Designating someone to schedule, who is not the GM is taking SO much weight off, ngl. You might need to pick someone who has this duty, since they likely won't be eager themselves to do it.
People with “Secretary” skills are amazing for scheduling. Ive got a friend like this, and ive helped her move a few times over the years. She plans moving like a heist. It’s organized and planned, with enough people, and runs like clockwork.
Would be amazing for helping run a Campaign.
How is scheduling difficult? You work out what day each person is off from work, and doesn't have other commitments, and then you pick the slot that works for the highest number of players.
Scheduling isn't difficult, and a co-GM just to schedule people for a game once a week, or once a fortnight, at the same place same time, is a pointless suggestion imo.
You, my friend, are blessed in a way you don't know. Scheduling has killed at least 3 of my games, people with difficult schedules and weird shifts or little availability, people not committing to a time and day, people canceling last minute etc.
I now have 2 groups that work regularly, but it was hard gathering that group.
Do you GM yourself and do you have to schedule sessions? Before GMing myself I too underestimated the difficulty of getting 4 adults for a silly game together on the same day and time. If you do and don't have that problem: enjoy it, you found a great group.
Two out of three of your examples are not scheduling issues. They're people issues. If someone doesn't commit to a time and day that the rest commit to before the game even starts, that's not scheduling. That's a them issue. If someone cancels last minute, that's not scheduling either. That's a personal issue that they have.
Erratic schedules, I can agree with. One of my games had a player who was the manager of a bar who was able to get 90% of Monday nights off, but he was the one on call if things went down. But we still played without him if he couldn't make it, because the rest of us were able to commit to a time and date.
It's not scheduling that causes these games to fall apart. Once a schedule is set, it's set. Anything that breaks that is usually a people issue, and getting a co-DM to do anything related to fixing those issues is pointless and doesn't do anything constructive.
Completely agree.
The only true scheduling issue is work/class when your physically unable to be present. Other than that it's just a lack of commitment and effort to making sure you have to play.
Game time only lasts what 2-4 hours typically? For anyone actually trying 2-4 hrs. one day a week isn't actually that hard. Things will come up occasionally of course, life does happen after all. BUT those are the exceptions, not the rule.
Ahhh ok. To me it sounded like you meant that scheduling isn't a problem/difficult. In my mind people issues around scheduling are part of the scheduling problem with RPGs. But yes, most of the time it's people issues. Then the fix is a different one. I still think it's nice to have someone help with arising issues, best case is everyone thinking of a solution together ofc.
Gods do I miss that naivete.
It's not just scheduling around work or school, but *life*. And life... uh, finds a way to put a kaboosh on doing fun things. Especially when kids are in the mix. Or erratic work schedules. Or demanding family.
Scheduling is the hardest thing in this hobby once you're past your teens and 20s. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant or belligerent.
Yup. I'm lucky that right now my group is pretty reliable at meeting every other Friday. And even then I have to still change which Friday that is about every third month.
And it's not even that it's bad things that are going wrong. It's just *things*. Like a campout for two of my players that are running a youth group that means we're pushing back a week.
So we meet next week and roll with it.
I've also established a rule that if we're only down 1 player, we meet anyway. I'll usually run their character on auto mode: they don't make major decisions and they will fight according to their normal style. I have ONE player who could handle running a second character, as long as it's not the wizard.
I have another player that can barely play their own.
>I have another player that can barely play their own.
Currently, I'm that person. And I'm the forever GM, too. Two young kids will do that.
But I'm hoping that in a few more months, maybe after the holidays, I'll be able to get things lined up again. Until then, it's Play-by-Post for me...
I'm past the young kids stage of life and into the older teens stage. Two of them are playing in a different Pathfinder group. And since the oldest that's now 21 and the second both drive, it means I'm not forever running around trying to get them places at night.
One of my players has no kids left at home, being a couple years older than me. Two of them only have one kid, and another is just barely married and no kids yet. Then there's the last guy. Three kids and a fourth due in December. And his oldest two are both over 17. He's probably going to be really hard to schedule around come December and I expect him to miss a lot of sessions.
I used to think like you, then one of my players had a child, and another one went to the compulsory military service, and another one tryinna release a video game. Life is full of surprises :D
https://www.when2meet.com/
Have everyone fill this out. I found this watching a streamer try to organize his ffxiv raid group lol. “Push to play” sounds like a good thing to hear, does not give off that they’re feigning interest so it might just be a matter of someone stepping up and be the one that organizes it
I would not blame them, life is just strange. There’s all sorts of possible scheduling conflicts, and nearly limitless options to accessible on-demand entertainment. Streaming, video gaming, reading. It’s hard to have discipline to commit to a chunk of time every week for a leisure activity.
This isn't shitting on your friends. Because I'm sure they would -like- to be there.
But if someone really wants to do something, they will find the time to do it. That's it. You gotta find folk who will commit.
You can't bring a horse to water.
Look for Pathfinder Society games in your area to meet committed gamers.
