[Blond Goth Girl]

How do you schedule your games?  What type of notification is considered acceptable?  Is it to much to ask for a game schedule?

Background:  I’m a homeowner who works full time with overtime a plenty and an aspiring writer on the side so time is precious to me.  For the game I GM, we meet two non-consecutive Sundays a month that are set according to GM/player schedules.  Basically, I look at a calendar and eliminate holidays and known busy days and publish game dates for three months in advance.  If there are conflicts, we reschedule to even a Saturday if need be with a majority rule motto but never last minute.  I have a yahoo group with an updated calendar that generates two reminders per session (6 days in advance and 1 day in advance) and emails to the group.  Basically, I respect folks’ time and expect the same in return.

That being said if there is a weekly schedule or some other set fixed schedule you don’t have to tell me twice.

Well, a friend is running a game that involves me and a couple of my SR players so it was decided that he would run it two weekends a month that didn’t conflict with my game.  We met, that was said, my game met the following week with one date that needed to be firmed up for that month.  We met and firmed up the dates so I sent the email with three months of my game dates the following day to the GM.  I got no response at all.  That lead me to believe there was no game plus this person had flaked in the past.  Apparently, there was a game.  I found that out after the game date.

When I spoke another player who helps out with that game, they acted like I expected far too much in asking for an email response and/or a list of game dates (at least for a couple weeks) in advance because that person was far too busy to plan it.  The GM has the same situation as I do.

IMHO – If a GM cannot take five minutes out of their week to set game dates for at least a month in advance, maybe they shouldn’t GM.  Yes, I realize that things can come up to cause someone to cancel but it shouldn’t be a habit.

Planning the adventure/session takes far longer than a five minute schedule planning.

Just curious as to how everyone else runs their schedule. 

[Neurosis]

Sadly, this has always been a huge problem for me, so I have no answers for you.

Scheduling a regular weekly gaming date has been the impossible dream for me for many, many years. Now that my girlfriend  of five years (and most-regular PC)  has moved back home to Colorado, it's going to be even harder for me to get in touch with the few players I have left.

All of them are flightly, elusive, and disproportionately 'busy' for the amount of stuff they actually do. And with my social anxiety, just calling to ask someone to schedule a game is difficult for me. My fear of rejection is in pathological overdrive compared to a normal human, and the rejections tend to come fast and furious.

I have never in my life ever had enough Shadowrun. (I don't expect the 24 hours of it I'm GMing at Gencon to scratch the itch either. It's not that it's not enough SR, I just genuinely prefer playing with my friends.)

tl;dr my friends are jerks, i have too much free time, and i have hundreds of times more SR adventures and campaigns planned or prepared than I will ever be able to run for the people I'd like to play them with. I definitely feel your pain; scheduling's a bitch.

[Onion Man]

Somehow, for DnD I managed to get into a huge meetup group, so I had a game set in stone every Saturday at the same time in the same store for about 18 months.  3 Saturdays were my ongoing, fly by the seat of the pants campaign, 1 was the monthly meetup (when I'd actually have a chance to play instead of DM).

Somehow for Shadowrun it's touch and go for every get together, but we still manage to get a lot scheduled.  Hopefully the group I play in will be out of Africa after a push to finish this section of Dusk in two all but back to back sessions.  The group I'm running things are a little more ginger, there's some real life stuff going on in one of the player's (a good friend to all of us) real life that take precedence over rolling dice and having laughs for the next week and change, maybe longer.

[nojosecool]

I run that first game that Onion Man was talking about.  I would love it if someone else could handle the scheduling, but it usually falls on the GM.

We have a basic understanding that since most Fridays are open for most of us, we will probably be meeting on a Friday.  Over group emails, we discuss when the next workable Friday is.  We've managed to get together almost twice a month, for the most part.  We've played a couple off-days (Thursdays and maybe 1 Saturday?) since we started in February.  For the most part, we get a schedule set for our next game at least one week in advance, but we start discussing about 2 weeks out usually.

