What is Nostalgia Gaming? 

Let me make up a definition for this. Nostalgia is defined as, “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past”. Nostalgia gaming is when you run a session to bring about that sentimental longing or wistful affection for a past game or game group. 

This was my goal. I wanted to play a game that would feel like when we played in our teens. I wanted us to forget about it being 36 years later, and transport us back to a time when we would get out of school on a Friday, run to the grocery store to stock up on drinks and chips, and then head to one of our houses to play games until it was way too late in the evening.

Because of this goal, I made some specific choices about what game we played, the adventure I wrote, and how I GMed it.

Picking The Game

For the group that I was going to visit and the years that I was the GM for them, the game that was iconic for our group was Palladium’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We played several campaigns of TMNT. One member of our group was an artist and drew character portraits for all the characters back when we were playing. While I could not remember too many specifics about the sessions of our campaigns, all of us could remember the characters. That was the kind of game I was looking for. One that everyone had fond memories of that could bring about that nostalgic feeling. 

There was just one thing. Over the years, I have lost my love for that system, but lucky for me Julian Kay created Mutants in the Now. Julian had the same feelings about the original system and the same love for the source material. I wanted a game that would bring about a nostalgic feeling and was happy to do it with a game with modern game design. 

Prepping The Game

The Adventure

I knew I would be writing the adventure. I wanted to go for something nostalgic, and it had to be a one-shot and playable in 1-2 sessions. I went with an assault on a big bad’s lair. It was an easy plot, with only one twist. I cut out the planning of the assault by making my Mad Lib plan. To make it nostalgic, I took the iconic villain from the TMNT RPG, Dr. Feral, and made him the center of the adventure. 

My goal was for the adventure to be high-action, with lots of minions to mow down, and an epic battle for the finale. I also wanted to make sure that there were scenes where everyone got a moment to shine and do something cool. All of that was worked into my prep. 

Pre-Gens

I did not want us to spend any time making up characters as time was precious. Mutants in the Now has a pretty extensive character generation system (though more streamlined than the source material). While that may have been fun if we had more time, I went with making all the characters beforehand. 

In doing so, I emphasized getting the memory of the character more correct than any of the mechanical specifics. I remembered all the archetypes for the characters and created the pre-gens around those themes. 

Abilities Sheet

Since none of the players were familiar with the system and none of them had any of the books, I made a Google Doc with the text of all of the character’s specific abilities so they could easily reference them during play. I wanted to avoid having to pass around the one table copy of the game during play.

Cheat Sheets

Mutants in the Now also has a helpful combat sheet, to aid during play. I made copies of that for the table as well, so that they could easily look up all the combat options. 

That was a lot of prep, but I wanted to be able to hit the table and start playing as fast as possible. For this kind of gaming, I was ok with putting the burden of the work on me, to make the play experience better for everyone. 

Running the Session

For the running of the session, I did just a few specific things to make the game go smoothly. 

No Planning

I wanted this game to be about action and not bogged down in planning. That is why I prepped the game with the Mad Libs plan, and because this was the type of mission where a lot of planning would have happened, I gave each of the players a token that they could use for one flashback, where they prepared something for a given moment in the game. This would remove the need for planning but also would emulate the competency of a team that had planned their assault well. 

The Spirt of the Rules…Not The Letter

During the session, I did not worry about if everyone exactly got the rules right, or if I was remembering each rule. The goal was to have fun, and so after a quick overview of how the rules worked we started playing, and when we hit any questions, I just made up answers and kept going, and did not check the rulebook. That is in contrast to how I run games at home or even at a convention, where I put more of an emphasis on getting the rules right or showcasing the rules.

I was also generous in making rulings in favor of the players, to make sure they all got to do some cool things. This game was not the place to worry about realism or how exact mechanics work. We played Theater of the Mind so that I could make the world fit what the players wanted to do. 

Everyone Got To Kick Ass

I made sure in my prep that there was the potential for each character to do something cool. During play, I also made sure that those opportunities came up or I capitalized on something cool the players came up with, and in most cases, both. The vast majority of the enemies they encountered before the climactic battle were minions and plenty of them. I let them mow them down unmercifully. This mixed with the advice above, allowed me to make sure each of them had some awesome moment where they got to shine in their archetype. 

For the climatic battle, I had a mix of combatants and non-combat objectives. The combat-focused characters could brawl while the non-combat characters could work on the other objectives all in the same dynamic scene.

They Were Going to Win

No matter what happened, we were here for a kick-ass time, and that meant that Dr. Feral was going to die, no matter what. I did not prep anything specific for this, but there are a number of GM tricks I could have used to ensure that he was taken down by the characters.

But in the playing of the game, I did not have to do any of that. In the climactic battle, one of the players scored a brutal Barrage maneuver, which took out Dr. Feral much to the joy of the table. 

How Did It Go?

It was awesome. The game lived up to what I was hoping it would be. First, the Mutants in the Now rules are excellent and they make for some very exciting combats. For all my intent of streamlining rules, I had to do it only a few times. Most of the time we played the game pretty much as written.

Second, all the prep paid off and I was able to get everyone into playing the game quickly and kept the focus on the action. Lastly, the way I ran it maximized the fun over the accuracy, and it was the right vibe for a nostalgia game.

This Kind of Sounds like Convention Gaming…

For sure, I drew inspiration from running numerous convention games, to design the game for everyone to have a good time. I think the biggest departure for me was that I relaxed on rules accuracy/mastery and emphasized having fun. Also, in convention games, I will let a party lose, but that was not going to happen in this game. 

Waxing Nostalgic

Thirty-six years is a long time to get that group back to the table. I wanted to make sure that our return would be an enjoyable time. It was. For that weekend, at that table, we were teenagers again, with our mutant animals saving the day. I was thrilled to be able to bring that experience to the group and to share the table with them once more.

The thing about nostalgic gaming is that feelings are more important than accuracy. Do what you need to do to make the game feel like it did back in the day. For me, it was to change systems and do a lot of upfront prep and just a minor change to my normal GMing style. 

If you ever get the chance to run a nostalgia game for people in your past, I hope you have as much fun as we did. Have you ever run a nostalgia game and for whom? How did it go?

