This patch for the D&D handbook solves game scheduling problems for good

What percentage of tabletop role-playing campaigns collapse because the group just can’t get its scheduling together enough to meet? I’d bet it’s a fair proportion, and it’s one of the most challenging and frustrating aspects of the hobby. Yet this crucial aspect of TTRPG etiquette has never been officially addressed by the rules.

It all got too much for comics and TTRPG writer Kieron Gillen after he heard about yet another friend’s Dungeons & Dragons game collapsing, so he wrote and issued a fantastic “patch” for the new 2024 edition of the Player’s Handbook that fixes this social-engineering nightmare for good. Be warned, though — Gillen takes a pretty hard line.

Gillen’s rules are very simple:

1. The Dungeon Master sets a regular time to play.
2. The game happens on that night, with whoever turns up.
3. The only time a date moves is if the DM can’t make that time or if literally no other player can make it.

Nonetheless, they might come as a shock. Some players will find the idea that the adventure can progress without them tough to deal with. But the way Gillen explains it, the alternative is worse. “Most campaigns end though not doing this,” he writes. “You turn up rarely? You’re a guest star. If anyone turns up, they are celebrated. However, it’s unfair to the other players who have time to play to derail the whole game waiting. By playing regularly without you means it’s much more likely there will be a game for you to play whenever you are available.”

Gillen suggests the DM and players come up with narrative reasons for absences (“after all, in The Hobbit, how often did Gandalf wander off?”) and even suggests narrative frameworks for continuing with just one player, like flashback episodes or dream sequences.

Devilishly, Gillen also suggests these hardline rules will make a certain kind of player more likely to attend — “it’s easy to skip something that isn’t happening” — and weed out players who aren’t really committed to the TTRPG lifestyle. “This way the group discovers that without spending weeks of painful e-mails that reveal the player was always more interested in something else.”

In his accompanying blog post, Gillen points out, “It is actively strange that RPG folks write rules about everything, but have avoided giving actual advice on basic play culture ideas. Generations after generations of players, falling into this particular trap. No more, I say.”

Gillen’s scheduling patch for the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook is available as a PDF, formatted to match the style of the official publication so you can print it out and insert it after Page 8. Do so. The man is doing God’s work.

As the author notes: “It may work on other RPGs too.”