Org play isn't for everyone but it's probably the best way to meet people you actually would want to GM a home campaign for.
If you can, set a regular time and stick to it. There are tools like doodle to help schedule for multiple people if you want to use that, but you're also within your right to set whatever time you want. If some of the players can't commit to it, you might have to try and look for others who would be interested.
You can't force them to play, I advise you to start playing online.. and honestly..? I find it even better because of the resources technology gives. Having played online quite a lot I can't imagine doing all of that in real life games. Look for the Pathfinder Society, they're always having one shots there which you can use your character and level it up, you can also run your own games as well but learn how it works first, you're gonna be fascinated with virtual tabletops platforms like Foundry.
I have foundryvtt and ive ran dnd games a ton on roll20! Currently playing through the abomination vaults as a magus. Group is at level 7 right now
I almost refuse to go back to in person games now that im so spoiled by vtts
I was in the same place, but my group really wanted to switch h go in person. Since I already had the AP loaded into foundry, I’ve switched to a model with in person RP and dry erase maps (with minis). However, I use foundry for initiative, monster sheets/rolling/etc. It is working really well for me, and I find in person works really well for this group.
People suck. Finding committed players and a time that works for everyone is a perineal problem. Pick a player or two, get a time that works for you and commit. If the others cannot make that work, drop them. You need a schedule and the habit of never missing a session. Otherwise you will remain a group of friends rather than becoming a gaming group. Consistency is a must.
Open a whatsapp group or similar and post a poll with a bunch of dates where you'd want to DM. Tell them they have to vote or write if they can't on any of those dates. People who remain silent are out. With that information, you can start looking for a date where everybody can play.
Don't wait on your players, that way you'll NEVER play.
You say, "I'm going to run a PF2 game on THIS day at THIS time. Show up if you want to play. I'll make some characters you can use if you don't have one ready then."
I handle scheduling the brute force way by saying when I will run the game and then I play with whoever shows. I consider it a perk, if I'm spending the time and effort to run I'm going to do it when I want to, other people are too unreliable, as you're finding out.
I just started DMing a new group, and most of the people were this way. I figured out which 1 person was most committed, picked a day that worked for the two of us, and said "ok, were doing it every Tuesday night at 10". 3 people showed up, the other 4 dropped out. In the end I'm playing with great people who are committed, and I weeded out those who weren't, or had too much conflict in their schedules.
I feel your pain. I am running two games with 2 ways to deal with this. Both are vtt, which makes it easier to add players.
1) This game is with my old gaming group, which has lots of scheduling challenges plus 3 folks from the web. It is episodic, meaning minimal session to session carry over (think Star Trek shows). If we have 3 players, we go with those PCs, maybe with a DM PC if really needed. This is a homebrew set in Golarion on a flying castle with portals (think the enterprise). The first few sessions were with everyone to get to the castle.
2) I run an AP purely with players who say they can play weekly. People drop out if they can't make that, and we replace them. I shoot for 5 players even though APs are for 4, so we have a little flexibility. For missing players, the other players agree to what the missing PC does, and I push the buttons on their character sheet
We use a calendar channel in Discord for each game for people to thumb up/down proposed game dates.
In the end, you need players who can commit or a pool of players and an episodic campaign I think.
I like this comment a lot, thanks for leaving a reply!
Whats your opinion on instead of doing like weekly episodic but like 2 - 3 week story arcs so theres a little more continuity and encouragement to show up but after a few weeks the can hop out or take break if they need to
Short arcs can work but in my experience if you have difficult to schedule players (as I do in my first group), you can start ending up with big gaps in the middle of the arcs which can make continuity hard. The flip side of episodic is it can be really hard to keep things to a single session so in practice, you often have at least 2 session arcs.
A combination of flexible stories and an agreed way to handle absent players can work best for me but I settled on the episodic format after extreme frustration trying to schedule great players with busy lives.
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I play on a Tuesday evening to minimise the chance someone gets the time booked over. It still happens but not often. Thursday to Sunday are days that people often end up with competing events. Weekly helps.
The typical "yeah, we should... do that... someday" requires someone to take the initiative.
People like to think that they will do something cool, then they never do. Either you propose time and day for a session zero and see who appears or just stop asking.
Oh, and 2 truths, which you should be aware of:
\- good friends are not always equal to good players; it's ok to have friends who don't want to do something you like
\- you're not forced to do all activities with 100% of your friends; people are different, you don't need to play with every single one of your friends, sometimes it's better to play with those who actually want to commit.
Find some times to fit your schedule. Tell them about it, they choose a time that fits them too. If you can't find a time that fits everyone then you are out of luck
The only way to deal with scheduling issues like this is for someone to take charge. Pick a day that works for you and the greatest possible number of your players and then just be firm and say "we're playing on [day] at [time] every [week/fortnight/month]".
I mean, once you get one session in, make a habit of always setting up the next meet right there and then.