That is the problem I was having. In a few weeks, my high school gaming group is having a reunion, and we wanted to play some games. One of our group’s main games was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rather than run TMNT, I offered Mutants in the Now, which I think is a better overall game. It will be a one-shot, and likely time bound to 4-6 hours. The scenario I wanted was a raid on an island of the evil genius Dr. Feral. But planning…

Other games have done a good job of designing around planning, but Mutants in the Now does not have any direct planning rules. So I started to think, what if we didn’t plan everything but the group just made some choices? That is when I got the idea for Plan by Mad Libs. So let’s talk about it. 

What are Mad Libs?

A Mad Lib is a word game where one player asks for certain words – a noun, a verb, etc – with little or no context. The words are plugged into pre-written text. After all the words have been collected, the person reads the text, which often results in a silly, but entertaining narrative. For more info see:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Libs
• https://www.madlibs.com/

What is a Plan?

A plan is defined as a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something. There is an objective, and there are the steps to achieve that objective. Typically when this is done in RPGs the group knows or decides the objective, and then works to figure out the steps. This often results in iterative discussions as details that are discussed prompt a new discussion about older details. It can be time-consuming, frustrating, and boring. 

Plan By Mad Libs

The idea is to use the Mad Lib format to streamline planning so that we can quickly define the plan and move on to its execution, where the characters are taking action. 

To do this, I needed to take some of the agency from the players, for the sake of time. That is, I needed to come up with the pre-written text – the plan for how the characters would raid the island. I did this using a simple story framework for a typical raid kind of story. The plan would need info on infiltration, a diversion, achieving the objective, and exfiltration from the island. 

The blanks could then be the WHO and in some cases the HOW. Those choices could be left to the players so that they could customize the framework and make the plan theirs. 

Here is an example of how I used the WHO to define the infiltration to the island:

We first have to get onto Dr. Feral’s island. NAME will smuggle themselves aboard Kris Pierce’s yacht in Miami, and arrive on the island at the docks. At the same time, NAME and NAME will take a private flight out of Ft. Lauderdale and will parachute onto the southeast grasslands with our backup gear. NAME got a job as a bodyguard for Linda Davenport and will arrive on the island as part of her entourage, and will be at the arena. 

Here is an example of how I used the HOW for the diversion:

While that is going on, WHO will go to the CHOOSE (DOCKS, AIRSTRIP, POWER STATION) to cause a diversion by BLANK (ACTION or METHOD). 

Implementing the Plan By Mad Libs

The full plan is written as if one of the characters is going over the plan with the rest of the group (this was highly inspired by a scene from the A-Team movie). The players will fill out the Mad Lib plan and then one of them will read it back to the group. As soon as it’s read, we can jump right into playing.

Advantages of Planning by Mad Libs

There are a few advantages to this. The first is that it should be quick. Filling in the blanks won’t take long and we should be up and running quickly. Second, the plan is written out and on the table while we play. There is little chance people will forget the plan with it there on the table. Third, I can prep for the plan, which means that I can add some nice mechanical details that I might miss if I was ad-libbing based on a plan made at the table. Fourth, I can roughly manage the duration of the game based on the size of the plan I write.

Kind of Sounds Like A Railroad

Not really. Of course, there will be twists in the plan – some from me and others through the actions of the characters – and that I will manage while we play. The players can abandon the plan as soon as we start, or they can follow it all the way through. Both work.

The goal of the Mad Lib plan wasn’t to control the whole adventure, it was to minimize planning and get into the execution of the plan. The Mad Lib plan accomplishes that goal. 

One-Shots vs. Campaigns

For sure, this idea works great for one-shots, but could it work for a campaign? I think so, if the players were to buy into the concept. Hijacking a bit of agency in a one-shot is not that big of a deal, but in a campaign it could be more of a complex topic. 

I think it would work in a campaign where planning was not the norm, where the core loop of the game is something other than planning and for a specific story there needs to be a plan, and you use the Mad Libs format to streamline things so that the story goes smoothly. For instance, I would not use this for a Night’s Black Agents op, but I might use it for a one-off supers heist in the Marvel Multiverse game. 

Anything But Planning

Planning is not a fun activity in most RPGs. There are a lot of ways modern designers are trying to reduce or remove planning from games, all for the better. That said, there are plenty of games out there that need a design for minimizing planning. For those games, something like a Mad Lib plan can help.

I hope that this Mad Lib plan will help my table come up with an interesting and entertaining plan that unfolds into an exciting session. 

How do you manage planning at your table? Would you try a Mad Lib plan?

The First Session

Your first session of a game can wind up being a lot of things. If you and your group are new to the game, this is your first time engaging with the rules. If the setting is new, it will be the first time you as the GM are expressing the setting to the players and the first time their characters are interacting with the world. In most cases, it is the first time the players are embodying their characters. Then on top of all of that, you are trying to run the first story of the campaign and be entertaining enough to have everyone want to do it again.

All in all, it’s a lot.

I will say it’s nearly too much. It’s hard to have a great first session. You wind up pausing and breaking flow to look up rules, or players are searching their character sheets for information. You can’t quite remember all the details of the world. The player’s portrayal of their characters are stiff and lacking dimension (no dig on them, look at the pilot of nearly any TV show, and you will see the same thing). Then at the end of the night, you are not sure if you pulled any of it off, and are hoping that everyone will want to play again. 

All in all, it’s a lot.

Lower Your Expectations

Your first session does not need to be great, it just needs to be good enough. There are future sessions where there will be time for great sessions, amazing stories, etc. Your first session does not need to be that, and in fact shouldn’t be. Your first session should be used to break everything in, get the uncomfortable parts out of the way, and get everyone settling into their characters. Once everyone is familiar with the rules, the setting, and their characters, that is when you can start working towards those great games. 

Set Your First Session Goals

Before you prep your first session, consider what you need to get everyone comfortable with. 

Is this a new system for some or all of you? 

Is this a new setting?

Are these new characters? 

Knowing the answers to these will help you set some goals for your first session. 

New System

If this is a new system, then some of your first session should be dedicated to trying out the rules and building familiarity. Start with the core mechanics of the game. Let them make some skill checks. Have a combat scene. Don’t set the stakes high in terms of combatants, you are not looking to put any characters down, you are looking to exercise the combat rules and get familiar with them. 

If your system has a lot of subsystems, don’t try to get them into the first session, spread them out a bit. Save vehicle combat for the next session. Let the players and yourself get familiar with one set of rules before adding more to the mix.

New Setting

If this is a new setting, keep the focus small. You don’t need to introduce the entire world to the players. Just show them a single town or area. Keep your scope narrow, so that you can manage the details you need to convey and that it is digestible to the players. Be there to answer any questions the players have, to resist hitting them with the setting firehose.

