Improvising a Plan B (or: What To Do When Players Cancel)

0:21 Adventurer, the podcast for role players. Hey game masters, to help level up your game. We are your dungeon masters. I'm Jus and Portiso, I'm Joe McCall and I'm Jim Crocker. And today we're kind of doing a little no. We always like doing our our mail bag episode, but this one kind of this This goes beyond a short mail bag episode. This is a whole episode in itself. So we got a voicemail here from Haron, So thanks so much for calling in. But let's let's hear from Haroen real quick and we'll talk about what we're going to talk about today. So Haron, go ahead, Hello, this is Haroen from Jersey. I was hoping to get your opinion on people missing sessions. So, right, if you have a five person session and one person cancels, I usually just do it the same way. We just have them jump in the next time. They were busy doing something and they game late, so that's what their character did too. But at what point do you feel it's worth just breaking out a different board game or canceling with different amounts of people, And at what point do you try and do like some kind of side quest or something or maybe try to do just a different one shot, maybe in the same universe.

1:36 I've had DMS tried to do like a prequel thing, which always felt kind of weird, but it did give characters the opportunity to do some character development. Maybe if you're the two people who show up or still friends or were friends beforehand, you can still build up how that relationship is, how that relationship got where it is. Thanks guys, big fan. Oh we're big fans of you two harn thanks so much. I thought he was telling us. See he was a big fan. He is a big fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they wouldn't know. Yeah that he's that thing of offshore that's been bringing us energy and making people mad for some reason. Huh so. Yeah. So the gist of it is when you got players or a player or players who can't make a session, what do you do and how much does that does that answer change? With how many players can't make it, you cut them out of your life and you never speak to them again. Then I would have zero friends ever ever, ever easy. Non.

2:35 I worked hard at this. Okay, God, our session would have our says would be dead years ago. Yo, Yeah, because of me. That's what I'm stopped talking about. So I'm going to open this up by saying my answers at least, and I am sure yours as well, are going to change with how many players are you expecting? How many players are in your game currently. And this kind of change is a little bit because you know that's going to affect you know, one player is gonna be taking up a smaller percentage of your table. So in a six player game, like like we're playing right now, Joe, you know, one player missing is like okay, that player is just kind of that that character is just, i know, off looking around for something and while the other five are doing stuff. In a six player game, if one player says they can't show up, that's what I call a relief. Three actually like players only because I couldn't bring myself to say no to that sixth person right, So where we're at. But yeahs like six player game, one player defa we like having Zach. I don't know Zach, so I got no beef with Zach. I just had a name somebody. Yeah, I think Zach is the most recent addition to our game. But so you know, going from six person game to a five player games, Okay, yeah, we can. It's actually a little easier to balance now, and we can still continue your canonical game, have them level up with you also, and then just kind of say like, okay that that player is like or the character is is back at wherever we left them looking for stuff, Like I'm going to make the argument that that is not the first question, okay, And

4:11 I think the first question is is this an absence you knew about in advance or didn't I and I think that that's where it starts. And then from there, Okay, you look at the table and how many players and stuff like this and everything, because your options are going to be different, you know, and and one is going to require you to, you know, kind of have a protocol in place to deal with that unexpected situation, and the other one someone says, hey, I won't be here in two weeks. You know, you can have a discussion with everybody about what's going to happen, and you've got some time. But the yeah, I think that first question is is you know, like did somebody just know show or do you know that you know? Their sisters getting married in a month, and so they're not going to be there for that session sure, and so okay, so that sounds like session zero stuff. So I think that is I think, and I think that's one of the things that setting that protocol for that that we got to get into here, is that is that this is stuff that should be laid down in advance and and and not a like it's not a question you should be asking day of Oh, should someone didn't show up, what do we do? Yeah, like you should have probably have that down, you know, and know what's going on, all right, So let's say that this is a discussion to be had at session zero.