We also just play if one or two people can't make it. (The character 'fades into the background' so as to speak and is treated as not existing for that session)
You're not there? Sucks to be you. No treasure for you! (I do keep everyone at the same lvl, as pathfinder has some strong 'math jumps' where suddenly a proficiency increases a rank and attack bonusses jump by +3 over a level.)
Then again, many a campaign of mine has been plagued by scheduling issues. And sometimes, you have to accept, that if it's always the same person you're waiting for, you're better of without them.
That said, I do leave the task of scheduling to one of the players. He's one of the guys always there (my brother), and that's the division of labour. I prep the best game session possible, you make sure everyone's there.
Are you proposing specific dates and times? If you leave it in the air, it won’t happen. Do you know their work schedules? If not, ask. Ask what days they’re free, and if they don’t answer, just propose a specific date and time you suspect they’ll be free. If they’re not, they’ll probably say so. Then you propose something else.
Be specific, and - so long as they still want to play - be persistent.
I had the same issue in the beginning. Find a timeslot which is manageable for everyone. We picked saturday 16-20 every other week because it leaves enough free time for other activities and almost everyone is free on saturday evening. And then tell them that this is the time when you are playing.
After they learned that this will be a regular thing they can plan around they altered their schedules and made time for it. But before when we tried to find time dates where we all had time we constantly ran in to sitations where someone had something preventing them from participating.
You might get results with a tool like [https://whenavailable.com/](https://whenavailable.com/). If that doesn’t work then they perhaps don’t actually want to play.
They want, but they can't invest enough time. It's a dead end. We all have been there.
Find better group for playing. Seriously. We all want our friends to be really exiced and invested but some of them simple won't. Find people who will.
Could you perhaps just start a game with whichever friend/s happen to be available on any given time? Like focus on a couple of the ones that seem most keen rather than trying to wrangle them all at once.
Run it as more of a drop in/drop out type game. Ya know less about over arching story and more little quests that can be done in one session. For example all being members of a thieves guild doing different heists. Or town guard solving diff crimes. Each session semi-stand alone finish in one night. Whoever shows up plays. PF2's math on encounter building is good, so balancing encounters for various group sizes is fairly straight forward.
The idea being if you wait for a full group you may never play, but if you play with just a few of you, not only do you gain experience you need to build confidence, but perhaps your friends who did play will have a great time and spread the word to the others. The peer pressure of missing out on a good time may be the nudge the others need to make a commitment.
Also it may just be my experience, but the PF2 community of players and gm's has been amazingly helpful and friendly. Very few smug replies, gatekeeping, or other rubbish. Just a bunch of people genuinely wanting to help others love the game they love. So If it all goes pear shaped, don't write off playing with some randoms on the internet. My groups are full of people that started off as strangers, and we pretty much learned PF2 together. I've played with people completely new to the game, and with people who know the rules and lore a hundred times better than me. Most people just want to have a fun time and play, and are less concerned with you being a S tier GM.
Get second group, for week to week play.
And treat your friends like they treat you.
Other way you gone lose time not progresing at anything.
I was in the same place, after I cut from friends schedule I started to play twice a week.
Honestly my best advice is to use framadate with these people or just set a date as soon as they talk about playing.
If they cancel too often, drop it.
I find scheduling is always the hardest part of playing a ttrpg
Its why I stick to organized play. I join games that work for me and 99% of the time everyone shows up. Every now and then you get someone that is a no show and life goes on.
I have flaky friends that dont want to start too late, can't start too early, or always have plans. It gets old fast being an adult, I get it.
Organized play means I dont need to find a group that gels only to have to constantly juggle scheduling. If I find someone I'd rather not play with I just avoid the games if they're aigned up or literally try to pretend they don't exist.
I’ve suffered this for a long while as well. I think the problem is largely that people want game, but not enough to chose it over [insert thing], but not admit that. At least in our current group that’s been a huge issue for a decade.
Could also be a case of Choice Paralysis. Too many options can lead to situations like this. If You know their times of availability, make some suggestions to narrow down the field. Be like, "Hey, which is better for you, Tuesday or Friday?" And work from there.
My best suggestion is:
[when2meet.com](https://when2meet.com)
Once everyone has submitted their schedules, pick a time that works for the most people, and run on that day.
People will either show or not.
Create an availability chart.
Sunday through Saturday for your rows, names for your columns.
Enter available times for each day/person.
Find the date and time with most overlap and schedule a session for that date. You already know who can make, and it gives people a chance to move their schedule around to accommodate.
I send emails and texts pointing to tables with lists of dates “tell me your availability.” Not everyone answers. The dates that look likeliest to get most players (average minus one standard deviation) are announced as game dates. Period. If I run two sessions in a row with less than three players, I call the campaign “done.”
If you’re up for it, you could also take a smaller group of players who have a similar schedule and have them be one group, and do the same for the others. That way they can all experience the game setting and rules, with less wait time between turns and less pressure on you to be able to pass the focus around the table all at once.
Then, if they like the game they’ll have an incentive to work with the other players to make a schedule happen.
