When You Miss a Session

I’ve gone over how to handle a player missing a session in a campaign from the DM’s perspective, but that’s not really complete. There’s also an etiquette around how to deal with missing a session yourself, whether you’re the DM or the player. Other people are counting on you to be available weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or whenever, and if you’re not going to be able to make it, some ways to handle it are better than others.

I’m in three weekly campaigns, so this month I was supposed to have twelve D&D sessions. Six of those were (or I expect to be) outright cancelled, and I’m going to miss another besides. All of these are for good reasons and all of them have been handled well by the DMs and players, much better than I’ve seen in past years (one of the perks of playing with grown-ups these days). I know a lot of the people reading this are similarly upstanding citizens, so forgive me if a lot of this seems obvious.

The most important thing is that you tell your DM or group when you expect to miss a session, preferably as soon as possible. If you’re a DM, alert your group that a session is cancelled early as well. I’m not saying that after a car accident your first call should be your gaming group, but let them know as soon as feasible so your DM can plan around it or so your players know they have the option to schedule other plans. I’ve been in too many campaigns where we only found out that the session was cancelled because the DM didn’t show up within the first hour. That shows not just laziness, but that the DM doesn’t care about the players, and that reflects poorly on the rest of the campaign. I’ve also held sessions for an hour waiting for players that never came, and I guarantee that those players weren’t on my good side when the orcs were deciding whom to behead.

Sometimes you don’t know you’re missing a session until it’s imminent. I had to drop a session of Wrath of the Cosmic Accountant because my throat was too sore to speak, and I didn’t know it until that morning. In a more extreme example, one of my DMs had a family emergency and couldn’t let us know any sooner than two hours prior. This is fine, because we both still contacted our players as soon as reasonable and kept everybody informed. I generally prefer knowing when a session will be cancelled weeks ahead of time, but often that’s not possible. I only recommend that you alert people whenever it makes sense; don’t leave it until right before the session to send that email, because it leaves people hanging almost as much as not letting them know at all.

Second, know what’s worth missing or cancelling a session. This goes both ways. On the one hand, don’t leave your party hanging for petty reasons; no matter how great Batman: Arkham City is (and it is), getting all the Riddler trophies is not worth dropping your players. After all, the trophies will still be there tomorrow and the session won’t. But on the other hand, don’t treat your campaign as the highest priority in your life. If you’re too sick to run a game, then get some sleep. If you have to drive 120 miles per hour to make it to a session on time, be late. It’s a pretty lousy person who doesn’t understand that sometimes you’re just not up to the task of being attentive, knowledgeable, and interesting for four to nine hours.

There’s a fuzzy line between “good reason” and “bad reason”. In general, if you think your players will understand, go for it. Most players know what it’s like to be sick, to have too much work to plan or run a session, or to have family in town, and they’ll be happy to let you have that necessary time. Certain groups will also understand new video game releases or staying up for midnight movie showings, and others won’t. If your players or DM think your reasoning for missing a session is lousy, they’ll probably tell you.

Third, know about the consequences of missing a session. There’s a good chance that you’ll miss out on some story and character development (in most games) and some treasure and experience points (in 4th Edition). You should expect that other players will try to update you on what happened while you were away. You can’t expect that they’ll save a share of treasure for you if you weren’t there to help earn/loot/steal it. No matter how good your reason was, you still weren’t there, and it’s perfectly reasonable for the DM to reduce your XP gains or for the party to withhold an equal share of loot.

If you’re a DM, expect that the players will have a harder time remembering what happened in previous weeks. There’s a reason a lot of TV shows begin with a “previously on ________” montage, because viewers are busy and can’t be expected to remember every interaction that happened in every previous episode. If you cancel two sessions in a row and your players don’t remember where they are, it’s not because they’re lousy players. It’s because they’ve been busy remembering other things for the last five hundred hours. It’s probably a good idea to start every session with a “previously on” montage anyway, to remind forgetful, busy, or missing players about where the campaign is.

In general, a lot of what I said falls under the “don’t be a jerk” rule (some sort of weird hybrid between Law #0 and Law #4). Remember that your fellow players are people who have lives and expectations and they usually understand when something unexpected happens, but if you push them too hard they won’t be nearly as willing to play with you in the future.