5:29 And the reminder that you are allowed to have a session zero mid campaign. So if this is the time to start thinking of these protocols, whether you've been playing for you know, two weeks or two years, you can you can always set down those protocols and get a game plan in place. So let's let's help hower and come up with a game plan. And I think the other thing that I want to that I want to call out is that people's, especially if you're an adult, people's schedules change during the year, and so one thing that might make a lot of sense is to say, you know, like September to June during the school year. Here's our policy for for how we handle it, you know whatever, except Christmas and New Years, and then we do it a different way during the summer or something like that, because a lot, you know, we're gonna have a lot more absences or whatever. And and this doesn't have to be like a one size fits all all the time. You can revisit it. Yeah, And it is that you always do a temperature check every couple of months or whatever, or even every month if you're playing that often. And say hey, or just like you're buying into your insurance at work, any any life change, you're allowed to change your insuranceitating event or whatever it is. So what is this but game insurance? All right? And so anybody has any sort of life change, No, and say hey we're hey, we're pregnant, Hey we got engaged. Hey I started school. Hey I got a new job, Hey I lost the job. You know, all that kind of stuff can change your your schedule. And I think we've had all of those things happened too. I think I've had all those things happen just to me,

7:00 like Balder's Gate guys. Sorry, oh yeah, I can see you later. Things are going really well with me and shadow Heart right now, So I need to concentrate it. I get that game, maybe I don't. It's really good, it's so so good. If I have one of the options I was going to give where if too many players cancel, just play with balder Skate for that night until I want to stay home. So with that aside, so I'm going to kind of like fear this towards like my preferences. Yeah sure, And obviously everybody chime in with your own preferences and we can make adjustments therein. And this is not for us to say, hey, haren this is the correct answer. This is like, these are the kind of things that go into my decision making process, and I invite you to also consider the same things for you and your table and come up with a solution that works for you. Guys. So the first thing I says, so, let's I'll let I'll let Joe kind of handle the game that I'm playing with him, because Joe is dming a table of six players. I just two days ago from the time of this recording, had my session zero for a game that I'm gonna start dming for four players.

8:09 And this is the kind of thing that we and that by session zero, I mean it was entirely character creation and we didn't really get into anything else. But this is kind of thing that we'll have to talk about with them as well. And you know, Jim, you've had how many tables over the years, So we'll go as your preferences, and then of course I'll kind of gear this towards my public one shots as well, because I have very different answers for those. And in fact, if I seem distracted of all this, because my discord is blowing up, because I might have to cancel the game tonight. So this is very very relevant right now in the moment. There we go. So Jill, let's let's start with let's start with you with with the larger table. What kind of things are you considering, Like, what are some of the factors that would make you kind of change your answer? Yeah, so our game is a little bit different than most games, because I feel like most games are going to be playing once a week or once every other week. We play once a month, so lucky if we're lucky. And but part of it is our schedule, the way we schedule it, and and so we Basically, we'll play a game and we'll start discussing it kind of at the end of that game, and then and then we'll take we have a discord, and we take our discussion usually there and say, okay, you know what dates. You know, these are the dates that are looking good. Hey, this is the holiday.

9:26 So we have this month, we have Father's Day coming up, and you know that's that's a day for me to half of our tables or fathers. Yeah, just bend my kids and and you know, we have some other dads some that are celebrating that for the first time this year, and so that's kind of a big deal. And I don't want to I don't want D and D hanging over you know, somebody's head to say, hey, you gotta you know, you got to get here because we've made this commitment to each other and and I'm busy. So so there are months sometimes, especially when there's holidays involved, that we just don't play that month, and that stinks, but you know, we just you know, come ready to play the next time. So that's number one is usually we're scheduling a few weeks out and everybody kind of understands it, like, hey, listen.

