, all right,
So let's say that this is adiscussion to be had at session zero.
And the reminder that you are allowedto have a session zero mid campaign.
(05:35):
So if this is the time tostart thinking of these protocols, whether you've
been playing for you know, twoweeks or two years, you can you
can always set down those protocols andget a game plan in place. So
let's let's help hower and come upwith a game plan. And I think
the other thing that I want tothat I want to call out is that
people's, especially if you're an adult, people's schedules change during the year,
(05:59):
and so one thing that might makea lot of sense is to say,
you know, like September to Juneduring the school year. Here's our policy
for for how we handle it,you know whatever, except Christmas and New
Years, and then we do ita different way during the summer or something
like that, because a lot,you know, we're gonna have a lot
more absences or whatever. And andthis doesn't have to be like a one
(06:23):
size fits all all the time.You can revisit it. Yeah, And
it is that you always do atemperature check every couple of months or whatever,
or even every month if you're playingthat often. And say hey,
or just like you're buying into yourinsurance at work, any any life change,
you're allowed to change your insuranceitating eventor whatever it is. So what
is this but game insurance? Allright? And so anybody has any sort
(06:45):
of life change, No, andsay hey we're hey, we're pregnant,
Hey we got engaged. Hey Istarted school. Hey I got a new
job, Hey I lost the job. You know, all that kind of
stuff can change your your schedule.And I think we've had all of those
things happened too. I think I'vehad all those things happen just to me,
like Balder's Gate guys. Sorry,oh yeah, I can see you
later. Things are going really wellwith me and shadow Heart right now,
(07:06):
So I need to concentrate it.I get that game, maybe I don't.
It's really good, it's so sogood. If I have one of
the options I was going to givewhere if too many players cancel, just
play with balder Skate for that nightuntil I want to stay home. So
with that aside, so I'm goingto kind of like fear this towards like
(07:27):
my preferences. Yeah sure, Andobviously everybody chime in with your own preferences
and we can make adjustments therein.And this is not for us to say,
hey, haren this is the correctanswer. This is like, these
are the kind of things that gointo my decision making process, and I
invite you to also consider the samethings for you and your table and come
(07:49):
up with a solution that works foryou. Guys. So the first thing
I says, so, let's I'lllet I'll let Joe kind of handle the
game that I'm playing with him,because Joe is dming a table of six
players. I just two days agofrom the time of this recording, had
my session zero for a game thatI'm gonna start dming for four players.
And this is the kind of thingthat we and that by session zero,
(08:13):
I mean it was entirely character creationand we didn't really get into anything else.
But this is kind of thing thatwe'll have to talk about with them
as well. And you know,Jim, you've had how many tables over
the years, So we'll go asyour preferences, and then of course I'll
kind of gear this towards my publicone shots as well, because I have
very different answers for those. Andin fact, if I seem distracted of
all this, because my discord isblowing up, because I might have to
(08:35):
cancel the game tonight. So thisis very very relevant right now in the
moment. There we go. SoJill, let's let's start with let's start
with you with with the larger table. What kind of things are you considering,
Like, what are some of thefactors that would make you kind of
change your answer? Yeah, soour game is a little bit different than
(08:58):
most games, because I feel likemost games are going to be playing once
a week or once every other week. We play once a month, so
lucky if we're lucky. And butpart of it is our schedule, the
way we schedule it, and andso we Basically, we'll play a game
and we'll start discussing it kind ofat the end of that game, and
then and then we'll take we havea discord, and we take our discussion
(09:18):
usually there and say, okay,you know what dates. You know,
these are the dates that are lookinggood. Hey, this is the holiday.
So we have this month, wehave Father's Day coming up, and
you know that's that's a day forme to half of our tables or fathers.
Yeah, just bend my kids andand you know, we have some
other dads some that are celebrating thatfor the first time this year, and
(09:41):
so that's kind of a big deal. And I don't want to I don't
want D and D hanging over youknow, somebody's head to say, hey,
you gotta you know, you gotto get here because we've made this
commitment to each other and and I'mbusy. So so there are months sometimes,
especially when there's holidays involved, thatwe just don't play that month,
and that stinks, but you know, we just you know, come ready
(10:01):
to play the next time. Sothat's number one is usually we're scheduling a
few weeks out and everybody kind ofunderstands it, like, hey, listen.
