As has been remarked upon by many DMs (that's Dungeon Masters to the uninitiated), the greatest threat to any group engaged in role-playing games is not the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal), but the players' and DM's schedules. Yet another scheduling conflict struck me this very week, a mere three days before our Session Zero for the big Eberron campaign, and my five person group suddenly drops to only three players able to attend. Rather disconcerting, considering my groups are set for monthly meetings to help alleviate such issues, but the best laid plans of blah blah blah.
What did I do? Fold? Call the session off? Surrender and drink away my feelings for the next 24 hours? No. If we can't do the original plan, we change course and drive on. No plan survives contact with the enemy, which is Army-speak for "you better have a backup plan for when the first one fails, bud". Not that I had a backup plan, but us DMs are known for our improv abilities and being able to think quickly on our feet. When first one and then not long after the second player dropped, I contacted the players in my other games (two other RPGs and one tabletop wargame) who aren't in my D&D group, and asked if they were free for a one-shot game. When I had two more, I let all of them know we were still on for the session, we would be switching over to a one-shot adventure, and made sure I would still have at least four show up. Sometimes, being a good storyteller and knowing the RPG's rules is almost secondary to being able to manage all the scheduling conflicts.
What was the off the cuff backup plan? I'm preparing for a long-term Eberron campaign, so let's stick to Eberron, thought I. I'm hip deep into getting the lore and feel of the world down, and it will be a good sneak peek for the three players that are already in the D&D group and will be playing in Eberron soon. Great idea! But do I want to write out a full adventure? No, let's be lazy about it. They (Wizards of the Coast, current owners of D&D, WotC to most of us) have already done two Adventurers League adventure series in support of Eberron, Oracle of War and Embers of the Last War. Oracle is the more recent of the two, but I plan on stealing parts of it for my upcoming campaign (shhh! don't tell my players!), and I really just needed an afternoon of gaming for low-level PCs, nothing that will be multi-session. So Embers it is, specifically the first adventure, Murder in Skyway. It's just vague enough that i can fill in details as I want them to be, but gives me names and stats on the baddies and other NPCs, plus maps for the big fight scenes. Well, okay, one map, and I had to create the other two i wanted to use, but the one they provided was very nice. Oh, and the adventure is only $5. I really need to go ahead and pick up all the Embers and Oracle adventures, just so I can comb through them for help with future sessions.
Got my adventure picked and purchased, start going through that material (only a part of a week to game day by this point) to familiarize myself with it, but I am still missing something - characters. Most of the time, I'm pretty open to whatever the players want to bring to the table (yes, I do make some restrictions, as I freely admit there are some races and classes that do not fit well into my games, and some ideas all players get are too crazy for anyone's game, much less mine), but for a one-shot where we are time limited, and especially in a new setting my players are unfamiliar with? Yessiree, we gonna need us sum pre-gens! Pre-generated characters, that is, as I did not want to waste time the day of the game making PCs, as even with experienced players this can take too long. D&D will always be special to me, my first tabletop RPG love, but even in 5th edition, character creation takes too long too often to count on doing it quickly. Plus, you ask any player, experienced or not, to come up with a character now Now NOW, hurryHURRYHURRY! and they will vapor lock with too much to choose from. So I needed to provide some pre-gens.
Let us set some parameters first. Am I rolling their stats or just using the "standard array" of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8? I wanted this to be easy, and rolling up a bunch of stats sounds like work, plus I also want these PCs to be fairly equal to each other, didn't want anyone to fight over the one PC I rolled well for while everyone ignores the character I rolled subpar on. Standard array it is. I began looking through various manuals when I realized that the internet contains untold thousands of nerds like me, surely someone out there has put up a character generator for free on the World Wide Web that will meet my needs. Yes they have, and don't call me Shirley - after only a small bout of Googling, I discovered Fast Character, a rather robust random character generator that is very configurable and blessedly free of pesky ads. They even cover PC options from obscure books, like Eberron: Rising from the Last War (though thanks to Monsters of the Multiverse, most of the Eberron options now come from there, instead), which is what I wanted as I knew I needed to include at least one warforged and one other Eberron-specific race (kalashtar, changeling, goblinoid/orc, whatever), and Fast Character had the options. It even has where you can set certain things a specific way and randomize the rest, so I quickly generated six PCs.
I was expecting only five players but hoping for six, so I made six to give a little bit of choice and cover myself in case of good fortune. I generated three basic characters to give my less experienced players something familiar- half-orc barbarian, halfling ranger, human wizard - and then branched out to Eberron new options for the more adventurous players - dwarf artificer, shifter rogue, and warforged fighter. Yes, I leaned away from casters and more towards fighters, but again, this was a one shot, just one session, hopefully never to be repeated (though always an option at need), so I chose the way I did. Thinking back on it, if I do ever run this again, I will probably change either the barbarian or the ranger out for a cleric or a druid (should have gone with a halfling druid from the Talenta Plains, wild shape into various dinosaurs in the middle of Sharn, that would have been a blast). I cannot give enough praise to Fast Character, as I set race, class, background, and chose the standard array ability scores (but not into what abilities each went, their program didn't just assign randomly, it has some thought behind its selection), and it randomized everything else and produced very workable characters everyone enjoyed playing. If I ever run a convention game or set up an Adventurers League locally, I am using Fast Character to make the pre-gens.
Got our adventure, got the pre-gens, and on the day of the game, as I had already been reading through the adventure and readying myself for it, I did not have much set up. Pull out miniatures (yes, 15mm still, I am in love with these tiny little minis), draw up the various maps on my battle board (just a sheet of Plexiglas with poster board under it and a half inch grid because we're using 15mm scale minis, which gives enough room I could draw the three potential combat encounters onto the board at the beginning), and we're good to go. For the characters, I put their one page character sheet in a page protector, along with a blank piece of ruled paper and a piece of graph paper, as a player I always loved having something to take notes on. The adventure itself went well, Murder in Skyway is not the best adventure ever, but as a one shot it was just fine, and it is the intro to a longer series of adventures, so if I ever need an emergency one shot again, I am so running the same pre-gens (leveled up to 2, maybe also do a class switch in there) in the next adventure in the Embers of the Last War series, Boromar Ball. And I'm really liking Eberron, it is not your typical "kill them all for they are all monsters, and care not for life!" classic D&D murderhobo-fest setting. There are so many factions, all vying for power that when I wanted my "bad guys" (who is really bad in Eberron? it's hard to say) to talk instead of just fight, they could. Not liking the odds? Run away, and that applies to both the NPCs/monsters and the party. There was enough story and combat that everyone was satisfied with the adventure and felt like they contributed. Like I said, not the best adventure, but good enough is all I was really looking for.
There you go. When half your group cancels for whatever reason, you just gotta drive on and get some enjoyment out of the situation. Oh, I could have easily pulled a couple of board games out from our voluminous collection and just played those with the remaining members of the D&D 5e group, but I wanted to get some role-playing in. I hope this helps out those of you in similar, unforeseen circumstances. Don't be afraid to change up what you had planned and go in a whole new direction, because your players' and your own schedules are your biggest opponent in this hobby.
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