10:09 Once we put that, we all agree this is the day we're playing, Like we've made this commitment and you really got to play if you say you're going to play the other part of that is we can move on probably without two to three. I would say three is like pretty rough. Usually it's not going to happen. Three is kind of a stretch, but doable. But in those instances, I just moved the story along. So if there's not a major story beat that's going to be taking place in the session the following week, or if it's nowhere near a major story beat, I'll usually play on with up to two to three players missing. If there is a major story beat, I kind of make that known, like, hey, I really would like to get as many of you guys together as I can because something big is going is coming, or this is a important this is an important session, but we're still For example, we had like two whole sessions that was like an extended dungeon crawl, right where like, no, we can continue a crawl without any major story stuff happening. Yeah yeah, yeah, but if there's major story stuff, I kind of want everybody there just just so you can experience that but we have again just because of our age and everything, we have like a player that's taking care of a parent that that needs you know, kind of a constant companion and they need to be there for their parent, and that that trumps any anything, right, that trumps any any D and D game or game or social outing it

11:39 whatsoever. So for that player, usually I think we've just been like, yeah, he's there, he's there, he's leveling up and he's off doing his own things, or yeah, just we just don't. We don't include them in the action, but as far as from the storytelling place, they are there and have experienced everything that the party has. The other way that I've heard, I think it was actually you that that told me about this is like there's different mechanics that you can kind of put in place, like oh, they went off on a boat or they went on a side quest or whatever, and you can the boat the boat method is something I'll talk about, Yeah, like that's that's all. You can do, all those things. But for us, it's just they're there. You're just not going to hear from that character this week, or maybe you are, but nothing major. And I mean that's pretty much how we deal with absences, like, out of six people, we very rarely have three missing. And most of the time people aren't canceling last minute unless it's me. It's usually me if if it's a last minute cancelation, and in those cases we just say Jason has run a one shot for us, or we call it board game night, and you know, I think we all for the most part, give as much notice as we possibly can, so it's at least a few hours. It's not like a last minute, last minute just but before I chimed on that part of it, we had a player that was unavailable that night, and uh, He's like, no, me know if anything big happens. And there was one point where like he's he's our rogue and we

13:11 just need like a lock of picture or something. I'm like, I'm like, oh, he's still with us, right, You're like, yeah, I guess he's kind of just hanging out the pack, like hey man, I'm just kind of grabb him by the scruff of his neck. But here picked this lock. Yeah, and we called the player or I think I texted him and I was like I was like roll D twenty for me. Yeah. Yeah, He's like why I'm like, just just do it. The next day, He's like, I was so scared. Yeah, he was. He was at like he was at an outing that he had to he could not miss. Yeah, but we could still have side job work. Yeah yeah, and right, Yeah, so he did. He rolled, He rolled the D twenty while he was at his event, and he ended up succeeding if I if memory serves, But we never told him why why. Yeah, I'm gonna tell him why. You gotta we gotta make him, make him sweat. I told him later. But we got one in the sweat for a little bit. Yeah, I make I make a regret messing the session. Yeah, it's it's not life and death. But if somebody has taken their time out of their schedule and and made an effort to you know, post a great night, put together a game for players, and they've made a commitment to you, it is it is your responsibility I think to like give as much notice as you possibly can. But but things happen, right, But you have to give have respect for the other people that you're playing with because usually they're at least in our in our game, like we're all friends, are connected in some way, like they're friend.

14:41 They're a good friend of your friend, right, and so we try to I think I think the important thing there is mutual respect. Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing. But and that's how we deal with absences. Yeah, Now, because we have a player who is, you know, a in taking care of a parent, it's it's difficult for us to even have all six for our players present at any given time. And that's the other part is that we play some of our players are that's one of the hardest. That's that is really tough. We are we are a hybrid table. We have a dungeon master and sometimes two or three players in person and a couple of players who live over an hour away and don't want you know, and even once a month that's a big trip. So we have some players that are online, some players that are in person, and that makes some of that dynamic a little bit difficult. Like if if Joe can't make a session that's our dungeon master, then like you know, I could run a one shot. But like if we have players that are kind of all over the place and now we're doing something that's that's not cannon and different characters, it's like you know, they're just like that, we'll just take the night off. Yeah, And it's also like there's a different consideration if everybody's just there online. Then if you know, people have driven to your house and brought pizza and all that kind of stuff and everything, that's that's another thing that's kind of like before you decide what to do, you got to like, you know, did we know that? Like like if you show up and then just somebody texts you saying I just got in a car accident or you know, we had a medical emergency or something like that, then you know that then that creates a different situation if there's people sitting there

