Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Ghostse]

This is why I'm an advocate for the Lazy Dungeon Master idea of a campaign one pager. If you can't fit the essential campaign lore on one page, then there's too much. And to clear, this doesn't mean you have to fit all the world info on one page. Just what the players need to know to make their characters and start playing the game.

I go even further and limit it to a paragraph and a bullet point list of key facts. Some players don't even read that, but if you're too lazy to read what amounts to a forum post before embarking on a 80 hour game, then that's on you.

For players I have a basic "Here's the general factions/environment/region-global situation" that is just the need-to know, but I also like to talk to my players before the campaign starts so if they've got an origin or concept that they want to go with (and not just some LOLRANDOMWACKY gimmick) my game worlds usually have enough flex I can work the needed background stuff in. So the initial layout is probably a page or less.

Then I usually have a longer 2ish page more indepth summary of "Here's how the local economy/trade networks go, Here's the major points of interest, name drop-and-five-word-description on any noteworthy personalities, here's who hates who and why, here's a bit more about pantheon & relations between the gods" with a bit of tuning to their character's perspective. Which I preface with "This is world building you don't necessarily need to know. If you are just going to show up and follow the set adventure hooks, you don't need to really care and maybe just give it a skim. If you are going to start trying to get involved in the shit or you/your character is going ask Why you need to do a certain quest, you'll want to (be expected to) have given this a good read to get the key points."
I also am very clear when describing the attitudes of races/cultures towards things "this what the average dwarf from Hammerfast thinks about elves. Your dwarf can feel differently, and you may meet dwarves with other opinions."

I always give my players homework every week, sent 2-4 days after session, with the expectation that it should take no more than an hour of their time to complete. It is a great way to judge who's involved in your game and who isn't - someone will usually stop doing homework a few weeks before they leave the game. Also if the player has problems, concerns, or questions the homework email gives them an open channel to "oh by the way..." and bring things up quietly. It also helps keep the game a little more active in the minds so there is much less "What the fuck were we doing again?" when you start the next session since they had the RPG neurons firing 4 days ago instead 7.

Content of homework varies. Sometimes its utilitarian - I want to know what the PCs will be doing in town so we don't waste in-session time with 'I got to the used sword dealer', or how they're leaning to respond to last week's cliffhanger, so I can have have things prepared for the upcoming session (letting the players know they aren't locked in on their responses). Sometimes its just a question about a past adventure (usually with an important, easily searchable keyword) or a magic item they haven't used in a while. But I'll hand out reading assignments when the players hit a portion of the adventure when there's some background they'll need to know - Clerics and Paladins get a lot of cosmology slowly meted out to them this way. Instead of a big list of Divine Greviances, they learn who hates who and why closer to when it matters.

 

[Snekposter]

It wasn't part of the original 5e design. The core conceit of the Battle Master was going to be in every melee character originally, but during play testing, Mearls found there is actually a very large contingent of players who want zero resource management with their Fighter. They want to grab a big sword, kill things, and just not ever be bad at it, the way it was in AD&D.

That's me in a nutshell when it comes to fighters. Shut my brain off, swing object until someone is dead.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I have a strange situation I want kiwi's advice and opinions on.

TL:DR. Should I try to run a backdoor campaign? What are Adventure League/Pathfinder Society? Are Adventure League/Pathfinder Society adventures any good? How do their rules differ from the base game?


Long post for context.
I've found myself in a strange situation. The game I DM has been slowly collapsing for months now. My group are all adults and as a result it's common for one or two people to not make it to the game due to things like work, family, and other "adulting" that gets in the way. Most of the players refuse to play unless everyone is present. You can see how this starts to create a feedback loop of people cancelling more often because the game often gets cancelled anyway. After almost two months of no games due to cancellations, I finally put the campaign on indefinite hiatus until I can get the party back together. I don't expect that to ever happen.

I can't get players that will commit to a campaign. Even if I could, I think I'd run into the same situation as before where people refuse to play without the whole party present.