Once we put that, we allagree this is the day we're playing,
Like we've made this commitment and youreally got to play if you say
you're going to play the other partof that is we can move on probably
without two to three. I wouldsay three is like pretty rough. Usually
(10:24):
it's not going to happen. Threeis kind of a stretch, but doable.
But in those instances, I justmoved the story along. So if
there's not a major story beat that'sgoing to be taking place in the session
the following week, or if it'snowhere near a major story beat, I'll
usually play on with up to twoto three players missing. If there is
(10:48):
a major story beat, I kindof make that known, like, hey,
I really would like to get asmany of you guys together as I
can because something big is going iscoming, or this is a important this
is an important session, but we'restill For example, we had like two
whole sessions that was like an extendeddungeon crawl, right where like, no,
we can continue a crawl without anymajor story stuff happening. Yeah yeah,
(11:11):
yeah, but if there's major storystuff, I kind of want everybody
there just just so you can experiencethat but we have again just because of
our age and everything, we havelike a player that's taking care of a
parent that that needs you know,kind of a constant companion and they need
to be there for their parent,and that that trumps any anything, right,
(11:33):
that trumps any any D and Dgame or game or social outing it
whatsoever. So for that player,usually I think we've just been like,
yeah, he's there, he's there, he's leveling up and he's off doing
his own things, or yeah,just we just don't. We don't include
them in the action, but asfar as from the storytelling place, they
(11:56):
are there and have experienced everything thatthe party has. The other way that
I've heard, I think it wasactually you that that told me about this
is like there's different mechanics that youcan kind of put in place, like
oh, they went off on aboat or they went on a side quest
or whatever, and you can theboat the boat method is something I'll talk
about, Yeah, like that's that'sall. You can do, all those
(12:18):
things. But for us, it'sjust they're there. You're just not going
to hear from that character this week, or maybe you are, but nothing
major. And I mean that's prettymuch how we deal with absences, like,
out of six people, we veryrarely have three missing. And most
of the time people aren't canceling lastminute unless it's me. It's usually me
(12:41):
if if it's a last minute cancelation, and in those cases we just say
Jason has run a one shot forus, or we call it board game
night, and you know, Ithink we all for the most part,
give as much notice as we possiblycan, so it's at least a few
hours. It's not like a lastminute, last minute just but before I
(13:03):
chimed on that part of it,we had a player that was unavailable that
night, and uh, He's like, no, me know if anything big
happens. And there was one pointwhere like he's he's our rogue and we
just need like a lock of pictureor something. I'm like, I'm like,
oh, he's still with us,right, You're like, yeah,
I guess he's kind of just hangingout the pack, like hey man,
I'm just kind of grabb him bythe scruff of his neck. But here
picked this lock. Yeah, andwe called the player or I think I
(13:24):
texted him and I was like Iwas like roll D twenty for me.
Yeah. Yeah, He's like whyI'm like, just just do it.
The next day, He's like,I was so scared. Yeah, he
was. He was at like hewas at an outing that he had to
he could not miss. Yeah,but we could still have side job work.
Yeah yeah, and right, Yeah, so he did. He rolled,
He rolled the D twenty while hewas at his event, and he
(13:46):
ended up succeeding if I if memoryserves, But we never told him why
why. Yeah, I'm gonna tellhim why. You gotta we gotta make
him, make him sweat. Itold him later. But we got one
in the sweat for a little bit. Yeah, I make I make a
regret messing the session. Yeah,it's it's not life and death. But
if somebody has taken their time outof their schedule and and made an effort
(14:11):
to you know, post a greatnight, put together a game for players,
and they've made a commitment to you, it is it is your responsibility
I think to like give as muchnotice as you possibly can. But but
things happen, right, But youhave to give have respect for the other
people that you're playing with because usuallythey're at least in our in our game,
(14:37):
like we're all friends, are connectedin some way, like they're friend.
They're a good friend of your friend, right, and so we try
to I think I think the importantthing there is mutual respect. Yeah,
I think that's the biggest thing.But and that's how we deal with absences.
