Okay, fellow gamers...I've got to get this off of my chest.
I haven't gamed in over two weeks, and it's driving me nuts.
Note that this isn't for a lack of trying, friends and neighbors. As you probably know, if you've been following this blog, I'm currently GMing three games a week--two sessions of Cold Steel Wardens, which is making its way through the paces of alpha testing, as well as a weekly session of Deadlands, as my Friday night group makes its way through "The Flood".
For the most part, the prep for these hasn't been too overwhelming. "The Flood" is a pre-made campaign, which means that stats, plotlines and the like are already generated; it's just a matter of executing the game, and making it amusing at the table. My CSW campaign, by and large, is running primarily on cliches--while I do have to stat up adversaries and the like, the plotlines that my Heroes are working their way through are deliberately stereotypical for the Iron Age, meant more to put the system through its paces than to put forward a "masterpiece" campaign.
Neither campaign has gone anywhere in nearly 3 weeks.
This doesn't bother me, under usual circumstances. I'm well aware that life gets in the way of gaming many times, and that sometimes you just have to call it a day. But, these past few weeks, the circumstances surrounding our cancelled sessions have been beyond frustrating.
Mostly, this is because of an utter lack of notice. I don't have any problem with a player missing a session, but when we're around the table, asking each other "Hey, does anyone know if Jim Bob is coming?", that brings the action to a grinding halt and starts us looking for other plans. This has been the case twice in a row our Friday night game, and has left us looking for alternate entertainment. I'm lucky enough to have a large enough game library to accomodate spur-of-the-moment games, but still...I want to run Deadlands!
Worse still is when this happens in my Saturday session, as it did this past Saturday. I got a text message from one of my players just after I woke up, which was fine--I had four other players, which would make for a perfectly viable session. As such, I packed my materials and headed over to Wittenberg...
...only to get a second text message, as I sat waiting for security to unlock the door to the classroom we use. Another player gone. Waiting patiently for the other three...only one showed up. Kung-Fu Jake told me that he'd heard that a second of our players was going to be running significantly late. Our last player was nowhere in sight. After fifteen minutes of waiting, I called the session.
Listen, this is absurdity. If you can't have the common courtesy to at least tell someone when you're running late or can't make a session, why should you expect me to run game for you? I'd love to be able to roll out the chase rules or the other investigation forms for Cold Steel Wardens, but right now I can't even get enough players together for a single session! Hell's bells!
Sorry. I really needed to get that off of my chest. If you have some advice or some ideas on how to change things up, by all means, comment for me!
Oh, and since there's no media for this entry, here's a great perspective on the DC reboot that the PlatinumChick had on her Facebook page. Enjoy:
A 7-year-old girl responds to the DC Reboot
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