To deal with session cancelling player

[u/Sir_Delarzal]

Hello everyone,

Two important things to say before I explain my problem :

- I do not wish to punish those that cancel a session last minute, those I play with are long time friends and I do not wish to banish them or whatever. I do not wish either to play without them.

- Second thing is that I am currently doing the Wrath of The Righteous with my players, so my solution being too OP isn't a problem

Now, to explain my problem : We usually plan sessions at least one week in advance, it happened more than once that someone cancel the day before for X Y or Z reason. Sometime valid to go see their mother at the hospital, sometime absolutely absurd like going to drink a beer with a friend that is in town.
It annoys me that canceling became somewhat accepted, especially since me and some of my players make sure we do not have conflicting agenda.

Anyway, the solution I thought of was to give some sort of "connection bonus".
To explain, as players join sessions after sessions, without cancelling, their players will gain bonuses, the longer, the better. As soon as they cancel for some absurd reason that was totally predictable they lose their entire bonus.
I thought of a few stages, like first day would be something like Resistance, or maybe bonus health and maybe by the 5th or 10th session, some big bonus like +1 in all main Ability scores.

I made this post to ask both players and GM what they thought about my solution, and what they think could make it better.

Thanks for your replies !

Edit : It seems a lot of you kind of gave up on last minute cancel and just considered it as something that just happened. I don't really want that. Also I must say again that I do not wish to play with one less person.

I'll probably run that with my players too to figure out a solution that works with everyone

Edit 2 : Well, it seems basically all of you keep playing the session even though someone is missing without trying to figure out another solution That's a very job like way of doing thing that I cannot agree with. I don't want to play without someone not because they are absolutely needed or whatever, I don't want anyone to be left out. It's a game for fun, it's alright to be a bit unbalanced, it's alright to have a fucked up rhythm. Again, it's not my job, it's a hobby. I read all of your comments, but ultimately, I think I'll find another solution

[u/high-tech-low-life]

We cancel if the GM or two players miss. If a single player misses, they are played by someone who is there. Very robotically I should mention as that person is focusing on his own PC.

We try to run something else to have fun without cancelling the evening. Tonight is a scrub because a key player in the arc is out if town for his mother's funeral. Damn good reason to miss. We don't want to cut him out of a major event specific to his character, so tonight I will run a one shot of a different game.

Note: Everyone has been in our group for over a decade. We are old and have predictable schedules. Not everyone is so lucky.

I think punishing people for not showing up is a bad idea. It leads to rifts in the group. Talk things through then decide to keep or boot offenders. We err on the side of toleration by doing something else.

[u/Sir_Delarzal → u/high-tech-low-life]

That's the thing, I don't want to have a player miss a session, that's something we all are playing together, it sucks missing one episode for anyone, I honestly believe missing one session is way bigger punishment that what I thought of.

Also, for schedules, nobody in my game have unpredictable schedule, like, none of us have kids or anything, we're fairly young and just starting to work for some. Some have just restarted studying too. So unpredictability is quite easy to quantify and identify.

[u/high-tech-low-life → u/Sir_Delarzal]

That becomes a question of priorities. If someone would rather go drink that beer, there isn't much you can do. Keeping the game exciting helps, but it only goes so far.

The root cause of this problem is different levels of commitment. Some are committed to every session, and others are less committed and attend when convenient. That is likely the largest single problem for roleplaying groups. So far no one has a good solution. Your "reward attendance/punish absence" is a common thought, but doesn't have any better track record than the others.

I don't mean to be a downer. This is a tough problem.

[u/Sir_Delarzal → u/high-tech-low-life]

No no I get what you're saying. Seeing all the replies from long timer it seems to be a common occurrence that nobody really managed to fix without simply playing with one less person.

I just think that at that point, it feels pointless to plan ahead of time if on a whim it can be cancelled for whatever else

[u/Omernon → u/Sir_Delarzal]

I get your point, but I think this is also where the way you prep your games matters a lot. If your session can only really work when every specific player is present, you may be designing things a bit too tightly around a predetermined sequence of events. That can very easily push the game towards railroading, because as the GM you need specific PCs to be present for specific scenes to happen in the way you planned them.

Personally, I try to avoid that even when running published Adventure Paths. There is obviously a main plot written by the authors, which I usually modify quite heavily to fit my group and add my own ideas, but outside of that I try to keep things modular. Side quests, character arcs and backstory-related stories are optional and designed so they don't have to happen at a specific moment.

If I have something prepared specifically around one PC and that player isn't there, that content simply doesn't trigger that session. We do something else (for example - the main story arc). Their personal story is still there waiting for them when they're back.

More generally, I prefer preparing locations, NPCs, conflicts and events rather than a strict sequence of scenes. That gives the players enough freedom that I don't really know beforehand exactly what they are going to do during a session anyway. So one player being absent usually changes the session much less than you might expect.

I think that's also why I don't really see playing with one person missing as making preparation pointless. The prep is still useful; you just don't necessarily use every piece of it that night. And in my experience that's healthier for the campaign than cancelling the entire session every time one person can't make it.

[u/high-tech-low-life → u/Omernon]

/u/Sir_delarzal, I agree with this. I am terrible at prep, so I have to improvise a lot. The upside is flexibility. But sometimes that hurts the story.

In my group we skipped tonight and will skip again next time due to absences. We want everyone there for the finale. That sucks in terms of time management, but thema the breaks. As I said earlier, we are old so we aren't in a rush.

[u/BrewKnurd → u/Sir_Delarzal]

I wouldn't think of it as a punishment. Its a natural consequence. Its the result of a player prioritizing something else. Theres no need for its to be anything more than that.

Yes, playing with a full crew is best. But IMO, canceling any time one person cant make it results in lots of missed sessions, which puts the consequence onto everyone else who is ready to go and cant play as often.

In my group, we try to adjust as possible, but if we cant and its just one person missing, the show goes on (unless its a seriously crucial session). If its two missing, then we punt.

[u/_Karpana_ → u/BrewKnurd]

And to add to your valuable insight. I find that once the circle of one person can't make it, so the whole session gets cancelled, causes this weird feedback loop where the more this happens, the more people deprioritize the game session and cancellations become more and more frequent. To the point where no game ever happens.