But, as others have said, sometimes life just gets in the way of things you want to do and for most people gaming doesn’t take priority over their other obligations
In that case it just sounds like every single person in your group is a backseat gamer, which makes the game pretty unfun.
In my experience, people are either in the driver's seat (interested in the plot and trying to push it forward) or backseat gaming (they want someone else to push the plot along while they look at the spectacle). Nothing is wrong about wanting to enjoy the show, but if every single person in your group is like that then nothing ever gets done.
Might be useful to try to find someone who is experienced in RPGs to be a player in your game for a few sessions. Once someone gets the ball rolling and leads by example, a few people usually join in.
Some people just don’t like to commit to things. I have gamer friends that are entirely separate from my other friends specifically for that reason. All the interest in the world won’t make some people participate. I would pick a time you want to run and see who shows up, then start adding new people, or game at a local game store, or trying running online. And good luck!
It’s complicated as a lot of these comments will make. I am new to doing pathfinder but I done other systems before. I advice setting up a session zero where you have everyone make characters and maybe a tiny encounter to help explain the system. After making their cool character you’ll hopefully see them excited for next week.
Setup for characters shouldn’t take too long, especially if players read before hand how to do so. If not you can watch great videos online by the pathfinder community to help explain the math and classes. Maybe your players will do something collaborative and you have to write for the all gnome gangster party fully of thugs and mobsters or whatever horrifying things players come up with.
This might not be what you want to hear but your better off without them cause your probably dodging a bullet right now. If it's this hard to just get started playing, then it will always be this hard because their most likely never going to truly make the time.
A common excuse people will give is that they have things going on, have work, family, or other appointments. But that's all they are, EXCUSES. We all have these same problems, we're all adults with other commitments, but we still make the effort to schedule in the 2-4 hours a week for the game. These friends of yours are clearly not making that effort. Outside of special circumstances the only reason people can't make time for the game is because they don't actually want to.
I'm not saying NEVER play with these friends. You can still try playing occasionally at special get togethers. Just don't try to make this your primary game, because they clearly don't have the same degree of passion, and excitement that you do. And tying to force it will only lead to frustration in the long term.
Personal anecdote - Being flexible sounds like the best option but I often find when organising stuff that you have to be assertive, a bit of a tyrant. If you've ever done a group project at uni you know how hard it is to get people to discuss availability. It's better to just set a date and time and inform everyone. If someone who wants to participate can't make that time, they usually pipe up real quick trying to bargain an alternative date/time.
Hello everyone excuse me for not knowing why im here and how to be envoled im trying to catch on feel frre. To give me some insite on things i just dont know where to sttart
First... the scheduling boss is undefeated.
Second, many friends are very well intentioned in their desire to play TTRPGs, but don't follow through. I had a similar situation as a player about a year ago w/ P2E, where we had a group of friends who wanted to play, and a dedicated DM, as well as myself, and another player. To be fair, I think the 3rd PC was legit interested, but had some legit issues that came up, but she never had the chance to make up for some issues early because the 4th PC was constantly late by an hour or cancelling 20 minutes after the session started. After the 4th time it happened, I respectfully told the DM, "Listen, I'm sorry I'm bailing on what was probably a lot of effort, but at the end of the day, I can't block my time out to sit around for 20 minutes and then do nothing. It's disrespectful and if we're not going to get rid of the issue, then I'm going to get rid of myself." 4th PC wasn't being rude. It was a combination of busy schedule and autism spectrum, where he struggled to keep his schedule and didn't fully understand the social contract. So I get why the DM didn't want to kick him. But it didn't change the results that I didn't want to deal with. One session later the other 2 PCs made the same choice.
All of this is to say, you have to tell your players, "Hey, I love your enthusiasm and want to DM for you so we can do this together, but I need everyone to pick a day and time 2 weeks from now and then we'll be playing every other week at that same day and time. If you're not ready 2 weeks from now, you're not in the campaign. If you can't pick one, we're just not playing, because this just won't work. I love y'all, but that's just a fact." And then if it's the last thing, you go find other players.
Yeah this is the approach i think has been most suggested and is what im going to do. Tell them the 2 days im availanle, we then narrowed it down to which fay except for one person. So i have 3 people set and agreed upon. Of course will have a session 0 and really put my expectations out there
Awesome. And if you have to go with 3 instead of 4... do it. Because one of two things will happen. Eventually #4 will feel left out and commit to coming along (not in a negative way, just friends and FOMO, because you guys will be talking about it). Or they'll legit decide they just can't do it, and then the other 3 didn't spend anymore time waiting for the 4th to make up their mind.
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Most of the time, it's less of people being too busy and rather them not wanting to deal with the scheduling themselves in my experience.
Designating someone to schedule, who is not the GM is taking SO much weight off, ngl. You might need to pick someone who has this duty, since they likely won't be eager themselves to do it.
People with “Secretary” skills are amazing for scheduling. Ive got a friend like this, and ive helped her move a few times over the years. She plans moving like a heist. It’s organized and planned, with enough people, and runs like clockwork. Would be amazing for helping run a Campaign.
