One Last Idea...

[Luther]

Ok - so the lovely Lenore came up with one other alternative to consider for the game day thang (though I have tailored the idea slightly): how about instead of doing single sessions on Sundays (which seems pretty bad for almost everyone), we do bursts on Wednesday play?  Basically, the idea is we do 2-3 Wednesdays in a row (one week between) then take 2-3 Wednesdays off instead of every other.  One burst will equal one mission.  If you are going to be out for any of the "burst", you are out for all of it - and if you sign-up for any of the burst, you are committed to all of it - except of course for unforseen issues like work or personal emergencies.  That way if people want to take a break they easily can, it just means it maybe a month to a month and a half before they can pop back in.  We could even save the occassional Sunday in our hip-pocket if that makes attendance better for a month then a group of Wednesdays.

This would solve lots of my current issues - the 2-D problem, the difficult scheduling problem (a vacation would mean out for a mission), the time for solo issue.  The only thing it won't solve is the occassional work conflicts for Jake and Otter, but those could even come up on a Sunday, so c'est la-vie.  I will probably wait and see what attendance looks like before tossing new player into the mix.

What do you guys think - that work better?

Also - just making sure tis understood the game change that I am making for the OOC/IC thing - I am going to keep you guys together unless there is a really good reason to isolate you (examples: you get captured, you are isolated from contact, you are having some wierd dream-vision thing that you might not wanna share).  As long as you guys are in radio contact (which is something you could arrange for given about 10 minutes in game) or have similar means of communication - this won't happen (although radio silence is sometimes part of the FBAA's official MO - particularly against Mages, since even the lowliest Forces initiates can listen to and decrypt radio transmissions).  With this route I would expect you to be seperated for any appreciable length of time at most every 3 games or so, tops.  I am hoping that addresses the issue for most folks.

[Rainee]

Are we actually having scheduling problems?  We had one cancellation and one session with an absentee ... all of which can happen with alternate schedules.  I don't personally have any problems with the alternating Wednesdays, especially with the 7pm start time.  Are we wracking our brains trying to fix something that ain't broke?

[Luther]

It will be a month since our last game by the time we have our next one.  Since we have only even been playing three months, this constitutes a problem to me.  The reason for the last cancellation was a social conflict, not an emergency or work issue - which meant to me that I need to find a way to facilitate absences because they will probably continue to happen.  The idea with all of this is to give people a painless option for missing games without issue because they are all busy.  Its effectively the same thing that the Augusta game did a while ago with the best-fit system - though I would hope that we wouldn't need something so drastic for a six person game.  Basically, I want a way to keep continuity without demanding absolute attendance - and this is the only solution I can come up with.