What I want to do is run a string of connected "one shots". I won't have to worry about people being intimidated having to commit to a months long campaign, and if a player misses a session I can hand-wave the absence with "it's just a one shot, it's not like he's missing anything essential to a months long campaign.". I've had one shots turn into campaigns organically, but it feels shady and underhanded to go into a game with a campaign in mind and pretend it's just a string of unconnected one shots, but it might be the only way to get the game moving.


While looking for adventure ideas I came across Adventure League and Pathfinder Society. I don't know what they're about, but I think these are convention games? Each game is stand alone but part of a larger campaign (Year of the Open Road, Oracle of War, etc.) that players can play with multiple DMs and still progress?

I don't want to DM at a convention.

I want to know, do those games offer a good base to build this "backdoor campaign" idea on? I read about half a dozen Adventure League/Pathfinder Society adventures and most seem to be generic filler content. "NPC has been kidnapped by goblins/orcs/bandits, go rescue them." type adventures, though I liked one set in an alchemy lab where the place catches fire if PCs miss with fire based attacks. I don't know how those adventures average out on aggregate as there's a lot of them.

These adventures seem to have special rules for gear and loot, I'm not sure how those work. I don't know if other rules differ.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I have a strange situation I want kiwi's advice and opinions on.

TL:DR. Should I try to run a backdoor campaign? What are Adventure League/Pathfinder Society? Are Adventure League/Pathfinder Society adventures any good? How do their rules differ from the base game?


Long post for context.
I've found myself in a strange situation. The game I DM has been slowly collapsing for months now. My group are all adults and as a result it's common for one or two people to not make it to the game due to things like work, family, and other "adulting" that gets in the way. Most of the players refuse to play unless everyone is present. You can see how this starts to create a feedback loop of people cancelling more often because the game often gets cancelled anyway. After almost two months of no games due to cancellations, I finally put the campaign on indefinite hiatus until I can get the party back together. I don't expect that to ever happen.

I can't get players that will commit to a campaign. Even if I could, I think I'd run into the same situation as before where people refuse to play without the whole party present.

What I want to do is run a string of connected "one shots". I won't have to worry about people being intimidated having to commit to a months long campaign, and if a player misses a session I can hand-wave the absence with "it's just a one shot, it's not like he's missing anything essential to a months long campaign.". I've had one shots turn into campaigns organically, but it feels shady and underhanded to go into a game with a campaign in mind and pretend it's just a string of unconnected one shots, but it might be the only way to get the game moving.


While looking for adventure ideas I came across Adventure League and Pathfinder Society. I don't know what they're about, but I think these are convention games? Each game is stand alone but part of a larger campaign (Year of the Open Road, Oracle of War, etc.) that players can play with multiple DMs and still progress?

I don't want to DM at a convention.

I want to know, do those games offer a good base to build this "backdoor campaign" idea on? I read about half a dozen Adventure League/Pathfinder Society adventures and most seem to be generic filler content. "NPC has been kidnapped by goblins/orcs/bandits, go rescue them." type adventures, though I liked one set in an alchemy lab where the place catches fire if PCs miss with fire based attacks. I don't know how those adventures average out on aggregate as there's a lot of them.

These adventures seem to have special rules for gear and loot, I'm not sure how those work. I don't know if other rules differ.

I don't know about premade adventures, but the GM on my second group has been running his own loosely linked adventures for about two years now. Bring a character of the appropriate level and with the correct magical item budget, and you're in. And don't assume your character will survive, the challenge is tuned pretty high. We got more people in that group than we can fit in a single session, but we never have everybody together all at once so being able to drop and and drop out on a session-by-session basis works well for us.

And we've been enjoying it, even with the occasional total party kill. One of the most memorable sessions was precisely the aftermath of one of the TPKs, where another group of adventurers went through the same dungeon a previous group died in about a year (in universe, about a month IRL) earlier, and we got to see the marks left by the previous group and the tweaks the denizens of the dungeon made to their defensive positions since. Win or lose the world goes on, and between triumphs and casualties we managed to avert the summoning of an ancient demon and the resurrection of an undead orc army. (Although we accidentally released a powerful malevolent fae, whoops.)

