How do you prepare for a new game?

[Engurrand]

I made a google form once to help me understand what my players were excited about. It only came up because I hadn't got anything in particular in mind to run, and wanted a way to help them articulate what they actually wanted (can be a challenge). I found the results illuminating, and the resulting campaign was probably my most sterling success (and is still running). I wonder if anybody else has tried this or something like it?

The link is to the form: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...k2cnc6MQ#gid=0

[muduri]

Originally Posted by Engurrand

10) First proper session.
11) Around session 5 a player will have a personal or work crisis or move away. Put the campaign on "hiatus" and start over from 0.

Originally Posted by Drifter

And that is the problem when someone 'leaves' the group. Because its never "I'll be away for a while so go on without me"; its more like "I'm sure I"ll be free next weekend". So you don't do much, or do a side adventure, or watch a movie. One weekend turns into a month, and then someone else can't show.

I feel your pains. This problem was endemic when I first started gaming - you can get the feeling the ratio between the work you put into designing the campaign world and the effort the players put into showing up and eating your pizza approaches singularity. But fair enough, things like careers and children turn out to be non-trivial. Or so I hear, ha. My solution for the last two campaigns (1993 and 2013, oddly) has been to go on an aggressive invitation campaign and build up a pool of like 15 players, so even if you have an 80% no-show rate you still have a good time.

Of course it means there's always one newbie each session so there's not time to explain much more than GURPS Lite. The redeeming feature is that there's some inter-player commitment - "deadline or no, we need a thief next Sunday for that chest!" - so it's no longer just me browbeating them into coming. Now if I could only get them to keep track of the clues and dreams that get lost in the shuffle from session to session!