In future sessions, you can expand the world and the information about it as other parts of the game become easier for the characters. My rule of thumb about this is that when the characters are low in power I focus on one area, and as they rise in power I zoom out to show them more of the world and later the universe.

New Characters

Your players need some time to act as their characters in order to get a good feel for them. They need to speak as their character to work on their voice, they need to make decisions and interact with people to work on their personalities. They also need to start figuring out how they interact with each other. 

Your first session should create places for them to do that. Some of those scenes should be with NPCs that you are playing, and some of those scenes should be with the other characters so that they can bond with each other. These scenes can be part of the story you are telling or they can just be spaces with leading questions to get the characters talking to one another. 

Your First Story

Your first session also needs a story – something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Something that the characters can accomplish. I have one word when it comes to the first story…

Simple. 

Resist any urge to be clever or show off in your first story. You and the players are distracted with all the things that we have been talking about above. Rather, go with a simple story and allow it to be the backdrop by which you accomplish all the other goals above. When you get this game off the ground you will have time to show off your storycraft. The first session is not that time. 

The 4-Session Rule

I bring this up because, at the end of your first session, you will want to know how it went. If all goes well it can be a pretty good session, but it is not likely to be great. Resist the urge to consider the session a failure or the game or campaign a failure. My group uses the 4-Session Rule. That is, we do not pass judgment on a game until we have played it for four sessions. 

In four sessions you will have had time to get used to the rules, and get a feel for the world and the characters. At the end of the fourth session ask everyone how they feel about the game. If it is not positive, then consider changing games. Give your game and yourselves a fair chance to find out if you like the game. 

My Mutants in the Now First Session

As I am getting ready to start brainstorming my Mutants in the Now first session, I am thinking of a very simple plot taking place in a single part of the city the campaign is based in (Chicago). What I want to focus on are the two core systems of the game: Dramatic Scenes and Combat. I know I want a decent combat scene so that we can all get used to those rules. 

I also want to create some character interactions with some NPCs and each of the characters, so that I can help the players get comfortable with their characters, and I also want to create a few scenes where I can let the characters chat as a group and bond to each other. I will also prepare some leading questions that I can ask various characters to talk about in different scenes. 

It sounds like a lot of goals but I don’t need to fully accomplish all of them in the first session, I just need to get each of them started, as I have three more sessions to work through things. In order of priority I want to accomplish:

• Character development
• Group development
• Combat
• Dramatic Situations

KISS That First Session

First sessions of games can be a handful, and we often put too much pressure on “making some magic” happen. Instead, consider your first session or two as the pilot of a TV show. You want to demonstrate what the show is going to be like, but it’s all going to be clumsy and awkward. Pilots are rarely the best episode of any series, and your first session is doubtful to be the best session of your campaign. 

Set some goals to help everyone get comfortable, do your best, and give it a few sessions before you pass judgment on the game. Do that and you can have a far more successful first session. 

How do you handle your first sessions for a game? What are your goals? How do you measure success? 

So what does this have to do with RPGs? Well, it’s about prep. Present you is going to prep a game for Future You, and there are some things you can do in the present that will help Future You quite a bit. So let’s talk about it…

Getting to Know Future You

Future You is going to be the person who is GMing your next game. They are some time in the future, and they are going to be sitting at the table doing all the tasks that a GM has to do, things like reading the table, managing the spotlight, keeping track of NPC health, playing various NPCs…you get the idea. Future You is going to be juggling a bunch of things while running the game. 

From time to time, Future You needs to look at your session prep to see what comes next, for a piece of dialog that you want to say, etc. They need to do that, all the while juggling everything else we talked about.

Present You

Right now you are prepping the game. You have access to any reference material you need, time to look things up on the internet, time to mull over ideas, and write down all sorts of things. Depending on how you like to prep, your prep could occur over multiple days. 

Side note – If your prep is getting the better of you, consider Never Unprepared, which talks about how to get your prep under control so that you are getting what you need done promptly. 

While you are doing your prep you need to consider… 

What can Present You do for the Future You?

We know Future You is going to be busy, so are you preparing your prep material to make it easy for Future You to reference during the game?

One of the reasons that I dislike running published adventures is that they are formatted like other types of publications, with paragraphs and multiple columns of text. That format is convenient for the publisher, in that it condenses text on a page, and helps to keep page counts down because more pages are more printing costs, which in turn would be higher prices for you. But it also makes scanning that text in the middle of a session difficult. 

I love Dungeon Crawl Classic published adventures, but my prep for them is to take the PDF and use color highlighters to help break up the paragraphs of text into things to read/describe to the players, rules/checks I need to be aware of, and stats. By coloring those blocks of text in different colors, it makes it easier for me to find them while I am running the game. 

For me, and I suspect others, that condensed format is not the most accessible form of information when running the game (Future You). 

What can you do to make your prep more accessible for Future You? 

Over the years, my prep evolved. When I was younger I wrote paragraphs and blocks of text, because I was emulating published adventures. Over time I moved away from that format and today my prep has the following characteristics:

Outline Text

My prep consists of headers and bulleted lists. I will use a few different sized headers to help group the information. I use bulleted lists with several indentations to organize single lines of information. Even long dialog will be a series of bullets. 

This format is easy for Future Phil to scan during play. The headers make it easy to find a specific part of my prep, and the bullets make it easy to scan/read. 

Complex Information In Tables

Things like stat blocks or checks are put into tables so that they are easy to find and easy to access different parts of the table, as needed.

Auxiliary Information in Sidebars

I will put information that may be helpful in sidebars next to the rest of the prep. These sidebars sometimes contain rules that may be relevant, setting info that may be germane, etc. By using the sidebar, it keeps the main text, the bulleted list, lean, while allowing me to also easily access that supplemental info by glancing over.

Separate Pages for Recurring NPCs

Some NPCs I will put in tables, as mentioned above, but if an adventure has a large number of NPCs or if some of those stat blocks are going to be referenced more than once, then they go into their own separate pages. This also helps to keep the outline text lean and makes it easy to flip over to the NPC page if I need to access their stats.

The goal of all of this is to make things easier for Future Phil, but this lean style also helps Present Phil because it’s less wordy than writing paragraphs. Also, this is easily scalable and I have used this format for games where I have done heavy prep, to games where I am ad-libbing more of the session. 