16:15 in your house already, and then if you're lock, you know, then if you can all just go do something else. Because it's an online game. I will say, luckily that the gentleman that hosts our games physically, even though I'm the GM, we have our games at Jason's house and it is filled with board games. So if that ever happened, no shortage of other things. Two player game, one player games, twelve player game, like whatever you need that is a tabletop game, sheez and has it. Yeah, everything from like the ware rolls two Rooms in a boom. Yeah, we get we get eighty players. I can get eighty player games going if I needed to. I don't want to do that by the wa Yeah, bring you over seventy eight of your friends. We'll play. You'll play t Rooms in a boom. Hello Adventurers, just been in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions the Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions to talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, or you the voice doing at helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now let's get back to the show. So, and that's something good that you mentioned, Jim, So like, let's hit the car accident. So let's take the day of cancelation, the last minute cancelation in good faiths Yeah, is going to

17:47 be very different than just the no show and this is another thing to consider where like what happens then is the same player unable to know just let's let's let's say you're both in good faith and not when it's the one is to repeat, repeat offender. Of course, if it's in good faith, you have to consider what the what the actual situation is. You know, a player taking care of taking care of another one, that's that's I think fully excusable indefinitely. But like now the player that's just like you know, car broke down. I got into another argument with my mom. Yeah, I'm sick, kids sick. Everyone else is sick. Someone's sick every week. Well, I mean, and I joked about like I just downloaded Balder's Gate. But there is some of that that can go on where somebody decides on the day of that there's something else going on. It's just more interesting than the game. Sure, yeah, and you know and then that that precipitates, see my girlfriend, my girlfriend will let me come over. You find out the girlfriend's shadow herd, which you no based but yeah, sure, what if that happens a couple of times? You know my es So yeah, there you go. But if that happens a couple of times, then then you have a discussion about it. But for the most part, I think you want to assume that you've got you know, in the indie game space, when we talk about safety tool with open door is one of the things we talk about, and you just kind of want to assume that if everybody's there and you you know that that if people can't make it, it's because something happened in their lives and they may or may not want to talk about it, right, And that if you're going to have a policy about

19:18 if you miss X number of sessions in X number of weeks, that that like you can it's totally cool for you to have what amounts to like a no fault divorce, right sure, you know, where like it's you know, we know it's no one's fault. It's not you know, nobody's angry, nobody's upset. But you know, but like if you miss more than three sessions in a row, clearly something's not working out somewhere and we're gonna we're gonna part ways and you know, either find another player or whatever, or you know, but to have all that stuff in place that you know what's going on with it and like the most common reason for that, I'm going to assume is going to be scheduling su where like somebody, somebody just cannot you know, maybe their schedule change and they didn't realize it was going to be as long term of a change as they thought. And like you know now for schedule reasons, they just missed session after session of your session.

20:12 And this is when, like I said before, you kind of just take a temperature checks check everyone, no checking out everybody? Is your schedule still going to work for this time? And you know, are we still still in this? We're gonna We're going to have another episode about session zeros and temperature checks because that's something that Joe and I are going to work on. There's also there's also the possibility that you are your friend is flaky. And here's the thing. You probably know that your friend is flaky, So don't invite that friend to be part of your D and D game or or treat their character as a drop in character, understanding that they may or not be there, you know, the presuming they're not going to be, and then when they are, it's a little extra bonus they you know, they've got some extra help in the fight whatever. I did actually have that rule a little bit with Walter Wilson. With our friend Walter Yeah, who I said to him, I said, hey, you know, I know you want to play d ind and I'd love to have you be at my table, but I know work sometimes because at the time, I think he was working at a liquor store. Okay, He's like, yeah, I don't know. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can. You know, I'd feel bad, I'd feel bad committing to the game and then like having to cancel.