But yeah. I wouldn't count on premade modules, but I can vouch for a campaign that doesn't rely on recurring characters.

 

[Brain Problems]

Long post for context.
I've found myself in a strange situation. The game I DM has been slowly collapsing for months now. My group are all adults and as a result it's common for one or two people to not make it to the game due to things like work, family, and other "adulting" that gets in the way. Most of the players refuse to play unless everyone is present. You can see how this starts to create a feedback loop of people cancelling more often because the game often gets cancelled anyway. After almost two months of no games due to cancellations, I finally put the campaign on indefinite hiatus until I can get the party back together. I don't expect that to ever happen.

I can't get players that will commit to a campaign. Even if I could, I think I'd run into the same situation as before where people refuse to play without the whole party present.

Reading this is like an eerie look into my future. I'm worried our group is one or two more kids away from never ever getting any of the crew together to play. Thank Christ we've (so far) managed to set a time once a week to play and people are almost always good at committing to showing up for it.

 

[Ghostse]

I have a strange situation I want kiwi's advice and opinions on.
[ ... ]
I've had one shots turn into campaigns organically, but it feels shady and underhanded to go into a game with a campaign in mind and pretend it's just a string of unconnected one shots, but it might be the only way to get the game moving.

Its not. Get over yourself.

Firstly, 95% of being a GM is lying to your players (the other 5% is making sure they like being lied to)
Second... what happens if the one-shots turn into a long running campaign? Do you really think your players will be 8 months in and say "Oh god, well I was having fun but now have realized you tricked me into enjoying myself in a standard campaign when all I'd wanted was one shots. I can't even look at you now that I realize how cruelly I was tricked."?

And if the unconnected one shots never turn into a campaign? The only person who knows that no campaign happened will be you.
And that is the rub: You need make sure you are mature and self-assured enough that when the players smash your careful crafted plan on the ground and shit on the wreckage while maintaining eye contact (because they are players and that is what they do) that you don't take it personally.
Cause that's the big danger.

While looking for adventure ideas I came across Adventure League and Pathfinder Society. I don't know what they're about, but I think these are convention games? Each game is stand alone but part of a larger campaign (Year of the Open Road, Oracle of War, etc.) that players can play with multiple DMs and still progress?

I don't want to DM at a convention.

[ ... ]

These adventures seem to have special rules for gear and loot, I'm not sure how those work. I don't know if other rules differ.

They aren't exactly convention games so much as they let a LGS run an event, and let players port characters to different groups and possibly different stores. Its connected one-shots with a drop-in/drop-out mechanic, so they do lend themselves well to convention play as well, but its really just resources for a store owner to host an event to sell books to the benefit of both the store and the publisher.

Anyway, here's the advice & opinion editorial, sorry for lack of organization but I spent too long getting the ideas down and I'm not going to put anymore time into trying to organize them.

Personal Opinion & Advice
I really hate how this hobby does obscure name-drops things, but you just need to West March your shit or get players to nominate seconds, or have a Zoom-in option.

When I GM, I hate leaving players out. But its needed sometimes. So I look at what's going on. If its combat, either myself or another player takes over. If its a town session, I'll work with who ever is there and the missing players get handled first next week. This is also where homework can come in handy - you can do an out-of-band zoom session to get their character synced back up to Party Time.

Only time it should really gum up the works is when its a RP-heavy session that the missing character(s) would really contribute to.

I would also pass along some narrative crafting advice. JMS, the guy who created Babylon 5, talked about how having worked in TV before he knew that actors could flake out on a TV production for any number of reasons. And when you have as tightly crafted a narrative as he had with B5, that could be a problem, so he had to write the show with a "trapdoor" (in the theater sense) under every character where they could be quickly and cleanly written off the show, and someone new could step in to fill their narrative role while being a different character

So, always have trap doors for every character. Have each character have an excuse why they wouldn't be in the session. Have then leave the room in close combat with an orc. They wandered down a dark alley in merchan districted and lost track of time in a shop. Shacked up with a bar wench or three. Had to go take care of sick mum.
Make sure anyone can leave and their absence can be readily waved away, but with someone meaningful to the character.