Yeah, Now, because we havea player who is, you know,
(14:58):
a in taking care of a parent, it's it's difficult for us to
even have all six for our playerspresent at any given time. And that's
the other part is that we playsome of our players are that's one of
the hardest. That's that is reallytough. We are we are a hybrid
table. We have a dungeon masterand sometimes two or three players in person
(15:22):
and a couple of players who liveover an hour away and don't want you
know, and even once a monththat's a big trip. So we have
some players that are online, someplayers that are in person, and that
makes some of that dynamic a littlebit difficult. Like if if Joe can't
make a session that's our dungeon master, then like you know, I could
run a one shot. But likeif we have players that are kind of
all over the place and now we'redoing something that's that's not cannon and different
(15:43):
characters, it's like you know,they're just like that, we'll just take
the night off. Yeah, Andit's also like there's a different consideration if
everybody's just there online. Then ifyou know, people have driven to your
house and brought pizza and all thatkind of stuff and everything, that's that's
another thing that's kind of like beforeyou decide what to do, you got
to like, you know, didwe know that? Like like if you
(16:04):
show up and then just somebody textsyou saying I just got in a car
accident or you know, we hada medical emergency or something like that,
then you know that then that createsa different situation if there's people sitting there
in your house already, and thenif you're lock, you know, then
if you can all just go dosomething else. Because it's an online game.
I will say, luckily that thegentleman that hosts our games physically,
(16:26):
even though I'm the GM, wehave our games at Jason's house and it
is filled with board games. Soif that ever happened, no shortage of
other things. Two player game,one player games, twelve player game,
like whatever you need that is atabletop game, sheez and has it.
Yeah, everything from like the warerolls two Rooms in a boom. Yeah,
we get we get eighty players.I can get eighty player games going
(16:48):
if I needed to. I don'twant to do that by the wa Yeah,
bring you over seventy eight of yourfriends. We'll play. You'll play
t Rooms in a boom. HelloAdventurers, just been in here to remind
you guys that we're actively looking forsubmissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets
reported every month. Send us yourburning D and D questions the Helloadventurers Podcast
(17:08):
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the voice doing at helloadventurers podcast dotcom slash voice. Now let's get back
(17:32):
to the show. So, andthat's something good that you mentioned, Jim,
So like, let's hit the caraccident. So let's take the day
of cancelation, the last minute cancelationin good faiths Yeah, is going to
be very different than just the noshow and this is another thing to consider
where like what happens then is thesame player unable to know just let's let's
(17:55):
let's say you're both in good faithand not when it's the one is to
repeat, repeat offender. Of course, if it's in good faith, you
have to consider what the what theactual situation is. You know, a
player taking care of taking care ofanother one, that's that's I think fully
excusable indefinitely. But like now theplayer that's just like you know, car
(18:15):
broke down. I got into anotherargument with my mom. Yeah, I'm
sick, kids sick. Everyone elseis sick. Someone's sick every week.
Well, I mean, and Ijoked about like I just downloaded Balder's Gate.
But there is some of that thatcan go on where somebody decides on
the day of that there's something elsegoing on. It's just more interesting than
the game. Sure, yeah,and you know and then that that precipitates,
(18:38):
see my girlfriend, my girlfriend willlet me come over. You find
out the girlfriend's shadow herd, whichyou no based but yeah, sure,
what if that happens a couple oftimes? You know my es So yeah,
there you go. But if thathappens a couple of times, then
then you have a discussion about it. But for the most part, I
think you want to assume that you'vegot you know, in the indie game
space, when we talk about safetytool with open door is one of the
(19:02):
things we talk about, and youjust kind of want to assume that if
everybody's there and you you know thatthat if people can't make it, it's
because something happened in their lives andthey may or may not want to talk
about it, right, And thatif you're going to have a policy about
if you miss X number of sessionsin X number of weeks, that that
(19:22):
like you can it's totally cool foryou to have what amounts to like a
no fault divorce, right sure,you know, where like it's you know,
we know it's no one's fault.It's not you know, nobody's angry,
nobody's upset. But you know,but like if you miss more than
three sessions in a row, clearlysomething's not working out somewhere and we're gonna
(19:45):
we're gonna part ways and you know, either find another player or whatever,
or you know, but to haveall that stuff in place that you know
what's going on with it and likethe most common reason for that, I'm
going to assume is going to bescheduling su where like somebody, somebody just
cannot you know, maybe their schedulechange and they didn't realize it was going
(20:07):
to be as long term of achange as they thought. And like you
know now for schedule reasons, theyjust missed session after session of your session.
