I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
The hardest thing about playing D&D is actually playing D&D.
Whether it’s busy schedules, unforeseen circumstances, or complications caused by a global freaking pandemic, there are a lot of ways that a planned D&D session can be derailed by the buzzkill that is real life.
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Not to mention all the players who are chronically late to sessions, or, worse, the one’s who simply don’t show up without saying a word to anyone.
These types of players can be a death sentence for any D&D campaign.
But there is hope for all those frustrated DMs out there (who have been trapped in the net of my admittedly click-baity title. Hi, thanks for coming. I’ll get to the point now).
The golden rule that I’ve implemented at my own table to ensure that we don’t have any cancelled sessions is the Half Plus One Rule.
As the name I just came up with implies, the followers of this rule will go ahead with a session so long as half the players +1 are in attendance.
So if you have a party of 4, you’ll need half of that (2) plus 1, so 3 players to go ahead with the game. For a party of 6, it’s 4 to play.
Things get a little tricky with the odd numbers, seeing as you can’t very well cut a person in half, but I’d say rounding down is your best bet.
Parties of 3 just need 2 players to play, parties of 5 need 3, and parties of 7 need 5, and so on and so forth.
Now I know that a lot of DMs don’t like the idea of some party member(s) just being silent shadows at the tail end of the party for a full session like some lifeless zombie, but there are a few ways around that.
Either the DM can come up with some reason why that character wasn’t around/speaking/helpful that day (they were sleeping off a bad hangover/suffering from food poisoning/oh, I don’t know, abducted and in need of saving), or the character can just be played by either the DM or a willing player when necessary.
The real golden rule here is not to call off a planned session just because you can’t have the full party there, because then you — and the players who actually managed to show up — will be missing out on a lot of D&D as a result.
The absent player who missed a session will also (hopefully) be motivated to either prioritize the sessions as a result, or realize that they’ve been away for so many games they may need to reevaluate their commitment. Either they will officially back out, or at the least have their character designated as a recurring guest rather than a full blown party member.
This will also open up space for another potential player to join the group, which in turn will make the likelihood of actually playing D&D that much higher.
It may take some flexibility on the DMs part to ensure that the now-four-person party isn’t killed going into an encounter balanced for six members (or keep it just as difficult and see what happens), but it’s worth making those changes if it means that the session actually happens.
On the flip side, too many cancelled session in a row will result in even your most consist party members potentially planning for a cancellation, and that’s when campaigns really start to die.
Consistency is key, after all, but that particular article is for another day!
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