sigh...West Marching your campaign
Give me a minute to deal with my self disgust. So for anyone here who has known the touch of a woman, West March is some groups campaign (I think there was a podcast?) with a fairly large group, so it was almost guaranteed that every week someone wouldn't be able to make it. The DM compensated by just saying "Show up when you want. Miss a week, your character misses out on XP and Loot. Only the players who attend get to determine how the adventure unfolds."
( I've never seen/listened/whatever to anything West March, but I grasped the concept)
The idea being to make players want to show up because if they don't, they miss out on the action and rewards. So my advice would be to do something like that.

I ran a couple of connected one shots using Maze Rats that were basically Star Gate:SG1 meets Age of Exploration with a dash of XCOM - Magic portals to the dead world of another civilization, full of valuable treasures and ancient traps.
The players were not individuals but took on the overarching role of "guild leader" - they got a Budget and hired & equipped a party to go exploring with the other players' guilds. So you had player character rosters being a few deep to handle deaths.
If someone didn't make it to a session, their guild just sat static for the next session they did make.

It worked pretty good, but it was basically a Over-the-Holidays game, and stopped and just never restarted once everyone's lives went back to normal. I didn't try to hard to keep it together because the loot & roster management mechanisms I'd thrown together needed tons of work - the wheels were already starting to come off.

Schedule a monthly Downtime session
Get together every week, but don't play D&D every week. Take a week off each month and have a "Downtime session" where you do something campaign-related but not the campaign. Sort inventory, do shopping, true up character sheets, paint figures, talk about adventures. You don't need to devote the whole session to campaign tasks - Maybe play a board/card game, or run a super quick one shot. Maybe run a one-shot set in the campaign world, but with new characters. Basically keep everyone's head in the game, but make it skippable.
The idea here is that if there is one week a month that you don't advance the campaign, that is the week everyone should focus on doing their "adulting" that would otherwise conflict - you need to have dinner with the inlaws, but if you know that next week is the downtime session, you tell the in-laws "I can't make it this thursday, what about next Thursday?".

You don't want to just not have a session, though. You want to get everyone together to build and nurture the habit. But this lets everyone focus stuff that would interfere with D&D onto the same day, instead of everyone piece-mealing it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Reading this is like an eerie look into my future. I'm worried our group is one or two more kids away from never ever getting any of the crew together to play.

I hope that doesn't happen. I think these problems might be specific to my group though. If they'd be willing to play with just 2 or 3 characters, the game would move forward fine. It's that even a single absence means they dig in their heels and refuse to play for fear of having someone miss out is what kills it. I know where they're coming from, but it's still a problem.


Due to not being able to quote long posts, here's my reply to parts of @Ghostse

And if the unconnected one shots never turn into a campaign? The only person who knows that no campaign happened will be you.

That was part of the plan.


On Trap Doors
I used to do trap doors, but I find it easier for characters to "fade into the background" so to speak. The damage to immersion only lasts a few minutes. Sometimes this doesn't work, but it's easier then constantly trying to write trap doors and ret con trap doors. It depends on context. So far my best trap door is to have a group that all the PCs work for. If a specific player is absent, then their PC simply weren't hired for that job or are doing another assignment.


On West Marsh
I think it was a blog? Whatever it was, it was an interesting concept.

I've tried west marshing, but I had difficulty getting players to join. They said they hated west marshes because their "actions don't matter". I'm not sure why.

When I got it running, I sucked at it. No one took notes and almost immediately players forgot all their hints and hooks, and arrived with the expectation someone else had a plan. This could be another adulting problem in that they have work, kids, etc. to worry about so they don't have to time to fuck around on Discord swapping notes and planning adventures. Or I failed to get them invested enough to do it. Whatever the reason it didn't work.

Now you mention it I'm tempted to try it again, but getting a big enough pool of players will be a challenge. It could be a viable option.


On Downtime
While not downtime, I did try skipping the first session of every month as a "day off". It didn't seem to help.