And this is when, like Isaid before, you kind of just
take a temperature checks check everyone,no checking out everybody? Is your schedule
still going to work for this time? And you know, are we still
still in this? We're gonna We'regoing to have another episode about session zeros
and temperature checks because that's something thatJoe and I are going to work on.
(20:30):
There's also there's also the possibility thatyou are your friend is flaky.
And here's the thing. You probablyknow that your friend is flaky, So
don't invite that friend to be partof your D and D game or or
treat their character as a drop incharacter, understanding that they may or not
be there, you know, thepresuming they're not going to be, and
(20:51):
then when they are, it's alittle extra bonus they you know, they've
got some extra help in the fightwhatever. I did actually have that rule
a little bit with Walter Wilson.With our friend Walter Yeah, who I
said to him, I said,hey, you know, I know you
want to play d ind and I'dlove to have you be at my table,
but I know work sometimes because atthe time, I think he was
(21:11):
working at a liquor store. Okay, He's like, yeah, I don't
know. Sometimes I can and sometimesI can. You know, I'd feel
bad, I'd feel bad committing tothe game and then like having to cancel.
And I was like, well,I'll tell you what, if you
ever, can you get the guestspot, you know, like you know,
so I did have a kind ofan open door policy for do a
(21:33):
wizard who was casting Blink and itwent awry, And you can do so
much fun, so many fun thingswith that. But that's also a thing
where if you kind of have inmind that you've got a kind of like
an open chair like all the time, then you know whatever, like like
a buddy who lives on the WestCoast who's home to visit his parents for
a weekend, you know, youcan have them drop into the game because
(21:56):
you're kind of always ready to havesomebody drop in something like that, you
know whatever, your cousin's in townand they want they want to get down
in the game. One of theother things that I wanted to kind of
piggyback on this is that this isall a lot easier if you're disciplined about
making sure your sessions start on timeand end on time, giving you know,
(22:19):
leading by example and showing some commitmentto yeah, commitment to commitment,
yeah, and making sure that youknow that you're clear about like session starts
at seven, and we like dicehit the table at ten after something like
that, you know, or youknow or or Dice hit the table at
(22:40):
seven, which means you hear anytime before that getting ready and stuff,
and you know, dice hit thetable at seven, you know, last
roll ten o'clock and you know,and then your wrap it because if it's
one of the things that can makepeople question what's going on is you know,
if you're willing to wait forty minutesfor someone to show up, that's
(23:00):
going to cause problems on the frontend. And it's gonna you know,
for the people that were there ontime, that's you know, not valuing
their time and their commitment and andif if you let it run over too
much at the end, then peoplestart to get you know, you know,
am I going to be here forthree hours tonight or four and a
half and I don't. And ifyou don't know, that can make it
tougher to commit to showing up aswe're awful where our table is awful at
(23:23):
both of those things. Yeah,starting, I think is something we should
work on better. And ending Ifeel like that's something where we are consistent,
just like, oh, we're donealready, one one more, one
more, Like I think like we'realways like, oh, we'll do it
for thirty more minutes, and thenI look down and it's been an hour
and a half and I go,oh no. And that was one of
the great things about when I ranin the store, right like we started
(23:45):
at the time the event started,yep, because people paid to start playing
at seven and it ended at ninebecause that's when the store closed. Well,
I should start selling the players,it was I should start closing.
But that made sure people showed upon time. And we were really clear
about like, yeah, like,you know, you got to be there
(24:06):
before seven if you want to getseated. Yeah, and maybe maybe if
you walk in a couple of minuteslate, you might still get a table,
yeah, I think, But ifit's seven to fifteen, you're not.