My Tool Of Choice

The type of formatting I am talking about here can be done in many different tools: Google Docs, Notion, Evernote, etc. I am a fan of OneNote. The platform isn’t the important part, except that you have to like it and be excited to use it. 

How Is Future Phil Using This Prep?

When I run a game, I use either an iPad, laptop or monitor to present my prep. By the nature of doing the prep, I have a good idea of many parts of what is going to happen in the session. As I run, I scroll the page down to the sections I need by looking for the headers. I can easily scan the bulleted text to find facts, info, or dialog.  When I see a sidebar, it’s a reminder of something that I may need during this part of the story.

What I don’t have to do during the game is stop and read or scan paragraphs of a page looking for something. It allows me to keep my focus on the play at the table while being able to glance over at my screen to grab some info.

Who Are You Prepping For?

While published adventures are a great way to learn what kind of prep goes into a story, the traditional publishing format is not always conducive to using it at the table. By considering Future You, the person who is running the game, you can format your prep to make it more accessible, making it less work to find information and decrease any pauses you will have during the game. 

What about you? How are you formatting your prep? What techniques are you using to make your prep an aid at the table?  

On average, I had 2-3 games in a week. I spent some time every week, prepping for one or more games. All of that time, playing and prepping, gave me a lot to reflect upon. Some of these lessons are new and others are ones that I re-learned. 

I wanted to share the five most important… 

Prep will only get you so far

I am sometimes known as the “prep guy”, and this year I did a lot of prep, so I feel like I can keep that moniker. But the best moments of the games I ran were not solely because of my prep, it was because of the players taking what I put out at the table, and adding to it. 

Many of those best moments are a mix of things I prepped for and some of those things spontaneously arose at the table. The constant between them was our group (GM and Players). The best parts of gaming happen at the table when the GM and players are interacting. 

What I learned was that my best prep, and I assure you, it’s pretty damn good prep, will produce at best a “good” session, if the players are dead fish. The only way to get from good to great is through playing the game at the table.

When the end of the campaign is near, don’t drag it out

In both of my campaigns that finished this year, there was a moment where I thought I could stretch this ending out into a few more stories. Not that I necessarily wanted to stretch the game out to pad how many sessions we played, but rather I saw the potential for the conclusion of the campaign to occur across several stories.

When I talked to the players, what I learned was that they were ready for the conclusion of the campaign. Their characters had traversed the power curve, they had done great things, and their stories were near the end. So rather than drag out more sessions, I found ways to streamline the plots, for both campaigns and bring both games to satisfying conclusions.

I learned that you don’t have to pace the end of the campaign at the same speed the rest of the campaign was paced. In fact, the proper pacing is more like this:

Beginning (fast) — Middle (slow) — Ending (fast)

This structure gets the campaign started quickly, allows you to build tension and develop characters in the middle, and then bring it to a conclusion in an orderly manner. I will be thinking about this more next year.

APs are both fun and tiring

This year, I was the GM for the Children of the Shroud AP over on the Misdirected Mark network [LINK]. It was the first time I had GM-ed an AP. While I have GMed many games for many folks, running an AP is different. It is more of a performance, than running convention games for strangers. GMs have a multitude of activities they have to juggle while running a game, and APs require you to add in performing as another task. 

Performing takes on several things. It is speaking clearly, and sometimes doing more than one take, because you were rambling as you synthesized an idea. It is narrating for the listeners what things are on the table, how you are building your dice pool, etc. 

For me, performing is draining, but running Children of the Shroud was also energizing, in a way that they nearly cancel each other out. I will likely do another AP in the future, but it is not my calling. 

Long-form play is satisfying

Before Covid, I was more of a short-campaign kind of GM. If a campaign made it to six months, that was considered a success. But lately, my campaigns have been much longer, and with it, I am learning more about long-form play. 

I learned that you have more room to build a complex campaign arc, one that is made up of smaller arcs. Each smaller arc builds up to a larger discovery or goal. Also, in longer games your ability to callback upon previous material is much larger in both the opportunities you have to callback as well as the amount of material you can draw upon. 

With that there is a bit more campaign management you need to do to build those smaller arcs and have them roll up nicely into a larger plot. You also have to have a good way to manage all the information from your sessions so that you can draw upon it during prep, and in play.

All systems have gaps and you need to fill them in

I learned this lesson twice, this year. The first time was with Cortex Prime. Three of my campaigns, this year, were run in Cortex, and each of them was different, based on the Prime Sets and Mods selected. There were times when there wasn’t a rule for something I was prepping or something that came up at the table. In those cases, I either made something up for my prep, or the table worked out how we wanted to solve the problem in play. 

At the end of the year, I started a Cyberpunk: Red campaign, and while I think the CPR rules are a nice update from the Cyberpunk 2020 rules, things are missing in the rules that I want, and I am planning on rolling out some house rules for the game, just to fill in some mechanics I like to have in all my games, that are missing.

That is ok. Everyone can be a game designer, and you are free to come up with your own rules and house rules for the games you run. As long as the group is ok with the rules, then you are having “right-good-fun”. 

And with that the 2023 season comes to an end

2023 was an amazing year of gaming for me, and I suspect when I look back on it, years from now, it will be one of the best years I have had. For sure, it was the year I ran one of my top 5 campaigns of all time. It was the year I ran my first AP. It is also the first time I have run multiple campaigns, at the same time, that spanned more than a year.

How about you? How was your year in gaming? What did you learn this year? 

So let’s talk about ending campaigns and the feelings that come with them.

Not all Campaigns End

Ending a campaign is not as easy as it may sound. The fact is that most campaigns just stop, rather than have an ending. There are tons of reasons for this, and I have stopped dozens of games over my tenure. What is more rare is ending a campaign. 

We are going to define ending a campaign as a campaign where the main story arc reaches a conclusion. This typically means some kind of climatic scene that then triggers the denouement, and concludes the story arc. If you have a campaign arc, that also needs to wrap up, but typically concluding the current story arc also resolves the campaign arc. 

It is possible to end a campaign by ending the story arc, but a more satisfying ending is to have an epilogue, where we get to find out what happened to player characters and NPCs after the story concludes. 

Knowing It’s Time

Like many things in life, a campaign is made to end. Campaigns were not made to go on forever. If we don’t end them on a high, we run the risk of extending a campaign like a TV show past its prime, and then things get weird (I am talking to you Prison Break). 