It's crazy because I am a student with a 1 year old and an overworked wife (an RN and a grad student), and one of the players is in Seminary, and another one is in nursing school.  Luckily, the other three were usually good for Fridays.  I couldn't pull off the kind of organizational biz that Goth Girl is doing, largely because I'm defaulting on logic to use my computer.  Thankfully, I have a respectable default pool.  If I were Goth Girl's real-life GM, I might give her a threshold of 2 for her auto-emailing scheme.  Unfortunately, I cannot reliably achieve that total, even with my considerable default pool.  But I digress (Note the flexing of my vocabulary.  "Digress" is at least a LOG 4 word.)

The crux (LOG 5) of this post is simply this: As long as everyone knows when the game is, and there's a general understanding that plans are solid within about a week of the game, there should be no problem

A big part of why this system works for us is that we try to set days aside (just in case) for about 2-3 weeks ahead of time. Sometimes it won't be until 3-4 days before hand that we'll know for sure when start time is, but the tentative plans were already in place.  With this many grown-ups trying to do something at the same time, sometimes you have to make those last-minute shifts.  The nice thing about this system is that I don't think we've had one session where we were short any players, and we meet fairly regularly.

Also, as soon as we know that a day will not work, that gets emailed immediately.  So far, I've had no complaints about the way we schedule games, even though it's a little chaotic.

[Neurosis]

Somehow, for DnD I managed to get into a huge meetup group, so I had a game set in stone every Saturday at the same time in the same store for about 18 months.  3 Saturdays were my ongoing, fly by the seat of the pants campaign, 1 was the monthly meetup (when I'd actually have a chance to play instead of DM).

*counts*

That's four weeks a month. Nice.

I'd be a much happier person all around if I could play SR once every week.

[Onion Man]

Somehow, for DnD I managed to get into a huge meetup group, so I had a game set in stone every Saturday at the same time in the same store for about 18 months.  3 Saturdays were my ongoing, fly by the seat of the pants campaign, 1 was the monthly meetup (when I'd actually have a chance to play instead of DM).

*counts*

That's four weeks a month. Nice.

I'd be a much happier person all around if I could play SR once every week.

Somrtimes 5

Too bad PHB3 had to officially tip D&D into the, beyond repair category of games.

[Neurosis]

I defer all discussion of D&D and its foibles to Frank Trollman and company on The Gaming Den anyway. (Whatever else you might say about them, they're good at dissecting D&D. Which I guess is a bit like being really good at dissecting frogs; what's the point?)

Anyway, don't you kids know that stuff causes cancer anyway? 

[baronspam]

How do you schedule your games?  What type of notification is considered acceptable?  Is it to much to ask for a game schedule?

Background:  I’m a homeowner who works full time with overtime a plenty and an aspiring writer on the side so time is precious to me.  For the game I GM, we meet two non-consecutive Sundays a month that are set according to GM/player schedules.  Basically, I look at a calendar and eliminate holidays and known busy days and publish game dates for three months in advance.  If there are conflicts, we reschedule to even a Saturday if need be with a majority rule motto but never last minute.  I have a yahoo group with an updated calendar that generates two reminders per session (6 days in advance and 1 day in advance) and emails to the group.  Basically, I respect folks’ time and expect the same in return.

That being said if there is a weekly schedule or some other set fixed schedule you don’t have to tell me twice.

Well, a friend is running a game that involves me and a couple of my SR players so it was decided that he would run it two weekends a month that didn’t conflict with my game.  We met, that was said, my game met the following week with one date that needed to be firmed up for that month.  We met and firmed up the dates so I sent the email with three months of my game dates the following day to the GM.  I got no response at all.  That lead me to believe there was no game plus this person had flaked in the past.  Apparently, there was a game.  I found that out after the game date.