We're not going to I'm not goingto see you. Yeah. The
other thing that you said that Ihad actually made the light bulb go off,
that I really liked was that yousaid, like, bring pizza,
because we do that wrong too.We like, for like an hour game,
we're like're ordering in the middle ofthe game is death? That'side.
(24:30):
Yeah, And I know we're dumb, and I know we're dumb every time
we do it. It's good toknow that you're deaf. Yeah, at
least you know there's a level,there's a level of stupid where you don't
you're too stupid to know you're stupid. I know, I'm so dumb,
like like, but like at thesame time, like why didn't I think
of that? Why didn't I thinkabout bringing the pizza, especially because you
(24:52):
don't know and like like if youorder door dash or whatever and it's like
you could be here anytime between thirtyand ninety minutes, then like you know,
everybody's kind of watching the door andit's just stress. The other part
is it should be pizza because theyhave a special right by Jason's house.
It's thirteen dollars Sicilian pie every Mondayor Sunday and Monday. One of the
best Sicilians ever. It's a reallygood one of the I don't even like
(25:15):
Sicilian pie. Yeah, delicious.You get pizza and Jersey get Sicilian.
That's that's how that's how I disagreethat one. Yeah, I disagree.
But this, if you're in Tom'sRiver and you're anywhere near me, is
thirty seven. That's the Sicilian toget. Okay, sponsor us, Yeah,
give us, give us pizza forour game. Well, we'll keep
talking about you can just it caneven not be free. Generally say sell
(25:40):
us a pizza. That's the worst, the worst sponsorship it could have possibly
asked for, a Joe. Youwill keep them for advertising your product if
you just sell it to us,like, oh, I guess so,
it's gonna be a coupon money on. But making sure that your schedule is
locked in, including when you takemeal breaks and you know, bio breaks
and stuff like that. All ofthat helps keep things consistent in a way
(26:03):
that makes people more likely to attendbecause they understand what they're getting into and
it's reliable, and that's that's hugeyelly, and again like leading by that
example, but he listen, Iwas here on time. We all started
on time. I need need everyoneon the same page for that. Yeah,
it's funny because this now it's ina good way. I think it's
bleeding into table etiquette, yes,which is this whole thing is table Yeah,
(26:26):
yeah, yeah, yeah, AndI think a lot of it does
come down to that because the morerespect that there is at the table and
for your group, I think thatright, you're going to have less of
these like yeah, I'm not goingto make it this week, you know,
and that's going to help help youidentify the ones that are just like
it's just D and D whatever andlike and if that's not the level of
(26:49):
commitment that you want at your table. If that if that's the level of
commitment that you want and this isjust like a way to hang out,
that's that's a totally fine, youknow. The blase attitude is is totally
totally totally fine. Like I'm notI'm not I'm not dissing those types of
players, but that's not your table. And you've got one that's there,
and that's how they think of this. It's like, all right, well
this is now that's one identifiable.So that's why I think session zero,
zero point five, whatever you wantto do there, those check ins,
(27:12):
those are super important and to moreof what Jim said too, like the
safety tools of of that, likesetting an expectation. Yeah, right,
setting an expectation early and often,like is the best medicine for a well
run meeting of any kind? Rightis I was a manager. I managed
(27:34):
a group of you know, nineor ten people, and that's something that
was super important in that managing thoserelationships as well. It was like,
hey, listen, there's going tobe an expectation we're going to meet when
we have meetings. We're going tomeet these times per month and at these
times and it's not different anything elsemeets. We want to touch on with
(27:57):
this. I mean, maybe thequestion is there is a little side question
here, and that is how areyou going to handle mechanically the characters that
don't show up for those sessions?You know, do you do progression?
How do you do xpeed? Andyou know, like if you've got someone
who just has a job that meansthey miss one session a month or something
(28:18):
like that because they've got a staffmeeting they have to attend. You know,
is their character going to advance twentyfive percent more slowly than everybody else?
Or and how do you handle that? Because people are going to have
those questions, you know, becausewe're talking about D and D where that
stuff's important. You want to makesure that's another session zero thing is not
just what do we do how dowe handle it? But if you play
(28:41):
and your character's not there, howdo we handle the rewards and the advancement
and all that stuff, And justmake sure you have that down and everybody
understands how that works. There's noright or wrong way to do it.