The players were not individuals but took on the overarching role of "guild leader" - they got a Budget and hired & equipped a party to go exploring with the other players' guilds.

Seems like an interesting way of doing things. Would that work with city building mechanics?

 

[Another Char Clone]

Anybody heard of Terra the Gunslinger? Japan makes some sick ass western settings.
Same author as Tenra Bansho Zero, sadly never translated because the translator is a fuckass who thinks it is too d20.
View attachment 3511770

 

[EnemyStand]

I hope that doesn't happen. I think these problems might be specific to my group though. If they'd be willing to play with just 2 or 3 characters, the game would move forward fine. It's that even a single absence means they dig in their heels and refuse to play for fear of having someone miss out is what kills it. I know where they're coming from, but it's still a problem.

Yeah, that's a problem. I get they're trying to be nice, but this reeks less of them wanting to game and more just wanting everyone hanging out and socializing. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if they were interested in the actual gaming they'd share notes and the missing player would be fine with that eventuality. I realize life comes first, but when the GM does all that work to make a game you're kind of being a dick to him (accidentally, of course).

On Trap Doors
I used to do trap doors, but I find it easier for characters to "fade into the background" so to speak. The damage to immersion only lasts a few minutes. Sometimes this doesn't work, but it's easier then constantly trying to write trap doors and ret con trap doors. It depends on context. So far my best trap door is to have a group that all the PCs work for. If a specific player is absent, then their PC simply weren't hired for that job or are doing another assignment.

That's the best way. It's how I run it.

On West Marsh
I think it was a blog? Whatever it was, it was an interesting concept.

I've tried west marshing, but I had difficulty getting players to join. They said they hated west marshes because their "actions don't matter". I'm not sure why.

When I got it running, I sucked at it. No one took notes and almost immediately players forgot all their hints and hooks, and arrived with the expectation someone else had a plan. This could be another adulting problem in that they have work, kids, etc. to worry about so they don't have to time to fuck around on Discord swapping notes and planning adventures. Or I failed to get them invested enough to do it. Whatever the reason it didn't work.

Now you mention it I'm tempted to try it again, but getting a big enough pool of players will be a challenge. It could be a viable option.

The players aren't invested enough. Don't bother. Once again, I'm not knocking them but if they're not interested in homework or note taking, best not to force it.

On Downtime
While not downtime, I did try skipping the first session of every month as a "day off". It didn't seem to help.

It never does if they haven't been showing up consistently. The solution isn't giving them an excuse to miss, it's to get them to play without the whole party. That's only going to be solved with very serious discussions and a little bit of the stick. I've had to tell groups that if they refuse to play while down a player and you haven't done anything in the game for a month, then I may as well just cancel the game and do something else with my time. Be polite, but be firm. It is an ultimatum, which I've been seen said never ends well. It may be true, but in the situation you're in you won't have a game either way so may as well go for broke.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

I run episodic for the city slums game.

Someone misses a game, it's the standard "Guard busted them and they got a couple days at the mines/gaol, everyone laugh at them" and they miss out on the XP and loot.

Since they're all street scum, getting picked up by a guard patrol is just a thing that happens.

It's raised tension a few times, because they needed that guy's skills that week and they got sent to the mines, but all in all, I haven't had a problem.

 

[Ghostse]

I used to do trap doors, but I find it easier for characters to "fade into the background" so to speak. The damage to immersion only lasts a few minutes. Sometimes this doesn't work, but it's easier then constantly trying to write trap doors and ret con trap doors. It depends on context. So far my best trap door is to have a group that all the PCs work for. If a specific player is absent, then their PC simply weren't hired for that job or are doing another assignment.

I usually just do things like that; Party memeber split off to go check a tunnel, or to see if the pack animals are ok, or to watch the entrance. I often have a background excuse for NPCs with a needed skill or party role to have the ability to show up with a reasonable explanation.

I've tried west marshing, but I had difficulty getting players to join. They said they hated west marshes because their "actions don't matter". I'm not sure why.