When I spoke another player who helps out with that game, they acted like I expected far too much in asking for an email response and/or a list of game dates (at least for a couple weeks) in advance because that person was far too busy to plan it.  The GM has the same situation as I do.

IMHO – If a GM cannot take five minutes out of their week to set game dates for at least a month in advance, maybe they shouldn’t GM.  Yes, I realize that things can come up to cause someone to cancel but it shouldn’t be a habit.

Planning the adventure/session takes far longer than a five minute schedule planning.

Just curious as to how everyone else runs their schedule.

Basically you are asking that to act like adults with a bit our professionalism- respond to communication, make commitments, etc.  Thats more than most of the hairless monkeys on this planet are capable of. especially gamers.  Sad but true.

[Gnomercy]

My group has a pretty set schedule as I'm a graduate student, another person is a fulltime wageslave, another is the owner of the game store we play in....My game is every other Sunday afternoon, alternated by a different friend's Hero System game.  We do the same thing on Saturday nights with games....my bf runs a D&D game one week, with the other Saturday being something else (it was Pathfinder, but it looks like I'll actually get to play Shadowrun).

YMMV though...I'm a pretty schedule-oriented person (especially with grad school), and my group seems to appreciate the schedule as well.

[Teknodragon]

The folks in my gaming group have a variety of semi-flexible or inflexible schedules, so we have to hammer out what regular night SR games are on, as well as keep each other updated when schedule conflicts come up in advance. On the plus side, we've been managing to have weekly game sessions for SR for some months now.

[DeciusRagnos]

I've found that most of the scheduling problems I've had in the past result from 1 PC always being absent.  Now a continuation without a person can be filled by a good NPC and you could always play it off like they got sick or some junk.  Consistent abscence however is something that holds the entire group back. 

I can't say that I know from a GM point of view what to do but from a PC point of view peer pressure works wonders.

[Blond Goth Girl]

Yeah - Absence drives me nuts if its last minute.  Continued absence means that someone just doesn't have time to game so I ask them why bother?

Seeing how anal I am regarding scheduling as a GM, I'm not sure why anyone would think that as a player I wouldn't expect some assemblage of a schedule.

[Denver Doc]

I set a scheduled time typically once every two weeks and everyone knows and understands it's GAME TIME.  I brow beat, tease, harass (in a semi-friendly way), cajole, etc. all my players to make sure they don't miss games. 

I set my expectation that unless it is a true emergency that they need to show up.  It isn't a job, but it is a group of people who are all relying on you to be there so that they can have a good game experience.  That doesn't mean that vacations, family visits, conferences, etc. don't occasionally interfere but I really try and have people schedule as best they can around the game. 

I expect a good deal of notification if players have to cancel for other plans.  If they don't, they know they can expect a penalty.  Typically that is a karma hit, but it can also be a reputation hit as the character drops out of the run in the middle or even a increased frequency of negative quality effects.  The severity increases with the shortness of notification and/or the lameness of the excuse. 

I know that a penalty based system seems like we are back in 3rd grade but honestly it seems to work.  No one wants their character to suffer so they make sure it is really important before they miss out. 

Of course I understand when there is a real reason to miss out, it happens.  But it is very reasonable to expect people to make and keep a schedule and notify you in advance when they have to miss.

@Neurosis - If you and your girl are back in CO and are looking for a group or a player hit me up.  I am in Northern CO and at least we could meet up in a place you feel comfortable in and see if our personalities mesh enough to want to game together.

[Cass100199]

If you're in Colorado Springs, Dragon and Dragoons in a great store.

[Neurosis]

She's in CO with her family for the foreseeable future, but I'm still in "upstate" (not really) New York. It sucks.. but is totally necessary for real world reasons.

Thank you for the offer, though.

I haven't been to Dragons & Dragoons but I have been to this place in Cherry Creek, I can't remember the name of it. The Wizard's Chest? Something like that.

It's weird that I've actually visited all of the locations in and around Denver where the first 4E season of SR Missions took place.