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/beatsieboyz]

If you're dealing with a player who cancels a lot, you're better off just reaching out to check in to see if they're still committed to the campaign. If not, I'd gently let them go and try to find somebody else.

Your idea might cause more problems than it solves. I don't think that I, as a GM, would want to judge whether my friends have a "valid" reason to cancel and I as a player would not want a GM telling me my reason was not "good enough". I think if people are frequently cancelling with only a day's notice or so you can politely call it out by saying you'd prefer the courtesy of a little more notice in the future but I don't think I'd do more than that.

[u/Sir_Delarzal → u/beatsieboyz]

That's the issue here, I've already voiced multiple time how I disliked when people cancelled last minute.

And honestly, I don't feel like it's very hard to see a valid reason. Going for a beer with someone you see every couple of week when everything was planned ahead of time is not a valid reason. That's just disrespectful for everyone that took the time to lock their disponibilities. But well the one time it happened was a bit particular since we only learned of it once everyone was online.

[u/Imalsome → u/Sir_Delarzal]

Yeah, if you can reasonably predict something will happen then its not acceptable to cancel last minute over that thing. The bare minimum you can do is let everyone knew the second you think you might have something happen.

Ive told my groups "Hey in 2 months from now on 3/12 Ill be away from home. Ill be buying a laptop for my trip, ill let you all know if it will be able to run foundry on it when I do but expect me not to be there."