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.