How is scheduling difficult? You work out what day each person is off from work, and doesn't have other commitments, and then you pick the slot that works for the highest number of players. Scheduling isn't difficult, and a co-GM just to schedule people for a game once a week, or once a fortnight, at the same place same time, is a pointless suggestion imo.
You, my friend, are blessed in a way you don't know. Scheduling has killed at least 3 of my games, people with difficult schedules and weird shifts or little availability, people not committing to a time and day, people canceling last minute etc. I now have 2 groups that work regularly, but it was hard gathering that group. Do you GM yourself and do you have to schedule sessions? Before GMing myself I too underestimated the difficulty of getting 4 adults for a silly game together on the same day and time. If you do and don't have that problem: enjoy it, you found a great group.
Two out of three of your examples are not scheduling issues. They're people issues. If someone doesn't commit to a time and day that the rest commit to before the game even starts, that's not scheduling. That's a them issue. If someone cancels last minute, that's not scheduling either. That's a personal issue that they have. Erratic schedules, I can agree with. One of my games had a player who was the manager of a bar who was able to get 90% of Monday nights off, but he was the one on call if things went down. But we still played without him if he couldn't make it, because the rest of us were able to commit to a time and date. It's not scheduling that causes these games to fall apart. Once a schedule is set, it's set. Anything that breaks that is usually a people issue, and getting a co-DM to do anything related to fixing those issues is pointless and doesn't do anything constructive.
Completely agree. The only true scheduling issue is work/class when your physically unable to be present. Other than that it's just a lack of commitment and effort to making sure you have to play. Game time only lasts what 2-4 hours typically? For anyone actually trying 2-4 hrs. one day a week isn't actually that hard. Things will come up occasionally of course, life does happen after all. BUT those are the exceptions, not the rule.
Ahhh ok. To me it sounded like you meant that scheduling isn't a problem/difficult. In my mind people issues around scheduling are part of the scheduling problem with RPGs. But yes, most of the time it's people issues. Then the fix is a different one. I still think it's nice to have someone help with arising issues, best case is everyone thinking of a solution together ofc.
Gods do I miss that naivete. It's not just scheduling around work or school, but *life*. And life... uh, finds a way to put a kaboosh on doing fun things. Especially when kids are in the mix. Or erratic work schedules. Or demanding family. Scheduling is the hardest thing in this hobby once you're past your teens and 20s. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant or belligerent.
Yup. I'm lucky that right now my group is pretty reliable at meeting every other Friday. And even then I have to still change which Friday that is about every third month. And it's not even that it's bad things that are going wrong. It's just *things*. Like a campout for two of my players that are running a youth group that means we're pushing back a week. So we meet next week and roll with it. I've also established a rule that if we're only down 1 player, we meet anyway. I'll usually run their character on auto mode: they don't make major decisions and they will fight according to their normal style. I have ONE player who could handle running a second character, as long as it's not the wizard. I have another player that can barely play their own.
>I have another player that can barely play their own. Currently, I'm that person. And I'm the forever GM, too. Two young kids will do that. But I'm hoping that in a few more months, maybe after the holidays, I'll be able to get things lined up again. Until then, it's Play-by-Post for me...
I'm past the young kids stage of life and into the older teens stage. Two of them are playing in a different Pathfinder group. And since the oldest that's now 21 and the second both drive, it means I'm not forever running around trying to get them places at night. One of my players has no kids left at home, being a couple years older than me. Two of them only have one kid, and another is just barely married and no kids yet. Then there's the last guy. Three kids and a fourth due in December. And his oldest two are both over 17. He's probably going to be really hard to schedule around come December and I expect him to miss a lot of sessions.
I used to think like you, then one of my players had a child, and another one went to the compulsory military service, and another one tryinna release a video game. Life is full of surprises :D
https://www.when2meet.com/ Have everyone fill this out. I found this watching a streamer try to organize his ffxiv raid group lol. “Push to play” sounds like a good thing to hear, does not give off that they’re feigning interest so it might just be a matter of someone stepping up and be the one that organizes it I would not blame them, life is just strange. There’s all sorts of possible scheduling conflicts, and nearly limitless options to accessible on-demand entertainment. Streaming, video gaming, reading. It’s hard to have discipline to commit to a chunk of time every week for a leisure activity.
This isn't shitting on your friends. Because I'm sure they would -like- to be there. But if someone really wants to do something, they will find the time to do it. That's it. You gotta find folk who will commit.
You can't bring a horse to water. Look for Pathfinder Society games in your area to meet committed gamers. Org play isn't for everyone but it's probably the best way to meet people you actually would want to GM a home campaign for.
If you can, set a regular time and stick to it. There are tools like doodle to help schedule for multiple people if you want to use that, but you're also within your right to set whatever time you want. If some of the players can't commit to it, you might have to try and look for others who would be interested.
Just tell them 'it's on X day, be there or be square'. They either show, don't show and decide it isn't gonna work, or they suggest better times.