21:22 And I was like, well, I'll tell you what, if you ever, can you get the guest spot, you know, like you know, so I did have a kind of an open door policy for do a wizard who was casting Blink and it went awry, And you can do so much fun, so many fun things with that. But that's also a thing where if you kind of have in mind that you've got a kind of like an open chair like all the time, then you know whatever, like like a buddy who lives on the West Coast who's home to visit his parents for a weekend, you know, you can have them drop into the game because you're kind of always ready to have somebody drop in something like that, you know whatever, your cousin's in town and they want they want to get down in the game. One of the other things that I wanted to kind of piggyback on this is that this is all a lot easier if you're disciplined about making sure your sessions start on time and end on time, giving you know, leading by example and showing some commitment to yeah, commitment to commitment, yeah, and making sure that you know that you're clear about like session starts at seven, and we like dice hit the table at ten after something like that, you know, or you know or or Dice hit the table at seven, which means you hear any time before that getting ready and stuff, and you know, dice hit the table at seven, you know, last roll ten o'clock and you know, and then your wrap it because if it's

22:52 one of the things that can make people question what's going on is you know, if you're willing to wait forty minutes for someone to show up, that's going to cause problems on the front end. And it's gonna you know, for the people that were there on time, that's you know, not valuing their time and their commitment and and if if you let it run over too much at the end, then people start to get you know, you know, am I going to be here for three hours tonight or four and a half and I don't. And if you don't know, that can make it tougher to commit to showing up as we're awful where our table is awful at both of those things. Yeah, starting, I think is something we should work on better. And ending I feel like that's something where we are consistent, just like, oh, we're done already, one one more, one more, Like I think like we're always like, oh, we'll do it for thirty more minutes, and then I look down and it's been an hour and a half and I go, oh no. And that was one of the great things about when I ran in the store, right like we started at the time the event started, yep, because people paid to start playing at seven and it ended at nine because that's when the store closed. Well, I should start selling the players, it was I should start closing.

23:59 But that made sure people showed up on time. And we were really clear about like, yeah, like, you know, you got to be there before seven if you want to get seated. Yeah, and maybe maybe if you walk in a couple of minutes late, you might still get a table, yeah, I think, But if it's seven to fifteen, you're not. We're not going to I'm not going to see you. Yeah. The other thing that you said that I had actually made the light bulb go off, that I really liked was that you said, like, bring pizza, because we do that wrong too. We like, for like an hour game, we're like're ordering in the middle of the game is death? That'side. Yeah, And I know we're dumb, and I know we're dumb every time we do it. It's good to know that you're deaf. Yeah, at least you know there's a level, there's a level of stupid where you don't you're too stupid to know you're stupid. I know, I'm so dumb, like like, but like at the same time, like why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I think about bringing the pizza, especially because you don't know and like like if you order door dash or whatever and it's like you could be here anytime between thirty and ninety minutes, then like you know, everybody's kind of watching the door and it's just stress. The other part is it should be pizza because they have a special right by Jason's house.

25:07 It's thirteen dollars Sicilian pie every Monday or Sunday and Monday. One of the best Sicilians ever. It's a really good one of the I don't even like Sicilian pie. Yeah, delicious. You get pizza and Jersey get Sicilian. That's that's how that's how I disagree that one. Yeah, I disagree. But this, if you're in Tom's River and you're anywhere near me, is thirty seven. That's the Sicilian to get. Okay, sponsor us, Yeah, give us, give us pizza for our game. Well, we'll keep talking about you can just it can even not be free. Generally say sell us a pizza. That's the worst, the worst sponsorship it could have possibly asked for, a Joe. You will keep them for advertising your product if you just sell it to us, like, oh, I guess so, it's gonna be a coupon money on. But making sure that your schedule is locked in, including when you take meal breaks and you know, bio breaks and stuff like that. All of that helps keep things consistent in a way that makes people more likely to attend because they understand what they're getting into and it's reliable, and that's that's huge yelly, and again like leading by that example, but he listen, I was here on time. We all started on time. I need need everyone on the same page for that. Yeah, it's funny because this now it's in a good way. I think it's bleeding into table etiquette, yes, which is this whole thing is table Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think a lot of it does come down to that because the more respect that there is at the table and for your group, I think that right, you're going to have less of

