What do you do about flakes?
I try to fill the hole in the group with a new player, repeating the process as many times as necessary. Even then he game usually falls apart by session 3.
>>43782685
What's worse is when the guy driving the plot flakes.
And then you basically wind up not having a session.
>>43782685
>What do you do about flakes?
Get a better shampoo.
>>43782685
One of our guys flaked because overwatch. And yet he constantly says how excited he is for the session throughout the week.
>>43782685
Stop living in SoCal. Gamers here are noncommittal fucks.
>Want to do a game
>Some asshole tells me "Solution: YOU host"
>Okay, fine
>Host a game
>Everyone invited flakes
>>43782685
They piss me off
I use head & shoulders.
>>43783063
Came here to say this.
>>43782685
Have several players waiting in the wings. In the Shadowrun group I am a player in we have 6 players and average 3 per session.
It sucks but run it anyway if you have more than one person. I had two people show up to my session tonight and it turned out to be a marvelous game.
I screen my players, get to know them and then populate my game with friends, rather than a bunch of autistic strangers.
>>43784516
Personally I'll run even if it's 1. The game must go on.
I have 2 guys that haven't showed up for a while toy sessions. Feels bad man.
Other 3 are really involved and love playing though, so even when one of them has something we still meet up and normally engage in noncombat encounters.
>>43782685
has it ever occured to you players leave your games because you're shit DMs?
>>43782685
Make 'em play in a game of FATAL
Make 'em play in a game of FATAL
Make 'em play in a game of FATAL
Erlai in the morning!
>>43782685
Drive to their house and beat them up I guess.
You can't let them set a precedent.
Shrug and keep playing?
I mean, there are reasons for flaking. Not always good ones, but still.
Just don't have the plot hinging on one person, or the flake, as
>>43783047
illustrates the issue of.
>>43786323
Doesn't work - you need something stronger
>>43782685
Depends on why if they have a reasonable reason to need to flake and tell me ahead of time all is well.
If you don't show up and don't let me know why, well then I drop you.
Had dm actually no show no call two weeks in a row, pretty much figured he dropped the game without bothering to tell any of us.
>>43782685
Had a flake miss 3 consecutive IRL sessions with last-minute excuses.
Sent him a carefully worded message explaining that RL takes precedence over gaming, I know, but calling out last minute wrecks the plans of the rest of the group and makes us feel disrespected.
As I don't know him much away from the table, asked him if his free time / commitment / desire to play changed recently.
Turns out it has, and he didn't say anything because he was desperately trying to finagle his way out of his other commitments.
Thanked him for coming clean. Told him his PC is going to continue existing in the world but be away from the action - in case his situation changes and he still wants to play the same character if / when he comes back.
TL;DR:
Talk to your flakes like they're human beings, because they are human beings.Unless you've been playing with some shoddy arcane constructs or AI, those things malfunction way too often.
>>43782685
If it's just one person, which it usually is, and they're not too integral to the campaign at that moment, run it anyway as long as there're two people, and the player who flaked gets zero xp for that session.
>>43782685
First time is excused.
Second time is the last.
No chance for a third time.
Keep finding people until you eventually settle with a group that is sturdy. Pretty easy if you are playing online with a system that is very popular like PF, torture if you live in the middle of nowhere and play a system that no one likes. Having relatively short campaigns(Three months or so) can help insure that you actually finish it.
>>43784853
This, basically. I know my players well enough that I have a good idea of who is likely to be flakey and make sure to have options ready to deal with the possibility. If something genuinely unexpected happens and plot-vital players can't come, the rest of us can play something else; board games, a one-shot rp session or whatever.
I swear, 99% of problems that /tg/ worries about can be solved by three things:
Understanding that there are games other than D&D.
Talking to people like adults.
Knowing people in real life.
>>43782685
Eat them. They're good for breakfast.
>alright we're starting a new campaign last one fizzled out
>"hey lets invite BOB!"
>...BOB can hardly show up on time then always flakes out
>And you guys never want to play when everyone's not here
>in fact that's what happened with the last campaign
>"Nah man BOB's great he loves to play he'll show up we already invited him"
>Fuck fine just get him here
>Oh wow it's game night and guess who's not here? Well lets start-oh you want to wait for him? Oh he's not showing up now? Oh so we're not playing then?
>...
>alright we're starting a new campaign last one fizzled out
What's a flake?
>>43786358
Then they should say so instead of being passive-aggressive cunts about it.
>>43789403
>Talking to people like adults
>/tg/
That's a good one
>>43789538
It's a person that drops an obligation the moment an opportunity, however petty, presents itself.
>>43782685
Ah, you mean "guest players".
Well, I require them to play characters with teleportation or dramatic dislocation powers/hindrances. Then never give them any vital clues and avoid making their character the linchpin for anything.