If your campaign is using story/campaign arcs, then the logical ending will be at the conclusion of the arc. What you may need to think about and/or discuss with your players is what constitutes the end of your arc. 

Example: In Aux, the last arc was about a subspace fissure that was threatening to destroy the characters’ home system. The solution was for one of the characters to achieve this god-like scientific knowledge in order to repair the tear. Originally, I was planning to have the last session be about repairing the tear, but when I talked to the players, they thought the more meaningful climax would be obtaining god-like scientific knowledge, and that repairing the tear would be more trivial after having that knowledge. So I adjusted the story accordingly to have the climax be obtaining the knowledge and repairing the tear as the denouement. 

With campaigns built on story/campaign arcs, once you know what events will lead to the conclusion of the story, you need to do some work to make that story dramatic and exciting. A topic for a future article. 

If your campaign is more episodic, then your ending is going to be deciding how many more episodes you want to play before ending the campaign. In cases like this, you may want to make the stakes of the last episode a bit higher or have that episode put the characters in a place where the campaign can conclude (i.e. find a horde of treasure, capture an important guy, end a major threat, etc). 

Saying Goodbye

Regardless of your campaign setup, plan to do an epilogue, either at the end of the session or in its own session. The denouement of the story has some satisfaction but an epilogue gives a greater degree of closure. There are no set rules on epilogues, but my preference is to do them as a shared narrative, where everyone gets a turn to narrate what happens to their character. 

Here are some tips for a good epilogue topics:

• Conclude any unresolved character or story arcs
• Discuss what the characters do “next”
• Discuss what the more important NPCs do “next”
• Do any new relationships form, change, end
• Discuss offspring
• Discuss the impact of the end of the arc on the world, history, etc.

The GM can facilitate this activity, players should have narrative control over their characters, and the group can narrate for NPCs and other elements. As with other shared narrative activities, try not to trample or negate anyone’s ideas, offer suggestions, make sure everyone is heard, and incorporate ideas as you go. (Also could be its own topic).

In Aux, our epilogue played out in several rounds. We looked at what the characters were doing a year later, 5 years later, and 20 years later. The rounds allowed us to conclude the immediate loose ends, look at the characters’ next phase of life, and then see them retire. It was immensely satisfying. The rounds were a mix of third-person narration and in-character discussions. 

If you do have time, have a wrap party or some kind of campaign conclusion ceremony. See this classic article for more details: Throw A Wrap Party And End Your Campaign In Style.

The Feels

The end of a campaign comes with a mix of feelings. There will be excitement that comes with the resolution of the climax and bringing the story to the end. There will also be feelings of pride and satisfaction for bringing a campaign to a conclusion. There can also be a feeling of loss that this is the last time you will get to play these characters in this world. 

That feeling of loss is natural, we get this same feeling anytime we reach the end of a book series, comic run, movie, or TV show. It’s not an awesome feeling but like with all feelings, it’s not good or bad. If we want to look at the positive of it, that feeling signifies that we are going to miss these characters and this world, which means that these meant something to us, and that, from the point of the campaign, is a success. 

When it comes to feelings, especially the one of loss, give yourself the space to have these feelings, give yourself some time to process them, and if you feel comfortable, talk about them. 

For Aux, when I realized that we were in the last session, my feelings came on quickly. For sure I was excited, the tension and drama of the climax were intense, and I had that feeling of excitement. During the epilogue and after everyone left, is when the feeling of loss came on. It took me a good week to move past the feeling of loss and move into a feeling of satisfaction. 

What Next 

Once your campaign is done, comes the question, “What’s next?” Are you going to run another campaign right away? Is someone else going to run something? Are you going to switch to one-shots? Are you going to disband the group? 

There is no right answer to this. I think in my tenure, I have done every one of those things after the end of a campaign. It is a decision you make with your group. 

For me, I am taking a break, and someone else in the group is going to run the new Marvel game for a while. I will likely take the GM seat after they are done, but I am not in a rush. I am ok being a player for a while. 

That’s A Wrap

Ending campaigns is a bittersweet activity. The excitement and satisfaction of ending a campaign are mixed with the feeling of loss as you say goodbye to the characters and world. Having an epilogue will help to bring a sense of closure, and giving yourself some space to process your feelings about the game, will allow you to end the campaign and move on to your next adventure. 

How are you at ending campaigns? Do you have a way you like to do epilogues? Do you feel a sense of loss when concluding a campaign?

Recently, I reorganized the time I spend on the weekend and re-prioritized some of my weekly activities. One of the things I created time for, during the weekend, was to engage in some RPG recreation. What I mean by that is time exploring RPG things that are not prep nor running games. Rather it is time for other RPG-related activities. In just a few weeks since I made the time, I have realized that I allowed my life to become so busy that I had lost the time to explore, tinker, organize, etc. 

If you happen to be like me, strapped for time and are only prepping and running one or more games, let me convince you to carve out a little time for some RPG recreation.

Isn’t Prep and Running Games Recreation?

Yes..and no. Prep and running games are a form of recreation, but they are also an obligation. You have made a promise to others to do these activities on a timetable. While these activities are often energy-giving, in that partaking in them gives you energy rather than draining energy, those two specific activities have obligations and you can’t just pass on them if you are not in the mood, interested in something else, etc. 

From personal experience, I sometimes feel the weight of my obligations if other parts of my life begin to become a drain. I may have a rough work week, or the kids are sick, and I am drained, and I want to relax, tune out, etc. Then I realize that I need to get my prep done or run a game, and I feel the obligation of those activities. Suddenly those activities are not as energy-giving. Sure I can cancel them, and at times that is totally the right thing to do, but then I also feel as if I am letting my group down. 

This is all to say that Prep and Running games come with strings attached.

Define RPG Recreation

There is far more to the hobby than just prepping and running games. Let’s build a definition to work from. 

• It is RPG-related. Either directly or indirectly.
• The activity is not an obligation.
• It is enjoyable, energy-giving, spoon-giving, etc.

Here is a short list of some of the things I have been doing:

• Reorganized my RPG components (dice, cards, minis)
• Researched VTTs
• Read a game that I am not running
• Wandered around DriveThruRPG looking at games I did not recognize
• Learned how to use perchance.org
• Investigated new name generators
• Jotted down some ideas for future campaigns
• Worked on a neighborhood map for my Cyberpunk Red campaign (note- we already had a map, and this one was just making a fancier one, with no deadline, and no commitment).
• Worldbuilding in World Anvil

Why is Recreation Important?