Necessarily, I know how I wouldhandle it. You can do it however
you want. Just make sure everybodyknows what's going on with it when they
do that. Yeah, a lotof it relies on what kind of game
(29:02):
you played, too, Like wedo a milestone ye progression, so everybody's
just at the same time. Yeah, and that seems to be a huge
five E thing too, where likethe game seems to be like pushing people
towards doing a milestone thing, andthat's that's that's a different topic really,
but keeping that at milestone and justlike you know, you can figure out
(29:22):
story wise what's going on with thosecharacters. And I promised I would come
back to the boat thing before Ireally was playing. When I was just
you know, as we mentioned inthe the Broadway episode, I was just
a fan of the culture and enjoyedhearing my friends play. I had a
bunch of friends that were playing verycasually where everyone had the whatever, it's
just D and D attitude, andthat's and again totally cool. They all
(29:45):
have blast where like nobody was expectedto commit to showing up every week and
it's just like, hey, listen, we're going to meet with this guy's
house and if there's enough to play, we're going to play. And whoever's
not there is on the boat.And like they kind of just like had
this centralized location where there was aboat that was docked and your character is
just on the boat doing boat stuff. You know, you're swabbing a poop
(30:07):
deck whatever it is, while theother players are out having an adventure.
And and that worked for them onsomething that's a little bit more like overarching
story wise, you guys can figureall that out and you guys can figure
it out on the day of ifyou need to, like when we had
our Roague missing and say, okay, he's there, he's with us.
He's just being really quiet today,you know. And when I need to
(30:27):
he's a sneaky boy. Yeah,when he needs to pick a lock,
I just don't meet me. Thebarbarian just picks up the the halfling and
just and just holds him at thedoor. He doesn't have to talk for
that. So, like, youknow, that's that's up to you,
guys. And it seems like thereal answer to this is that and like
everything and it's just almost it's almosteven like boring to keep saying it.
(30:48):
Talk to your players, but there'sa lot of things to consider, and
that's like, you know, ifthey are going to have like an off
story thing to be doing, that'ssomething and you discussed as you need to,
but heard it sounds like you hadlike a lot of options there and
it's all they're all good options.Yeah, And then the question was,
you know, the question on thesurface was at what point do you do
(31:11):
this? And I'm not going togive you like you know, when there
are two players missing, do this. I'm not going to give you,
like the flow chart for your table, that's for your table. But you
guys can absolutely have a mid campaignsession zero or zero point one as Joe
and I like to call it.Yeah, and you guys can make that
flow chart whenever you want. Yeah, it's a lot. Like it's a
(31:33):
lot like smoke and a brisket.How do you know when it's done?
Depends on how it feels done whenit's done. Yeah, try asking it
you're done yet? Yeah, atour particular table, since we play at
my house, if there's two orthree people over and that's all it's and
like we're it does not have toplay a D and D. We'll play
you, We'll play one of myboard games and still eat the pizza that
Joe definitely brought. Yeah, I'vegot to start now. I love that.
(31:57):
Where like I have like warm upgames that we play while we're waiting
for people to come to the table, mostly D and D stuff. I
have a Rock Paper Wizard which isa ton of fun. And what's the
dungeon mayhem? I think it's calledyea also a ton of is that a
preconstructed deck card game? But it'smade it's made by Wizard's like it's just
(32:19):
a little casual game, and like, maybe that's what we do tonight.
I have plenty of one shots readyto go that that I keep prepared with
Minis to set aside for them,that I keep prepared for the for the
game store and breweries. So ifwe have enough for a one shot and
there's not enough for a canonical campaign, or if the DM can't make it
and I can and I can dM for the night, that's another option.
I actually really like your prequel idea. And I couldn't tell if Jim
(32:43):
was making a face about the prequelthing or not, But but I've played
in a prequel canonical one shot onD and D four O four which I
haven't decided if that interview is comingout next week or last week, so
go back and listen to it orwait a week, whichever I decide.