When I got it running, I sucked at it. No one took notes and almost immediately players forgot all their hints and hooks, and arrived with the expectation someone else had a plan. This could be another adulting problem in that they have work, kids, etc. to worry about so they don't have to time to fuck around on Discord swapping notes and planning adventures. Or I failed to get them invested enough to do it. Whatever the reason it didn't work.

Now you mention it I'm tempted to try it again, but getting a big enough pool of players will be a challenge. It could be a viable option.

@EnemyStand nailed it, sounds your players aren't invested enough for a meaty campaign. They want a show-up-and-ride-the-rails adventure. They'll say they don't, but that's really what they want. So honestly while I'm going to keep typing more austism detail, you really can just stop reading after this sentence:
You are not going to get all of them to adjust their preferences; you need to change your expectations of the game you run or find a new group.

There is probably one, maybe two, players who you're synced with, and probably another one you could turn given the chance. But they are going to be drug down by the deadweight. You're all adulting now, and maybe its time to realize your group has just run its natural life time.
I had to kick out a couple (or more accurately, had a heart-to-heart where all three of us mutually agreed them leaving was for the best of everyone) after they had their kid because while I loved them as people, they couldn't put the time or energy in to play a serious game. It was unfortunate but in the long run the best for everyone. Only real regret I have about how it went down was I didn't do it earlier.

That's one of the reasons I do homework. Generally I work with each player to let them determine their level of commitment, but there is a floor. If someone just wants to show up and roll the die to figure out if they hit the orc, I'll work with that and homework is usually going to consist of "What orc do you'll be chopping?" or asking them what sort of axes do they think they'd like to find, or maybe I send them a quick write up of a barbarian tribal myth. If someone wants to get deep into the politics and what's going on behind the scenes, thye're going to get more involved things, maybe letters that get delivered by shadowy couriers. Regardless, if they aren't willing to take an hour on a non-D&D day to respond to an email, they are not going to be invested in the game enough to enjoy playing the game I'm running, and I'm not going to enjoy trailing dead weight, and the only thing that will come of them participating is slowly building mutual frustration until there is a meltdown and/or one person realizes this isn't working and they leave.
I'm not like the BrOSR "join the cult, eat sleep and breathe nothing but the campaign", but there's a minimum level of "Show up for the session ready to go with your deliberating done already" I expect, and if players can't meet it on a regular basis, neither of us is going to have a good time.

Also, never ever advertise a campaign as (ugh) West March. Firstly, never ever compare your campaign (or anyone else's campaign) to another campaign, its a horrible idea.
So don't say "I'm aping this design", instead tell them "Players who don't show up don't get loot or XP". When you're playing and at the end of the session let the attending players decide what the party is doing next session, and start next session with that happening. If anyone complains about the choices made, tell them "Your character wasn't there to provide input.".

Only other advice I have is level cap the campaign, but let players cash in XP for things like stat-boosts, feats, gear, etc. have them advance via more ephemerial ways so people who can't attend regular see the rewards of coming and playing, but aren't left completely in the dust.

On Downtime
While not downtime, I did try skipping the first session of every month as a "day off". It didn't seem to help.

Non non non mon ami. Don't take the day off. You need to get everyone together, just don't do anything to advance the main campaign. Worst case everyone sits around and shoot the shit for two hours - which is beneficial because it removes the need for the first part of the session to be social hour while everyone catches up.
You need to keep people in the habit. Also, I found it better to have the day off be floating. When its too regular it builds bad habits.

Seems like an interesting way of doing things. Would that work with city building mechanics?