Recreation recharges your mental and emotional batteries. While prep and playing games will do that, the specter of obligation means that not every time you prep or every time you play will be recharging. Having some dedicated recreation time ensures that you can recharge.

In addition, because recreation has no strings attached, it is a great time to experiment and to tinker. You can try new things out, look up techniques, advice, etc. These activities are the things that can lead to improvements in our games, in the way we run games, etc. 

Also, recreation can be educational. It is a time when we can learn something new and use that to improve our games. You can read (re-read rules), watch some videos, listen to a podcast, etc.

Making that Recreation Time

How much time you can dedicate to RPG recreation is going to be a function of your available time, but even 30 min can be refreshing. What is more important than the amount of time, is that you hold to making it true recreation time, based on the definition above. Don’t sneak prep into that time. 

Can you paint minis for your game and have it be recreation? Yes. 

But if those minis are for tomorrow’s game, then no, that is not recreation, that is tied to a timetable.

For me, I was able to shift a number of things around, which caused me to give up a few other activities so that I could give myself a 2-hour block on Sundays to recreate. In order to have that time, it means that I have to complete my prep for my Sunday games by Saturday, otherwise it is too tempting to use that Sunday time for the prep. 2 hours is not a trivial amount of time, but I wanted enough time to be able to do 1 large activity or a few smaller ones. 

<dalek voice> Recreate! Recreate! </dalek voice>

For those with lots of obligations, recreation time is not easy to find. At the same time, recreation is important for us to mentally and emotionally recharge. While the very RPG hobby is one of recreation, it is also, at times, work. So we need to have a part of the hobby that can be pure recreation. You need to give yourself that unbound time to engage the other parts of the hobby, explore, organize, and learn. 

What are your RPG recreation activities? Do you have separate time to engage in them?

Gelling The Campaign

A new campaign is like the first season of a TV series. The characters are not fully developed, and everything is a bit clunky. With a good TV series, within a few episodes, it either comes together and forms a solid series, or it never gels and winds up getting canceled. 

The same holds true for campaigns. In those first few sessions, everything is a bit clunky. Players have not fully embodied their characters, the first story never has the same emotional hooks or depth, and if the system is new, everyone is fumbling with the rules. After a few sessions, one of two things happens… It gels – that is everything starts working, players get a good feel for their characters, the emotional investment in the story takes hold, and everyone starts getting comfortable with the game system – or it does not. 

I can’t list all the characteristics of what a campaign feels like when it gels, but you can feel it. The game starts working, people are interested, the story is compelling, the system is fun to play, and overall everyone is having a good time. When it does not gel, it’s the opposite, everything is a struggle. 

Fail Early

I have in my 40+ year tenure as a GM, had a lot of campaigns not take off. I have canceled more of them than I can keep track of. Over the years, I developed a philosophy of: “Fail Early and Move On.” This means that if a game is not working out after a few sessions, it’s time to make a decision about retooling it or dumping it. 

The idea is that time is limited and precious. If your game is not generating joy for you, scrap it and find another game that will bring you joy. For those of you who only play one system, scrap the campaign you have for another one.

The Four Session Rule

To help this along, I have what I call the Four Session Rule: Play four full sessions of the campaign, with no changes. I like four sessions because it gives you a few sessions to get used to the rules, as well as enough play to engage most of the core rules of the game. It also lets you get at least one full story done, so you can see if the setting and plots are working, and four sessions lets the players get comfortable with their characters. 

At the end of the fourth session, discuss as a group if this game is gelling or not. If it is, keep playing. If it is not, what needs to be changed/fixed to get the game to gel? 

This rule has become a part of the Social Contract for my group. At the end of the fourth session, we have a discussion and make a decision. 

What to Look For

So how do you know if you should dump a campaign or just retool it? Again, there is no exact science on this, but here are the criteria that I use. 

The problem areas I look for are the following:

Rules are not a good fit

I am a person who likes a light to moderate amount of crunch to a game. I like rules and I like mechanics until they become too complex. So if a game has rules that are either too simple or too complex, then the rules are not a good fit for me. That is also true for my players. If the rules are not working for them, then it also is not a good fit. I am lucky in that my players have about the same range of rule complexity as I do. 

In this same category is also something a bit more subjective. Are the rules fun? That is, is the game fun to play?  If the rules are annoying or frustrating then they are likely going to be a pass for me.

Setting Is Not Working

The next issue, for me, is if the setting is not engaging or worse is frustrating. As a GM, the setting of the game is the foundation for the stories that I am going to facilitate. If the setting is not exciting, or designed in a way that is hindering my ability to craft the plots I want to tell, then the game is going to be less enjoyable for me and start draining my energy.

The Core Loop Is Not Interesting

The core loop of the game is the main type of story that the characters engage in. For something like Blades in the Dark, these are jobs. In a Gumshoe game, investigations. For a D&D game, it might be Dungeon Crawling. Whatever that core loop is, it needs to be interesting and enjoyable for more than one session. After all, it’s the core loop, the majority of stories will be centered around this activity, so if this is difficult or a struggle, then why are we playing it?

Issues with Characters

Are the characters fitting into the setting, the core loop, and within the rules? Are the characters interesting, the kind of people I want to get to know through a campaign? Are they a good team/group/party?

No matter what you think as a GM, your best plots and ideas don’t work unless the characters are interesting, work mechanically, and can operate as a team. 

Retool or Dump

Once you know what is not working, you have to decide if you want to retool or dump the campaign. This boils down to the following question:

Can you easily change something or several things to get the game to gel?

Some things are going to be easy to change and some things are embedded into the fabric of the game. Here is what I think about:

• Rules – Can a house rule or two fix the issues? Then retool. Otherwise, dump the campaign for a rules system that is a better fit. 
• Setting – Can you change the thing you are not enjoying with the setting without the premise of the setting unraveling? For instance, can you just move the game to another location and solve the problem, or are you fighting with the concept of magic in Eberron? The former is easily fixed, but the latter is not.
• Core Loop – This one is tricky. Some games tightly couple the core loop of the game to the setting and rules (e.g. Blades in the Dark). Whereas other games have a far less tightly coupled core loop (e.g. D&D). You can’t really play Blades in the Dark if you do not want to “do jobs”, but you could find something else to do if you did not want to Dungeon Delve in D&D.
• Characters – Are the players amenable to making changes to their characters? Would some of them make new characters? Make mechanical changes to them? Can the group change the premise of how they came together as a group? 