One last word: find out the best way to contact your players. Some players read their email religiously and some only check it weekly. Some ignore most text messages and some tweet all day. If you send them a message via a communication medium they don’t use, that’s as good as not telling them. I sometimes forget that most people *aren’t* required by their job to keep their phone on 24/7, so I use a lot of text, but I’ve shifted to email more lately because players seem to prefer it.

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6 Responses to When You Miss a Session

  1. Yanni says:

    This is nice and all, but could you force my players to read and internalize this?

  2. Dave Fried says:

    TL;DR warning!

    My attitude on this comes from participating in musical ensembles and theater for most of my life. When you are in a band, a play, a choir, or whatever, you typically have a part that only you play. At best, if you’re in a large chorus, there are a few other people doubling you. If you are not there at a rehearsal or (gods forbid) a performance, then the product suffers – other people will not get their cues; lines or solos might be missing entirely!

    The attitude of most ensembles is that it is unacceptable to miss a performance, and damn near unacceptable to miss a rehearsal. Our college marching band’s policy on missing performances was something like “wedding in the family or death in the immediate family, preferably yours.” If you missed a rehearsal for even a legitimate reason, you were going to sit out most of the performance that week. The rehearsal policy was harsh, but fair in the sense that (a) you knew exactly where you stood ahead of time, and (b) it only affected you that week.

    As I’ve gotten older and performed with more casual groups, greater allowances have been made. People are busier – they have jobs, kids, lives. But people are also more responsible and more professional, so for example in the Blacksburg Community Band we usually know ahead of time if someone can’t make a gig and we fill in the parts so nothing’s missing. But even though it’s okay to miss a gig, I always feel guilty when I do. It’s been drilled into me that you don’t let down your people by not showing up.

    I feel the same way about gaming. Whether I’m GMing or playing, I have a part to play. I’m a critical piece of the story and/or a critical role in the party. Not showing up with my healer is the same as the supporting actress not showing up for a play rehearsal, or the first violin not showing up for an orchestra performance. I’m putting everyone else on the spot – especially the GM, who now has to work around that hole or cancel the session entirely.

    That doesn’t mean I never miss a session, but here’s the thing: there’s practically nothing in my life that would cause me to miss a session that I won’t know about at least a week in advance. Am I going on vacation? Do I have a gig with one of my bands? That stuff is all scheduled in advance. If I don’t respect the people I’m playing with enough to let them know ahead of time, I’m just being a jerk, and they probably shouldn’t be bothered to have to play with me.

    Now I do want to get to one big beef I have with traditional games and missing sessions: XP. This is being fully aware that neither you nor I actually grant XP when we run D&D. I’ve already done my rant on how XP is a pacing mechanism, not a reward. But assuming you’re using XP in your game, and if you go by what’s in the rulebook, it seems reasonable that players who have to miss sessions (for legitimate reasons) ought not to get XP.* The problem is this: missing XP is a long-term penalty. It’s not like in marching band where missing a rehearsal means you’re an alternate for one week. Missing XP means you’re always behind everyone else in a game where access to the next spell level or feat or ability matters. Loot is similar though not as bad, since it can get made up later and decent players will tend to want to share anyway.

    * though 4E actually addresses this, IIRC, and provides some nice alternatives.

    If a player has to miss sessions, missing fun sessions – and the guilt that goes along with not being there to help out their buddies – should be punishment enough. Some people’s schedules are busier than others. If you know the people you’re inviting to your game, you are probably aware of how likely they are to miss sessions. If you’re comfortable with having them and accommodating their schedule, then “You have to miss next week’s session? Feel bad, you bad person!” should be sufficient. No need to rub salt in the wound.

    Finally, if a critical player can’t make a session, or a player can’t make a critical session (season/campaign finale, etc.) then you can always still get together and just play something else. There are tons of board games and fun one-shot RPG and story games out there. If you really like the people you game with then that should be reward enough – the big climax can always wait another week. My Dresden Files, Icons, and Apocalypse World campaigns all required massive rescheduling at the end, and it was worth it every time.

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