The concept worked, but the details needed a huge amount of polishing. I had the profit margins set way too high, and maintenance too low, so players were starting to accumulate wealth that was approaching game breaking very quickly.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'city building'.
if you're trying to have something like "Sim City", the way to do this is the players are never allowed to do anything involving construction themselves - which makes sense, they are strong-arm thugs not engineers. Everything is delegated to NPCs, so they miss a session the NPCs continue carrying on the wishes of the absent party member as they best would be able to. If a player is gone and clearly not coming back, their city falls apart.
(You can try to inject things like their bureaucracy having some members who are backstabbers and usurpers, but I'd advise against it. The players are disconnected from the reality enough without having to worry about the reliability of their interface with it. OTOH, having enemies hypontize/control their delegates and being easily discovered is a quick way to get them go full scorched earth on some motherfuckers)[/quote]

 

[Brain Problems]

@Ghostse I agree with most of you but iffy on this part:

Non non non mon ami. Don't take the day off. You need to get everyone together, just don't do anything to advance the main campaign. Worst case everyone sits around and shoot the shit for two hours - which is beneficial because it removes the need for the first part of the session to be social hour while everyone catches up.
You need to keep people in the habit. Also, I found it better to have the day off be floating. When its too regular it builds bad habits.

With our group I would rather everyone just take a day off than get everyone together for two hours and accomplish nothing but hang out under the pretense of playing a game. To me it sounds like an awkward middle ground that would be better served either committing entirely to playing a session minus a player (God forbid two), or just saying come over for beers. That said I agree it could cut down on some of the shit shooting that happens but come on, we're here to socialise and play a game, surely we can balance the two.

I also agree that momentum is fragile and that vacations can kill it pretty quickly in the warmer seasons and illnesses in the cold (more so now that delicate souls are terrified of Wu Flu). I think it just depends on your group and their tolerance for adhering to a schedule of getting together regularly or not. If you've got people that see a cancelled/skipped session as a breaking-the-seal on going AWOL then yeah, don't cancel. But otherwise I think a set break or at least acknowledgement of taking a week off here and there (floating like you said) makes the heart grow fonder.

Ultimately it boils down to whether or not people are invested in the campaign like Dredd is running into and if they are there shouldn't be a problem getting people together to play because they actually want to.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

I have a strange situation I want kiwi's advice and opinions on.

TL:DR. Should I try to run a backdoor campaign? What are Adventure League/Pathfinder Society? Are Adventure League/Pathfinder Society adventures any good? How do their rules differ from the base game?


Long post for context.
I've found myself in a strange situation. The game I DM has been slowly collapsing for months now. My group are all adults and as a result it's common for one or two people to not make it to the game due to things like work, family, and other "adulting" that gets in the way. Most of the players refuse to play unless everyone is present. You can see how this starts to create a feedback loop of people cancelling more often because the game often gets cancelled anyway. After almost two months of no games due to cancellations, I finally put the campaign on indefinite hiatus until I can get the party back together. I don't expect that to ever happen.

I can't get players that will commit to a campaign. Even if I could, I think I'd run into the same situation as before where people refuse to play without the whole party present.

What I want to do is run a string of connected "one shots". I won't have to worry about people being intimidated having to commit to a months long campaign, and if a player misses a session I can hand-wave the absence with "it's just a one shot, it's not like he's missing anything essential to a months long campaign.". I've had one shots turn into campaigns organically, but it feels shady and underhanded to go into a game with a campaign in mind and pretend it's just a string of unconnected one shots, but it might be the only way to get the game moving.


While looking for adventure ideas I came across Adventure League and Pathfinder Society. I don't know what they're about, but I think these are convention games? Each game is stand alone but part of a larger campaign (Year of the Open Road, Oracle of War, etc.) that players can play with multiple DMs and still progress?

I don't want to DM at a convention.

I want to know, do those games offer a good base to build this "backdoor campaign" idea on? I read about half a dozen Adventure League/Pathfinder Society adventures and most seem to be generic filler content. "NPC has been kidnapped by goblins/orcs/bandits, go rescue them." type adventures, though I liked one set in an alchemy lab where the place catches fire if PCs miss with fire based attacks. I don't know how those adventures average out on aggregate as there's a lot of them.

These adventures seem to have special rules for gear and loot, I'm not sure how those work. I don't know if other rules differ.

I played PFS at conventions a couple of times and the missions are pretty bland, don't know much about adventurer's league but I feel like it might be about the same. One thing I remember about PFS was that a player picked a faction and they had secret little faction goals that the adventure just handed to you if you remembered what was written on your card. Something like, "The guy in Andoran wants to know what it says on this wall" and then you go to the adventure and the GM says, "It says this thing on the wall" and thats it.