After you look at the changes that need to be made you can decide if you want to retool the game or dump it. 

If you Dump It

This is pretty easy. Stop playing that campaign and look for something that is going to work better. Use what you learned as a way to inform your next campaign choice. 

If you Retool

If you retool, figure out what you need to change. Discuss with your group what story and continuity changes may need to be made to make the adjustments. Keep the parts of the game you like, and change out what is not working. 

You can decide to have an in-game reason for why these changes took place, or you can just make the changes by fiat, and move on. 

CPR Case Study

For my Cyberpunk Red campaign, there were a few issues that were preventing things from gelling:

• The Red setting is different from 2020 or 2070, and I struggled with how it felt more post-apocalyptic at times and less chrome and neon. That was an issue that I could not fix wholesale, but I could lessen it by keeping the characters in Night City and not putting them out on the wasteland roads.
• Core Loop – our campaign idea was to be a Nomad family traveling around helping people, but that was emphasizing the setting issues. 
• Characters – I had one player who made a variant of the Rockerboy (Celebrity Chef) that on paper worked, but at the table never worked for me. We also did not have anyone who could do healing and we lacked a Netrunner. Not having a Netrunner in any Cyberpunk game was making writing plots a challenge.

As I said, we decided to keep the game, and here are the fixes we made:

• We centered the game in Night City. Our Nomad clan existed, but the characters were charged to set up a home base in Night City where the Clan could come to when they were in town, and the characters could acquire supplies for the nomads while they were on the road. 
• Instead of helping people on the road, the characters are going to clear out and then take responsibility for some city blocks in the combat zone. They can still do good and help people, but it will be centered in the city, and in doing so will also allow us to have more recurring NPCs, which is something the players wanted.
• The one player who was playing the Nomad retired that character and created a MedTech, so the group had access to medical aid. The Rockerboy/Chef retired their character and made a Netrunner. 

We have had two sessions since then, and the game is running much better. It is starting to gel, and I think overall we are all happier. 

A Watched Campaign Never Gels? (That isn’t true, but it’s catchy.)

Campaigns are tricky. Some work and some don’t, and it’s hard to get all the factors right before you start playing the game. At the same time, your gaming time is valuable and you should be getting energy from your game. So run a new campaign for a bit (I like 4 sessions) and see if it gels. If not, figure out why it’s not working and then decide if you need to retool or dump it. 

How about you? Do you have a set number of sessions to see if a campaign is going to gel? Do you retool struggling campaigns or do you just move on to something else? 

So I thought we would take today to talk about when your players become competent – how to let them enjoy that feeling, while also still providing them a challenge. 

The Need for Struggle in our Games

TTRPGs require some kind of struggle in order for them to be interesting. Struggles have a few components. One, they have some kind of conflict – fighting, stealing, etc. Two, they have characters who have the abilities to engage in the conflict, and finally, they have mechanics, often with some kind of randomization, to resolve the conflict. 

Quick for instance: 

In my Aux game, the characters are alien super-geniuses who travel around the galaxy helping people who are in danger or in need.  A common conflict in the game is to repair broken or malfunctioning alien tech from the previous empire. The characters have various skills in different sciences and technologies, and using the Cortex Prime rules, they build dice pools and roll to see if they are successful or not. 

Struggle is what makes a game interesting. The game asks the question, “Can the characters do X?”, and the mechanics answer that question. The outcome of that question then drives the narrative of the game. It is this constant asking and answering of this question that makes games so compelling. If the answer was a foregone conclusion, would asking the question be that interesting? 

The Role of Difficulty in Struggle

In the framework of challenges, we talked about three elements – a conflict, the characters, and the rules. One part of those rules is mechanically representing how difficult something is. The mechanics of the game help define something that is easy and something that is difficult. This is represented in things like Stat Blocks and Difficulties. Nearly every game I know has some range of easy to near-impossible. 

The mechanics of the game also define how competent a character is at any given action. The character sheet is a set of mechanics that translate between the narrative of who the character is and how that is represented in the game. Characters also have a range of abilities from incompetent to hyper-competent. 

The Character Power Curve

Most RPGs (not all) are based on a power curve. They start the characters with a low-to-modest competence in their abilities and then through play, through struggle, they reward the character with the ability to advance and increase their competency.

Typically a power curve is somewhat logarithmic, meaning that at the start of the game, it is easy to increase your competency so that you go from stumbling to walking in a few games, but then plateaus in the later phase of the game, so that there remain some challenges at the higher end of the game mechanics. 

How fast characters progress through this curve is set by the rules of the game, tempered by how the GM interprets those rules. GM’s have been known to tweak that power curve by doing things such as: starting players at higher initial levels, granting a few more power points for character creation, increasing XP bonuses per session, etc. 

Becoming Competent

If you play a game long enough, eventually you will advance to a point where what was once a challenge is no more. What used to be a “normal” challenge for the GM now is easy. This is both good and bad.

On the one hand, it is a great feeling if you are a player. The things you struggle with are now so easy for you to accomplish. Let’s go back to Luke Skywalker. In Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, Luke has a lot of trouble wielding the Force. He struggles to get his lightsaber out of the snow before the Wampa eats him, he gets his ass kicked by his Dad on Bespin and loses his hand as a result. 

But when we get to the opening of The Return of the Jedi, Luke is badass. He mind-tricks the Twi’lek and force-chokes some Gamorrean Guards, he runs a break-out scheme for Han that has put a tear in more than one TTRPG player’s eye. He is competent, he is cool.

On the other hand, the lack of struggle makes things less compelling. As mentioned above, if the answer is a foregone conclusion, is there any excitement in asking the question? So there still have to be some challenges for the character, otherwise the game will become stale. 

Again, The Return of the Jedi does a great job of showing us this. Yes, Luke is all badass now, on one level, but Vader and the Emperor are now his challenges, and they are of a sufficient level of power to pose a threat. Can Luke, as good as he is, beat the Emperor? Can he save his father? Those questions are uncertain as we go through Jedi. Thus Luke’s storyline remains compelling.

Creating A Balance

As with most things in life, the more interesting option is to find balance. When characters reach a level of competency, you need to balance scenes where they get to be competent and ones where they struggle. Allow them the time to revel in the character they earned, by giving them moments where they shine, and then contrast that with newer, more powerful threats.