26:38 these like yeah, I'm not going to make it this week, you know, and that's going to help help you identify the ones that are just like it's just D and D whatever and like and if that's not the level of commitment that you want at your table. If that if that's the level of commitment that you want and this is just like a way to hang out, that's that's a totally fine, you know. The blase attitude is is totally totally totally fine. Like I'm not I'm not I'm not dissing those types of players, but that's not your table. And you've got one that's there, and that's how they think of this. It's like, all right, well this is now that's one identifiable. So that's why I think session zero, zero point five, whatever you want to do there, those check ins, those are super important and to more of what Jim said too, like the safety tools of of that, like setting an expectation. Yeah, right, setting an expectation early and often, like is the best medicine for a well run meeting of any kind? Right is I was a manager. I managed a group of you know, nine or ten people, and that's something that was super important in that managing those relationships as well. It was like, hey, listen, there's going to be an expectation we're going to meet when we have meetings. We're going to meet these times per month and at these times and it's not different anything else meets. We want to touch on with this. I mean, maybe the question is there is a little side question here, and that is how are you going to handle mechanically the characters that don't show up for those sessions? You know, do you do progression?

28:10 How do you do xpeed? And you know, like if you've got someone who just has a job that means they miss one session a month or something like that because they've got a staff meeting they have to attend. You know, is their character going to advance twenty five percent more slowly than everybody else? Or and how do you handle that? Because people are going to have those questions, you know, because we're talking about D and D where that stuff's important. You want to make sure that's another session zero thing is not just what do we do how do we handle it? But if you play and your character's not there, how do we handle the rewards and the advancement and all that stuff, And just make sure you have that down and everybody understands how that works. There's no right or wrong way to do it.

28:52 Necessarily, I know how I would handle it. You can do it however you want. Just make sure everybody knows what's going on with it when they do that. Yeah, a lot of it relies on what kind of game you played, too, Like we do a milestone ye progression, so everybody's just at the same time. Yeah, and that seems to be a huge five E thing too, where like the game seems to be like pushing people towards doing a milestone thing, and that's that's that's a different topic really, but keeping that at milestone and just like you know, you can figure out story wise what's going on with those characters. And I promised I would come back to the boat thing before I really was playing. When I was just you know, as we mentioned in the the Broadway episode, I was just a fan of the culture and enjoyed hearing my friends play. I had a bunch of friends that were playing very casually where everyone had the whatever, it's just D and D attitude, and that's and again totally cool. They all have blast where like nobody was expected to commit to showing up every week and it's just like, hey, listen, we're going to meet with this guy's house and if there's enough to play, we're going to play. And whoever's not there is on the boat. And like they kind of just like had this centralized location where there was a boat that was docked and your character is just on the boat doing boat stuff. You know, you're swabbing a poop deck whatever it is, while the other players are out having an adventure.

30:10 And and that worked for them on something that's a little bit more like overarching story wise, you guys can figure all that out and you guys can figure it out on the day of if you need to, like when we had our Roague missing and say, okay, he's there, he's with us. He's just being really quiet today, you know. And when I need to he's a sneaky boy. Yeah, when he needs to pick a lock, I just don't meet me. The barbarian just picks up the the halfling and just and just holds him at the door. He doesn't have to talk for that. So, like, you know, that's that's up to you, guys. And it seems like the real answer to this is that and like everything and it's just almost it's almost even like boring to keep saying it. Talk to your players, but there's a lot of things to consider, and that's like, you know, if they are going to have like an off story thing to be doing, that's something and you discussed as you need to, but heard it sounds like you had like a lot of options there and it's all they're all good options. Yeah, And then the question was, you know, the question on the surface was at what point do you do this? And I'm not going to give you like you know, when there are two players missing, do this. I'm not going to give you, like the flow chart for your table, that's for your table. But you guys can absolutely have a mid campaign session zero or zero point one as Joe and I like to call it. Yeah, and you guys can make that flow chart whenever you want. Yeah, it's a lot. Like it's a lot like smoke and a brisket. How do you know when it's done?

