How Do You Coordinate Your Gaming Sessions?

[Ulfgeir]

We have standing sessions every second Friday and Sunday (same week). Always in person (was online during the pandemic), and always in the home of same person. If a session is cancelled or someone wants to do an extra session, either online or in person we use a discord channel.

Edit: The same group on both cases. We are 8 persons in the group so we run stuff even if 1 or 2 is missing (unless of course the host or the GM, or there are things that require everyone to be present) .

 

[R_J_K75]

We have standing sessions every second Friday and Sunday (same week). Always in person (was online during the pandemic), and always in the home of same person. If a session is cancelled or someone wants to do an extra session, either online or in person we use a discord channel.

Not something that I could commit to these days but that sounds like a good game schedule

 

[Ulfgeir]

Not something that I could commit to these days but that sounds like a good game schedule

This is specifically because we all have jobs and are getting older... this also means that we usually always have 2 active campaigns so we play one thing on the Friday and something else on the Sunday.

 

[Longspeak]

1) Discord

2) Be Responsible

By that, I mean, I Run a Discord Server just for the reminders. I generally post reminders on Wednesdays for the upcoming weekend, and pin notable news like absences and such. But, last I checked, I'm not their mum. They can get to games. I'm not going to be responsible for turning on their computer for them. Years ago I had a guy blame me for not being his alarm. I told him from then on we'd play without him if he wasn't there. I had a another guy tell me he didn't want to join the server. Okay, no prob. We just played without him when he didn't show or was late. Asked why I didn't remind him, I told him I did. In the server.


Re Discord... first it was ICQ and a Yahoogroup. Then it was Skype. Then Discord.

 

[R_J_K75]

This is specifically because we all have jobs and are getting older...

Same with our group. two group members have jobs, one has a wife and kids and two are on permanent disability. I'd say we play 3/4 of our scheduled games then cancel/re-schedule probably a 1/4 of them. I used to stress out about scheduling as I was always the one to manage it for the most part, but nowadays my mind set is, it's just a game and a hobby so no big deal if we push a game a week or two from what was planned. We only play one game/campaign at a time because we have other things going on in life and it's hard to keep track of more than one game at a time. Further we take breaks around the holidays at times and play less frequently in the summertime because people have other things going on and to avoid burn out.

 

[MNblockhead]

For my main campaign, we play one 8-hour sessions once a month. At the end of a session, we look at our calendars for a Saturday we can all play in the next month. Then I send out a calendar invite. That has worked well for almost a decade.

I'm playing as a player in a weekly 4-hour Thursday game. We just know the date and time because it is always the same. The DM will ping everyone the day before and day of the game on Discord. Also, post-game housekeeping is done by discord. That has been a bit of an adjustment for me because I don't keep Discord running on my phone all the time and almost never on my laptop except while gaming. I've had to get used to opening Discord at least once the day before and once the day after the session.

 

[Mars Hall]

We set a regular date and time, confirm next week after the session, and do a reminder the day of (usually by sending memes and discussing the dinner plan). I can't remember the last time we played without a person, tbh.

 

[SableWyvern]

I post a google form with three months worth of Saturdays, and people indicate their availability.

I then select session dates, aiming for one session every two weeks as much as possible, and post the three months of finalised dates in the schedule sidebar of our group forum.

Any discussion well in advance usually occurs on the forums, while shorter notice commentary often happens in our whatsapp group.

I used to use doodle instead of google forms, until they crippled most of the functionality that made it easy for me to use.

(I voted shared calendar, as that seems closest to what we do of the available options.)

 

[hgjertsen]

I've always liked Discord because it combines the efficiency and interactivity of instant messaging with the feel of a sophisticated IRC. It might help that I'm a zoomer and I play with zoomers though, everyone has Discord on their phones and they get notifications pushed straight to the lockscreen.