I think you might be better off finding some of the 3e dungeon mags or adapt an adventure path and pull adventures from there. The GM in a game I was playing with for a while was running a side game for when people couldn't make it and he just adapted keep on the boarderlands and just substituted his lore. To explain why people would pop in and out he said there were mysterious blue portals that popped people in and out and laughed about it because at the end of the day it got the party together.

If you would like a nice starter adventure I recommend Mad God's Key in Dungeon Issue 114. I've kicked off two non-sequitur games where I wanted to minimize effort so people could play and both of those games ended up lasting years and are parts of lore in my current game. Eventually I found myself writing adventures week to week that just followed up on what the players wanted to do, nothing too overarching, no major story, just adventuring. Eventually the overarching story wrote itself.

 

[Ghostse]

With our group I would rather everyone just take a day off than get everyone together for two hours and accomplish nothing but hang out under the pretense of playing a game. To me it sounds like an awkward middle ground that would be better served either committing entirely to playing a session minus a player (God forbid two), or just saying come over for beers. That said I agree it could cut down on some of the shit shooting that happens but come on, we're here to socialise and play a game, surely we can balance the two.

I think earlier context was missed/left off; To be clear, you should definitely communicate ahead of time "The 14th will be our Downtime/Idle/Administrative/GM Office Hour session" so people understand that no main game progress will be happening and if people want to skip that week, they can safely skip. But for everyone who doesn't have any other plans that night, just have it be social hour and face time with the GM. Get character sheets sorted, talk about the campaign, if you're in town or about to be get the shopping lists taken care of. Maybe play a board game, or a card game, Or have like a pre-gen one-shot set in the campaign world but somewhere/somewhen else, or have pre-gen night with another setting/system.
Just have SOMETHING scheduled for the usual D&D time slot and ideally at the usual D&D place, don't simply have it be a hole in a calendar.

For my current group, I usually ask towards the end of the preceding month if anyone's got any thing coming up they know about, if they do, that's our Downtime week. If no one has anything I keep the downtime session in my backpocket and have it be the last week in the month if nothing comes up; if someone has something come up, I'll let the group know a few days in advance 'downtime week'.

And again, all this advice depends on your group, and is more geared towards managing an older group as younger crowds sometimes have the time and mental energy for multiple sessions a week. If you aren't having attendance or player interest problems, maybe you only do your admin session every other month. Or if you've got a lot of people traveling long distances during winter, maybe go ahead and have it be nothing - or just have a zoom call for anyone who wants to talk. Or if you're renting a space, maybe move it somewhere cheaper - maybe just have it be out-to-dinner night or couple-a-beers night at a local restaurant. I'd still recommend - when sensible - meeting up at the place you usually meet for D&D.

 

[anti SJW]

Posted in multimedia but thought it should go here, too.

 

[Ghostse]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IiMinixSXII
Posted in multimedia but thought it should go here, too.

Dwarf lady doesn't have a beard? Fuck this genderqueer shit.

 

[Corn Flakes]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IiMinixSXII
Posted in multimedia but thought it should go here, too.

You know, I thought the old D&D movies were exceptionally bad. But this is triggering some form of existential dread.

It's going to be so. fucking. bad.

 

[Fag Albert]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IiMinixSXII
Posted in multimedia but thought it should go here, too.

It's like the 2000 movie except everyone is Marlon Wayans

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Dwarf lady doesn't have a beard? Fuck this genderqueer shit.

That was only LOTR and Discworld, to be honest. D&D dwarf women don't usually have beards.

Honestly, I have no confidence in this thing, but it's kind of interesting to play 'spot the monster'. Black dragon, displacer beast, gelatinous cube, owlbear, mimic...

 

[Snekposter]

mimic...

"So the bartender came over to us and asked why we were armed in his bar. We said, 'Mimics'. He laughed, we laughed, the table laughed, we killed the table. Good times were had."