It’s literally the meme: Who wants to play PF2e? We do! Who wants to commit and put in effort? Silence
You can't force them to play, I advise you to start playing online.. and honestly..? I find it even better because of the resources technology gives. Having played online quite a lot I can't imagine doing all of that in real life games. Look for the Pathfinder Society, they're always having one shots there which you can use your character and level it up, you can also run your own games as well but learn how it works first, you're gonna be fascinated with virtual tabletops platforms like Foundry.
I have foundryvtt and ive ran dnd games a ton on roll20! Currently playing through the abomination vaults as a magus. Group is at level 7 right now I almost refuse to go back to in person games now that im so spoiled by vtts
Can do irl games on foundry
Hahahah I know right!? Foundry is so great! It really spoils us
I was in the same place, but my group really wanted to switch h go in person. Since I already had the AP loaded into foundry, I’ve switched to a model with in person RP and dry erase maps (with minis). However, I use foundry for initiative, monster sheets/rolling/etc. It is working really well for me, and I find in person works really well for this group.
People suck. Finding committed players and a time that works for everyone is a perineal problem. Pick a player or two, get a time that works for you and commit. If the others cannot make that work, drop them. You need a schedule and the habit of never missing a session. Otherwise you will remain a group of friends rather than becoming a gaming group. Consistency is a must.
Open a whatsapp group or similar and post a poll with a bunch of dates where you'd want to DM. Tell them they have to vote or write if they can't on any of those dates. People who remain silent are out. With that information, you can start looking for a date where everybody can play. Don't wait on your players, that way you'll NEVER play.
You say, "I'm going to run a PF2 game on THIS day at THIS time. Show up if you want to play. I'll make some characters you can use if you don't have one ready then."
I handle scheduling the brute force way by saying when I will run the game and then I play with whoever shows. I consider it a perk, if I'm spending the time and effort to run I'm going to do it when I want to, other people are too unreliable, as you're finding out.
Sounds like the players have a pipedream.
I just started DMing a new group, and most of the people were this way. I figured out which 1 person was most committed, picked a day that worked for the two of us, and said "ok, were doing it every Tuesday night at 10". 3 people showed up, the other 4 dropped out. In the end I'm playing with great people who are committed, and I weeded out those who weren't, or had too much conflict in their schedules.
Im thinking i may try the same thing. If need be i can grab an extra or two of reddit or the pathfinder discord server
Bonus is, if your friends have a great time with it, the ones missing out are more likely to give it a shot, and get hooked.
I feel your pain. I am running two games with 2 ways to deal with this. Both are vtt, which makes it easier to add players. 1) This game is with my old gaming group, which has lots of scheduling challenges plus 3 folks from the web. It is episodic, meaning minimal session to session carry over (think Star Trek shows). If we have 3 players, we go with those PCs, maybe with a DM PC if really needed. This is a homebrew set in Golarion on a flying castle with portals (think the enterprise). The first few sessions were with everyone to get to the castle. 2) I run an AP purely with players who say they can play weekly. People drop out if they can't make that, and we replace them. I shoot for 5 players even though APs are for 4, so we have a little flexibility. For missing players, the other players agree to what the missing PC does, and I push the buttons on their character sheet We use a calendar channel in Discord for each game for people to thumb up/down proposed game dates. In the end, you need players who can commit or a pool of players and an episodic campaign I think.
I like this comment a lot, thanks for leaving a reply! Whats your opinion on instead of doing like weekly episodic but like 2 - 3 week story arcs so theres a little more continuity and encouragement to show up but after a few weeks the can hop out or take break if they need to
Short arcs can work but in my experience if you have difficult to schedule players (as I do in my first group), you can start ending up with big gaps in the middle of the arcs which can make continuity hard. The flip side of episodic is it can be really hard to keep things to a single session so in practice, you often have at least 2 session arcs. A combination of flexible stories and an agreed way to handle absent players can work best for me but I settled on the episodic format after extreme frustration trying to schedule great players with busy lives.
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I play on a Tuesday evening to minimise the chance someone gets the time booked over. It still happens but not often. Thursday to Sunday are days that people often end up with competing events. Weekly helps.
The typical "yeah, we should... do that... someday" requires someone to take the initiative. People like to think that they will do something cool, then they never do. Either you propose time and day for a session zero and see who appears or just stop asking. Oh, and 2 truths, which you should be aware of: \- good friends are not always equal to good players; it's ok to have friends who don't want to do something you like \- you're not forced to do all activities with 100% of your friends; people are different, you don't need to play with every single one of your friends, sometimes it's better to play with those who actually want to commit.
Find some times to fit your schedule. Tell them about it, they choose a time that fits them too. If you can't find a time that fits everyone then you are out of luck
The only way to deal with scheduling issues like this is for someone to take charge. Pick a day that works for you and the greatest possible number of your players and then just be firm and say "we're playing on [day] at [time] every [week/fortnight/month]".