But prequels are fun. You doprequels, You can do dream sequences,
(33:04):
you can do you can do thething where like if currently what you're doing
is rescuing some farmers that got capturedby goblins, you can play the union
going back and show the farmers gettingcaptured, you know, like like you
can almost use it like a retcona little bit. That's what we did.
We did you can do. Yeah, we did a prequel one shot
(33:25):
for like in their story there waslike the event. It was something like
really really bad that happened that peoplealluded to, but like no one really
told exactly what happened. We playedout what happened and we were the bad
guys. Yeah, so you wantto save the farmers. That was not
what we did. Yeah, youcan play the goblins who capture the farmers.
Yeah, that's cool. I castFireball, right, it was awful.
(33:47):
But just the one player like uhlike silently messaged the d M and
he's like, I have the opportunityto create a time paradox right now.
He's like, please don't. Idon't know how to handle that, So
just make sure you're not creating anyparadoxes. And by killing your big bad
while he's a baby, you can, like you know you can, and
(34:09):
then you know, maybe it's worseor this is the reveal that that's that's
not the real big bad. Thisis the the guy who took his place.
Well it would be really great aboutthat though. Is the player that
missed that session coming back and belike, wait a minute, what did
I miss? No? No,no, you shot Gary Hitler. He
was gonna win no Bell Prize.Dary was a good guy. He gott
(34:30):
to art school. So but Ilike the ideas that you're laid out and
they're all totally viable options. Sothe question about like when do you do
this, when do you do that? That is up for your players and
you and I will chime in onthat if you invite me to play,
and that's that's kind of that's kindof my thing. Any other any of
(34:51):
the major things you want to dropon this, No, he covered this
pretty thoroughly. I covered everything Iwant to talk about, so hear,
I think so much for listening.I will I think I've we got we
got some mutual friends, and Ithink I promised to run one shot for
you guys, so looking forward tothat. You know what, I Am
going to say. One thing pleasethat we didn't really cover, and that
is that every now and then sometimesit's okay to take a week off.
(35:14):
That's fine too. There's nothing wrongwith that. You can totally do that.
And if you know, and ifeverybody's going like I don't know about
this, week, take a weekoff, take a breather, you know,
play some video games, go youknow, go for a walk outside,
and then pick it up next weekwhen everybody's freshing him. That that's
totally cool too, Like just becausejust because someone's there doesn't mean you like
have to come up with an alternateactivity. It is okay, every now
(35:37):
and then, it takes sure,Yeah, well we do that pretty often.
It's a little too often, butit's yeah, keep us us going
on, us playing much more infrequentlyas than most tables. Lets us do
that. It's like, hey,next week instead where we're like, we're
not really losing anything, but yeah, totally fine as well. And it's
going to come as a shock toa lot of listeners, but there's other
things to do then play D andD. It's true, we just lost
(35:59):
ten subscribers. Okay, you cango to the theater and watch a show
about Dada. You can go backan episode or possibly two, depending on
how I feel. Listen to Jim'ssynopsis on that go outside, slow down,
Joe, all right, relax,Okay, we speak like, that's
cool if that's what you want todo. But yeah, dude, thanks
so much for sending you a question, you can send yours in that you
(36:20):
can need the email us at HelloAdventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, or
you can leave a voicemail just likeKaren did at Hello Adventurers Podcast dot com
slash voice that'll bring you to alittle web page you can do right from
your phone without actually having a dialanything. It's literally one button. It
cannot be any easier. Because welove to hear your questions. Will we
try to do a mail back showwhere we enter them a bunch of these,
but this particular question warranted its ownepisode. So and if you got
(36:45):
something that is that's that deep andthat also, we will set up an
episode for that as well. Ithink it's going to wrap it up right.
Yeah. Cool, So, Jim, Joe, thanks for hanging out
with me, Thanks for having me, and thank you for listening to Hello
Adventurers. We are your host JasonTiso, Jim Crocker and Joe McCall,
producer, editor and engineer Jason Portisoand used by Nick Spurrier, Artworth,
(37:05):
Battison Broderick. You can reach outto us with any feedbackward suggestions by emailing
Helloa Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Helloadventures is a JTP audio production Goodbye Adventures,
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