As I said at my table when we talked about that roll in the opening story, “Sometimes the Wizard gets to cast Meteor Swarm on the goblin army.” Meaning that when you have earned your way to casting Meteor Swarm, you should be allowed to have the time to cut loose and look like the terrifying power Wizard you are. 

At the same time, you as the GM now have to move the goalposts for some of the encounters to make them challenges. Because sometimes you need to cast Meteor Swarm on the Tarrasque. 

I say this because there is a tendency for GMs to just constantly move the goalposts so that the characters never feel more competent. As the characters advance the GM just keeps raising the difficulties. That does not make a character feel competent. They may have more options to do things, but they don’t feel more powerful. They are having a more complex version of their starting character experience. 

By giving characters a few easier challenges, it reminds them of how far they came. Their beginning characters hid in terror as the goblins searched for them in the forest in their first adventure, now they are repelling a goblin army by themselves. That feels great! It feels like they have grown, because they have, and it is a reward for the hard work they put into their characters. 

The End Game and Chasing The Curve

When a character reaches a high level of competency that is more than halfway up the power curve, the game tends to thin out in terms of challenges. How realistic is it that every week another world-shattering threat shows up (more acceptable in a Supers game, than anywhere else, but also still…)? 

At the higher range of competency comes a signal that the campaign needs to end. The characters have traversed the power curve, it is time to give them a great threat/challenge, and then be ready to retire the game. 

Otherwise, what happens is that each week the game is about some world/universe-ending event, and hitting the same beat over and over, becomes stale. When they reach this phase, it is time to give them one great challenge and then close out the campaign.

That is exactly what is happening in my Aux game. The story I told is during the character’s final journey where they are looking for knowledge to stop a subspace fracture from destroying their world. 

“I Know Things”

Competency in TTRPGs is a journey. Characters start on the lower end, facing struggle everywhere they go. Through their wits and ability to survive, they gain experience and traverse that curve, getting better and better. At some point, they are so competent that what was once a struggle is no more. 

In those times, remember to let your players feel the success of their hard work, and let their characters be the badasses they are. Temper that with greater challenges, but also know when to end the campaign before those challenges become cliche.

How do you handle your competent players in your game? Do you give them moments to shine? What are some of your favorite moments? When do you know that it is time to end the campaign? 

What is a Quorum?

By definition, quorum is: the minimum number of members of an assembly or society that must be present at any of its meetings to make the proceedings of that meeting valid.

In the context of TTRPGs, it is the minimum number of players that must be present in order to have a session. 

I say players because in most cases if the GM can’t make it, you can’t play that specific game. I don’t know of too many groups that can sub in the GM for the same game, so I think that definition holds water.

Why have one?

At some point, someone is not going to be able to make it to a game. Life is complicated and humans are squishy, and at some point one of these two things will create a situation where someone cannot play. Without an agreement on quorum, as soon as someone cannot make it, the questions start, “Are we still playing?”, and you wind up answering the question on a case-by-case basis. Should you play, and that person misses out? What about the others who can play? 

If you have a quorum agreement in your group, then everyone knows what happens when one person or more can’t make a session. For the person who can’t play, they know that that group will go on if they can’t make it and have no hard feelings. There is no group chatter about what to do, and things go smoothly. 

Making a Quorum Agreement? 

Making a quorum agreement is pretty easy. Based on the game you are playing and the number of players you have at the table, how many players could be missing where the game could be played in an enjoyable manner?

That question is influenced by a few things. First, what is the nature of the game? In a game that is focused on location-based adventures, such as Dungeon Crawling, the group is mostly in the same place and often is party-based, meaning that each character brings certain assets to the group. It may be difficult to not play with the Healer, or without your Tank. Conversely, in a game where you are all vampires in a city living out your individual stories, it may be pretty easy to lose a few players and just focus the spotlight one who is present. 

If you are playing a game with a large group, then losing one or more players for an evening may be fine. If you are playing a small group, like 3 people, then you may not want to lose any or just lose one.

After you have the number of players you can lose and still maintain the quorum selected, there are a few caveats you should consider.

One: the GM… If the GM cannot make it what is the plan? Is there a backup game that someone else runs? Does it become board game night? Movie night?

Two: the Host … If the Host is unable to host the game what is the plan? Do you move the game to a different location? 

Three: characters that are missing … does the missing character get edited out of the session and not used? Is someone allowed to run that character? Can they be used for some things but not others? 

The more of this you figure out as a group, the less confusion there will be when life starts encroaching on your game time.

Where To Store That Agreement

Once you have your quorum rule figured out, where are you going to store it? It can become part of your social contract for your group. This works out well if you play the same game or play a single system. It can also be part of your Session Zero, and this works well if you are a group that plays a bunch of different systems, where you need to figure out that quorum number for each game/campaign.

The idea is that once you agree upon what to do, it’s great if everyone can remember it, but writing it down somewhere is likely to be better. Also, if someone new joins your group later, it would be nice to have it on hand to share with them.

When Not To Follow Quorum

There are no absolutes in GMing. There are going to be times when a player cannot make it and you still have quorum, but you might not want to run the game. 

For me, these are often times when something important is about to come up in the game, a big reveal, a story climax, etc. Or the storyline depends on that missing character. Things that if we play and a player is not there, they are going to regret not being in the moment. In times like these, I will do one of two things. One, I will just cancel the game, wait until everyone is there for the next session and proceed. Two, I will run a shorter session, ending close to the big event but before it, so that the player can be there when we get to it next session. 

What to do for the missing player

With the quorum rule, you are still playing and that player is going to miss a session. It is important that the player find out what happened in the session, so that when they rejoin the game at the next session, they have some idea of what happened. 

If your group takes notes during the session, then they can share the session notes with the missing player and you are all set. If your group does not take notes, you may want to write a special recap for the player, and share it with them before or at the session.

Depending on the time you have, you could even run a mini-adventure for that player to cover what they did. In a Dungeon World game I played in, missing players often got a custom move detailing what they did while they were gone, and it got played out at the start of the session. 

Should We Stay or Should We Go

Getting together and gaming is great, but it is not without its perils. At some point, someone won’t be able to make it. When that happens will you play or will you cancel? With a quorum rule, you won’t have to figure it out on the day of your game. Instead, your group will have an agreement if you should play or not, what to do with the character who is missing, and how to get that player up to speed when they return. 

Do you have a formal quorum agreement for your group? How many players can be missing? What do you do with the missing characters?