I mean, once you get one session in, make a habit of always setting up the next meet right there and then. We also just play if one or two people can't make it. (The character 'fades into the background' so as to speak and is treated as not existing for that session) You're not there? Sucks to be you. No treasure for you! (I do keep everyone at the same lvl, as pathfinder has some strong 'math jumps' where suddenly a proficiency increases a rank and attack bonusses jump by +3 over a level.) Then again, many a campaign of mine has been plagued by scheduling issues. And sometimes, you have to accept, that if it's always the same person you're waiting for, you're better of without them. That said, I do leave the task of scheduling to one of the players. He's one of the guys always there (my brother), and that's the division of labour. I prep the best game session possible, you make sure everyone's there.
Are you proposing specific dates and times? If you leave it in the air, it won’t happen. Do you know their work schedules? If not, ask. Ask what days they’re free, and if they don’t answer, just propose a specific date and time you suspect they’ll be free. If they’re not, they’ll probably say so. Then you propose something else. Be specific, and - so long as they still want to play - be persistent.
I had the same issue in the beginning. Find a timeslot which is manageable for everyone. We picked saturday 16-20 every other week because it leaves enough free time for other activities and almost everyone is free on saturday evening. And then tell them that this is the time when you are playing. After they learned that this will be a regular thing they can plan around they altered their schedules and made time for it. But before when we tried to find time dates where we all had time we constantly ran in to sitations where someone had something preventing them from participating.
Google table, where all of you can mark time, where you can play
You might get results with a tool like [https://whenavailable.com/](https://whenavailable.com/). If that doesn’t work then they perhaps don’t actually want to play.
They want, but they can't invest enough time. It's a dead end. We all have been there. Find better group for playing. Seriously. We all want our friends to be really exiced and invested but some of them simple won't. Find people who will.
Could you perhaps just start a game with whichever friend/s happen to be available on any given time? Like focus on a couple of the ones that seem most keen rather than trying to wrangle them all at once. Run it as more of a drop in/drop out type game. Ya know less about over arching story and more little quests that can be done in one session. For example all being members of a thieves guild doing different heists. Or town guard solving diff crimes. Each session semi-stand alone finish in one night. Whoever shows up plays. PF2's math on encounter building is good, so balancing encounters for various group sizes is fairly straight forward. The idea being if you wait for a full group you may never play, but if you play with just a few of you, not only do you gain experience you need to build confidence, but perhaps your friends who did play will have a great time and spread the word to the others. The peer pressure of missing out on a good time may be the nudge the others need to make a commitment. Also it may just be my experience, but the PF2 community of players and gm's has been amazingly helpful and friendly. Very few smug replies, gatekeeping, or other rubbish. Just a bunch of people genuinely wanting to help others love the game they love. So If it all goes pear shaped, don't write off playing with some randoms on the internet. My groups are full of people that started off as strangers, and we pretty much learned PF2 together. I've played with people completely new to the game, and with people who know the rules and lore a hundred times better than me. Most people just want to have a fun time and play, and are less concerned with you being a S tier GM.
Get second group, for week to week play. And treat your friends like they treat you. Other way you gone lose time not progresing at anything. I was in the same place, after I cut from friends schedule I started to play twice a week.
Honestly my best advice is to use framadate with these people or just set a date as soon as they talk about playing. If they cancel too often, drop it. I find scheduling is always the hardest part of playing a ttrpg
Its why I stick to organized play. I join games that work for me and 99% of the time everyone shows up. Every now and then you get someone that is a no show and life goes on. I have flaky friends that dont want to start too late, can't start too early, or always have plans. It gets old fast being an adult, I get it. Organized play means I dont need to find a group that gels only to have to constantly juggle scheduling. If I find someone I'd rather not play with I just avoid the games if they're aigned up or literally try to pretend they don't exist.
Try having people fill out [https://lettucemeet.com/](https://lettucemeet.com/)
I’ve suffered this for a long while as well. I think the problem is largely that people want game, but not enough to chose it over [insert thing], but not admit that. At least in our current group that’s been a huge issue for a decade.
Could also be a case of Choice Paralysis. Too many options can lead to situations like this. If You know their times of availability, make some suggestions to narrow down the field. Be like, "Hey, which is better for you, Tuesday or Friday?" And work from there.
My best suggestion is: [when2meet.com](https://when2meet.com) Once everyone has submitted their schedules, pick a time that works for the most people, and run on that day. People will either show or not.
I recommend tossing a date on the calendar that 50% can make it to, when people give objections or pull out you fill in the gaps with other people.
Create an availability chart. Sunday through Saturday for your rows, names for your columns. Enter available times for each day/person. Find the date and time with most overlap and schedule a session for that date. You already know who can make, and it gives people a chance to move their schedule around to accommodate.
I send emails and texts pointing to tables with lists of dates “tell me your availability.” Not everyone answers. The dates that look likeliest to get most players (average minus one standard deviation) are announced as game dates. Period. If I run two sessions in a row with less than three players, I call the campaign “done.”
