Attendance guidelines

[Venture]

Given the minor chaos before last session, with only a couple of people signed up in advance, I'm reposting the attendance guidelines that I had up in the NWC forums. Since I don't know if many of you will be checking in before next session, the guidelines won't gone into effect until after our break (mentioned in this thread).

Guidelines notwithstanding, please simply try to remember two things:

1. Sign up as early as possible, once you know your schedule.

2. If you can't make it, please let me know either via message or posting in the forums.

The reason for this is so we can know in advance if we need to cancel a session, and also to help me in building (both in tailoring custom content, and setting encounter difficulty level).

OK, here is the text copied over from NWC:

Although we want to stay away from having too many rules (we're playing for fun, after all), attendance is one area that affects the game dramatically. It is much harder to design a module if we don’t know how many players will be in attendance, and what character classes will be in attendance. This could also affect character survivability if it unbalances things too much. Further, your PC is always "there" in game.... even though you may not be, and even if the PC is not physically present with the party. We’re trying to revolve this campaign around the player characters, so it is possible that an absence could negatively impact a storyline, and detract from the game for the other players.

Fortunately, attendance has not been much of a problem yet. That being said, Bigbluepaw and I feel the need to establish a few guidelines now, rather than later. They are as follows:

(1) Two unexplained missed games in a row probably will result in us trying to find a replacement for you. All we ask is a note in advance letting us know, so we don’t sit around waiting for you. We understand life happens.

(2) We hope that everyone can attend at least 80% of the games. If attendance falls below this, we will consider trying to find a replacement.

(3) If someone has not signed up for the game by the night before, he will not be able to play the following day. This is because we need to know who will be there from a building perspective, in order to balance the module. For our sake, the earlier you can sign up for a game once it is posted, the easier our job is (so I'm not up late the night before doing last-minute tweaks).

Please don’t take this to mean that Bigbluepaw and I are unhappy with anyone. To the contrary, we are having a blast with the campaign, and enjoy playing with all of you. We hope you're having as much fun as we are. We simply want to put out some attendance guidelines early on in the process, so that the campaign goes smoother for everyone. See you next week!

[lindalas]

We seem to be getting into trouble with this right away... where is Bree? Why isn't anyone posting?

[Venture]

That's why I mentioned we'll start following the guidelines after the break. I suspect with summer here, people aren't checking the forums as much. As long as we have at least 3, we can give it a shot tomorrow.