The Case of the Missing Players

This weeks campaign was supposed to be exciting. I had Six people R.S.V.P.—five of those were planing to attend. A sixth person had given me a maybe, and a seventh generally comes, but never reads his e-mail and as such, never gives an R.S.V.P.. Also, one of the five is a friend of mine from high school that lives out of state now, and was in town for business and family purposes.

I was excited to run a session that featured enough combat to keep every one satisfied.

Right before go time I got a message from the maybe man—he had a wedding reception that he had forgotten about and was obligated to attend. My wife had called the person that never reads his e-mail and he indicated that he would be over in a bit.

A little after go time, my friend that now lives out of state arrived. He was the first—which worked out well, since we had not yet created a character for him. So we took care of that, we talked a little about how the system works—and no one else had shown up. It was getting late—but people have shown up late in the past. I called though, because I like to know what's going on.

Three of the people that indicated that they were going to attend weren't answering their phones. About twenty minutes later my wife got them on the phone and they weren't coming. The person we called, who stated he would be over in a bit—never showed up.

Essentially, I invited my friend from out of state to some Zombie Hunting good times and everyone else that stated they would be there (except my wife) bailed. Which left me with two players—and the bare minimum I will run the game with is three.

We ended up just talking and catching up—which was nice, but I think we both would have liked catching up over the rotting corpses of the undead just as much.

I'm not sure what I learned from this session. 

Five seems to be the R.S.V.P. kiss of death. If five indicate they are coming, only one comes. That's what happened last time. There were two other sessions where five people played, but I think on both occasions only three people had indicated that they would attend.

The next session falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I'm not holding my breath in thinking that enough people will come to play. But, I am hoping that people will need a break from their crazy families and holiday shoppers—thus helping them to choose to blow off steam, by blowing up Zombies.