After a little bit over two months, I finally had all of my players back together again for The Magical Millennium and we not only got to catch up on what one of the characters was doing in the background of every scene previously discussed by the other players, but get through the entirety of the second day of school for all of the players who couldn’t be there last time. My players also picked out their first quests, discussed their homework, and dealt with the small revelations that came from catching up the other player (and worked on catching her up on the small revelations that come from everyone else’s scenes). We also got to have a few discussions that had been put off because one of the required players wasn’t there. It was a great time, even if we started half an hour late and spent most of the session focused on catching up rather than doing something wholly new. I’d have preferred to get some completely new stuff into the game, but there were a few scenes that came up that needed time and attention for reasons I’ll be keeping to myself for now (though I’ve already revealed to one of my players that something important happened that their character only really noticed in retrospect). Fully caught up, now, I’m excited for us to continue forward with a sort of parent-teacher conference to discuss one student’s accidental spellcasting, one or more new adventures, and the eventual introduction of the first threads of the larger plot I’ve been cooking up.

As excited as I am about this game, I’m starting to feel a little worried about actually making the game happen. We’ve had only three sessions with all of my players and while I’ve only had six total, I’ve skipped maybe four or five potential sessions because we didn’t have enough players. While I’m always a little disappointed when we don’t get to meet and play a game, I’m used to consoling myself that it will only mean waiting another week before trying again. These days, in what has clearly become my new normal, none of my games are weekly, so skipping a session means going almost a month before we can potentially play again. If you wind up having to cancel multiple sessions due to a lack of availability, it gets even more dire-feeling, given how many games I’ve seen begin to fall apart because players couldn’t meet more than once every month to month-and-a-half. I mean, I literally did a session zero for my other Sunday game (name pending) a month and a half ago and I’m starting to wonder if it will actually survive past its first few sessions. This group is small, so even one player missing means we have to cancel the session since I can’t exactly run a Dungeons and Dragons game with only two players when things have already been super closely tailored for three players (or when the missing player is the one whose character is currently central to the plot, which happens much more frequently when your player base is only three people). The Magical Millennium doesn’t have that exact problem, but a lot of my players are much less solid on their availability, so it looks like it might be a while before I run another session with all of my players.

That said, this isn’t a foregone conclusion. People might free up or turn out to be less busy than they thought. Or even wind up able to attend, just a bit late. There’s a lot of other options out there, other than needing to balancing player characters coming and going from one session to the next. I’m not super hopeful that a lot of them will happen, but I’ve dealt with worse and can cope as long as I can get my players to at least rotate who is out. Having one player out for a few sessions in a row was a lot more work (which took a lot more time) than I thought, as was catching both player and character up. I might just have the character sit things out in the future, rather than assume the player will be back before I really need the character to participate and directly reference said character being present. It’d make my life a whole lot easier if I just left players and their characters out when they were gone, and it’s not like I’m doing points-based leveling up. Everyone will always level at the same time anyway, no matter what, so I’m not worried about characters falling behind in power or abilities. Just, you know, in story. Which is arguably the more important part in this game…

Anyway, everyone’s doing a great job of investing themselves and their characters in this world. I got to do a bunch of deeper NPC roleplaying scenes this time around and my players are starting to spend more time just talking to each other, which I enjoy immensely. As the characters invest in each other, either resolving conflicts or worsening them, that will only get more and more intense, which will make a fantastic centerpiece to the overarching story ideas I’ve got cooking up. Nothing like plenty of little drama, teen angst, and misunderstanding your friends to make dealing with a major conflict or societal issue seem unimportant or trivial. It’ll be great, I’m sure, and I really can’t wait to start stirring the pot more and more as allied and adjacent NPCs start getting involved in the lives of the player characters in ways that will hopefully lead to interesting complications. The best part is that the impressive stable of NPCs I’ve built means that I can just toss people into likely or unlikely yet plausible situations and continue to develop the same characters in ways that give them depth and nuance. Or just make up a guy whole cloth because of some dice rolls and spend fifteen to twenty minutes chatting back and forth with a player about nothing in particular. It’s all so much fun. I really hope this game can continue and that we don’t have to skip a session too often. I have so much I want to do with this game and never enough time.