>>43787759
>Depends on why if they have a reasonable reason to need to flake and tell me ahead of time all is well.
I don't think it even counts as flaking if you have an actual reason and tell the GM ahead of time.
>>43789696
>games are an obligation
>>43789785
Why did you sign up for a 9-12 game if you can't even show up?
>>43789785
Well, you made a commitment to come to play don't you?
>>43782685
I weep bitter tears I cry into my pillow at night. I sob without end as I see another week pass by without game night.
>>43789785
>my word and the trust others place in me are worthless
>>43789785
Not that anon but, if you agree to do something with others, that creates a social obligation to be be there, on time as well.
The game itself isn't the obligation. It's like saying you'll meet your group in the library at 3 to work on your assignment and no one turns up and you're left holding the bag, only to get a text an hour or so later saying "Yeah sorry bro, I forgot."
Hmm? What's that? No I'm not projecting at all.
>>43782685
Generally, the first time I see them cancel their game without a good reason I dial back my investment in it. No reason to get myself hyped for something that may just not happen, after all. If it happens often enough, I might consider dropping just to free the day up for other things.
>>43782685
Give them small tasks they must complete in-between sessions. Quick little things like write a paragraph of story, draw up a character sheet etc. Something preparatory but small between every session to demonstrate that they are willing to devote the time and care. It keeps the interest between sessions and demonstrates which players are willing to put the effort in and which aren't
>>43790038
>Generally, the first time I see them cancel their game without a good reason I dial back my investment in it.
It hurts to do this when you've been hyped for the the campaign.
Like, literally everything in the campaign I'm in right now is just *perfect*, and yet the DM has started flaking on sessions and as of yesterday just not shown up to a session at all (including the DM's friend and wife, which makes me think they abandoned me and the other guy they got from Roll20.)
It just hurts.
>>43789565
This, holy shit having hosted a game that had gone so far down the toliet that I only had one guy at the end, what annoyed me the most was that nobody just straight up said 'hey, this shit sucks. Can you do this, this, and this differently?' It would've made a world of difference and saved us all an assload of e-drama if they would have just said so.
Your GMs aren't perfect, and if they're ADD riddled dumbfucks like me they fuck-up hard occasionally. Don't be afraid to vocalize your complaints rather than bottling it up like the stone cold badass you wish you were.
>>43782685
1) Have an in-game mechanism by which PC's can easily be removed from the party and put back into it (this is really easy in magic-heavy settings like D&D).
2) Keep the game about the party as a whole; don't write a session which needs a particular player unless you know that player to be super reliable.
>>43790147
>It hurts to do this when you've been hyped for the the campaign.
I used to get pretty pissed off and worked up about it when I saw GMs just flake out like that. Even more so if it was for easily preventable reasons, or if they could be hosting if they really wanted.
Then I had the wonderful realization that there's nothing I can do to prevent a GM from running their game into the ground. So why should I worry about it?
>>43790180
>Your GMs aren't perfect, and if they're ADD riddled dumbfucks like me they fuck-up hard occasionally. Don't be afraid to vocalize your complaints rather than bottling it up like the stone cold badass you wish you were.
There's a happy medium to this. Being an endless font of complaints and negativity can drag a game down as surely as saying nothing. You're not wrong though, if something is ruining sessions for you or you have suggestions, you should be mentioning them. But if everything that's coming out of your mouth is negative, you should really stop and consider how much of it is really important to get out there.
And if there are things you particularly like about the game, mention them too. It's cool for the GM to hear, and it's as helpful or in some cases more helpful than negative criticism.
>>43789346
>Unless you've been playing with some shoddy arcane constructs or AI, those things malfunction way too often
This.
Fuck you Sollex and your false advertising. Your new Mk VI "Grognard" player servitor does not work "almost better than a real player".
>>43790202
This.
I designed my airships "everyone has feather fall" campaign setting so that if someone can't make it to the session, or if even two people can't make it, their characters "fell off the boat" and will ve back next session after the floaty rescue barge picks them up.
Even if they're in the middle of a palace, even if they are capable of sustained flight, missing a session means falling off the boat.
It happens semiregularly but campaign has been going for 1 1/2 years so it can't be all that bad.
>>43791959
Yeah, but they never smell bad. So that's a plus.
>>43792101
I like that.
For my WFRP and Dark Heresy campaigns, both groups are afflicted with an (apparently contagious) Warp phenomenon which occasionally causes people to flicker out of existence and then reappear later in proximity to their comrades. My WoD campaign takes places in a single city, so it's easy to explain away absent PC's as taking care of personal matters.
Not sure what I'm going to do for Infinity.
>>43782685
fuck em to death tbqh