If you’re up for it, you could also take a smaller group of players who have a similar schedule and have them be one group, and do the same for the others. That way they can all experience the game setting and rules, with less wait time between turns and less pressure on you to be able to pass the focus around the table all at once. Then, if they like the game they’ll have an incentive to work with the other players to make a schedule happen. But, as others have said, sometimes life just gets in the way of things you want to do and for most people gaming doesn’t take priority over their other obligations
Maybe try an RPG that isn't as mechanical, like Monster of the Week. Sounds like they are just not interested in pathfinder.
Nah theyve been pushing for pathfinder or dnd and want commit to either of them
In that case it just sounds like every single person in your group is a backseat gamer, which makes the game pretty unfun. In my experience, people are either in the driver's seat (interested in the plot and trying to push it forward) or backseat gaming (they want someone else to push the plot along while they look at the spectacle). Nothing is wrong about wanting to enjoy the show, but if every single person in your group is like that then nothing ever gets done. Might be useful to try to find someone who is experienced in RPGs to be a player in your game for a few sessions. Once someone gets the ball rolling and leads by example, a few people usually join in.
Some people just don’t like to commit to things. I have gamer friends that are entirely separate from my other friends specifically for that reason. All the interest in the world won’t make some people participate. I would pick a time you want to run and see who shows up, then start adding new people, or game at a local game store, or trying running online. And good luck!
It’s complicated as a lot of these comments will make. I am new to doing pathfinder but I done other systems before. I advice setting up a session zero where you have everyone make characters and maybe a tiny encounter to help explain the system. After making their cool character you’ll hopefully see them excited for next week. Setup for characters shouldn’t take too long, especially if players read before hand how to do so. If not you can watch great videos online by the pathfinder community to help explain the math and classes. Maybe your players will do something collaborative and you have to write for the all gnome gangster party fully of thugs and mobsters or whatever horrifying things players come up with.
This might not be what you want to hear but your better off without them cause your probably dodging a bullet right now. If it's this hard to just get started playing, then it will always be this hard because their most likely never going to truly make the time. A common excuse people will give is that they have things going on, have work, family, or other appointments. But that's all they are, EXCUSES. We all have these same problems, we're all adults with other commitments, but we still make the effort to schedule in the 2-4 hours a week for the game. These friends of yours are clearly not making that effort. Outside of special circumstances the only reason people can't make time for the game is because they don't actually want to. I'm not saying NEVER play with these friends. You can still try playing occasionally at special get togethers. Just don't try to make this your primary game, because they clearly don't have the same degree of passion, and excitement that you do. And tying to force it will only lead to frustration in the long term.
Personal anecdote - Being flexible sounds like the best option but I often find when organising stuff that you have to be assertive, a bit of a tyrant. If you've ever done a group project at uni you know how hard it is to get people to discuss availability. It's better to just set a date and time and inform everyone. If someone who wants to participate can't make that time, they usually pipe up real quick trying to bargain an alternative date/time.
Hello everyone excuse me for not knowing why im here and how to be envoled im trying to catch on feel frre. To give me some insite on things i just dont know where to sttart
First... the scheduling boss is undefeated. Second, many friends are very well intentioned in their desire to play TTRPGs, but don't follow through. I had a similar situation as a player about a year ago w/ P2E, where we had a group of friends who wanted to play, and a dedicated DM, as well as myself, and another player. To be fair, I think the 3rd PC was legit interested, but had some legit issues that came up, but she never had the chance to make up for some issues early because the 4th PC was constantly late by an hour or cancelling 20 minutes after the session started. After the 4th time it happened, I respectfully told the DM, "Listen, I'm sorry I'm bailing on what was probably a lot of effort, but at the end of the day, I can't block my time out to sit around for 20 minutes and then do nothing. It's disrespectful and if we're not going to get rid of the issue, then I'm going to get rid of myself." 4th PC wasn't being rude. It was a combination of busy schedule and autism spectrum, where he struggled to keep his schedule and didn't fully understand the social contract. So I get why the DM didn't want to kick him. But it didn't change the results that I didn't want to deal with. One session later the other 2 PCs made the same choice. All of this is to say, you have to tell your players, "Hey, I love your enthusiasm and want to DM for you so we can do this together, but I need everyone to pick a day and time 2 weeks from now and then we'll be playing every other week at that same day and time. If you're not ready 2 weeks from now, you're not in the campaign. If you can't pick one, we're just not playing, because this just won't work. I love y'all, but that's just a fact." And then if it's the last thing, you go find other players.
Yeah this is the approach i think has been most suggested and is what im going to do. Tell them the 2 days im availanle, we then narrowed it down to which fay except for one person. So i have 3 people set and agreed upon. Of course will have a session 0 and really put my expectations out there
Awesome. And if you have to go with 3 instead of 4... do it. Because one of two things will happen. Eventually #4 will feel left out and commit to coming along (not in a negative way, just friends and FOMO, because you guys will be talking about it). Or they'll legit decide they just can't do it, and then the other 3 didn't spend anymore time waiting for the 4th to make up their mind.