31:34 Depends on how it feels done when it's done. Yeah, try asking it you're done yet? Yeah, at our particular table, since we play at my house, if there's two or three people over and that's all it's and like we're it does not have to play a D and D. We'll play you, We'll play one of my board games and still eat the pizza that Joe definitely brought. Yeah, I've got to start now. I love that. Where like I have like warm up games that we play while we're waiting for people to come to the table, mostly D and D stuff. I have a Rock Paper Wizard which is a ton of fun. And what's the dungeon mayhem? I think it's called yea also a ton of is that a preconstructed deck card game? But it's made it's made by Wizard's like it's just a little casual game, and like, maybe that's what we do tonight.

32:22 I have plenty of one shots ready to go that that I keep prepared with Minis to set aside for them, that I keep prepared for the for the game store and breweries. So if we have enough for a one shot and there's not enough for a canonical campaign, or if the DM can't make it and I can and I can d M for the night, that's another option. I actually really like your prequel idea. And I couldn't tell if Jim was making a face about the prequel thing or not, But but I've played in a prequel canonical one shot on D and D four O four which I haven't decided if that interview is coming out next week or last week, so go back and listen to it or wait a week, whichever I decide. But prequels are fun. You do prequels, You can do dream sequences, you can do you can do the thing where like if currently what you're doing is rescuing some farmers that got captured by goblins, you can play the union going back and show the farmers getting captured, you know, like like you can almost use it like a retcon a little bit. That's what we did.

33:22 We did you can do. Yeah, we did a prequel one shot for like in their story there was like the event. It was something like really really bad that happened that people alluded to, but like no one really told exactly what happened. We played out what happened and we were the bad guys. Yeah, so you want to save the farmers. That was not what we did. Yeah, you can play the goblins who capture the farmers. Yeah, that's cool. I cast Fireball, right, it was awful. But just the one player like uh like silently messaged the d M and he's like, I have the opportunity to create a time paradox right now. He's like, please don't. I don't know how to handle that, So just make sure you're not creating any paradoxes. And by killing your big bad while he's a baby, you can, like you know you can, and then you know, maybe it's worse or this is the reveal that that's that's not the real big bad. This is the the guy who took his place.

34:17 Well it would be really great about that though. Is the player that missed that session coming back and be like, wait a minute, what did I miss? No? No, no, you shot Gary Hitler. He was gonna win no Bell Prize. Dary was a good guy. He gott to art school. So but I like the ideas that you're laid out and they're all totally viable options. So the question about like when do you do this, when do you do that? That is up for your players and you and I will chime in on that if you invite me to play, and that's that's kind of that's kind of my thing. Any other any of the major things you want to drop on this, No, he covered this pretty thoroughly. I covered everything I want to talk about, so hear, I think so much for listening. I will I think I've we got we got some mutual friends, and I think I promised to run one shot for you guys, so looking forward to that. You know what, I Am going to say. One thing please that we didn't really cover, and that is that every now and then sometimes it's okay to take a week off.

35:14 That's fine too. There's nothing wrong with that. You can totally do that. And if you know, and if everybody's going like I don't know about this, week, take a week off, take a breather, you know, play some video games, go you know, go for a walk outside, and then pick it up next week when everybody's freshing him. That that's totally cool too, Like just because just because someone's there doesn't mean you like have to come up with an alternate activity. It is okay, every now and then, it takes sure, Yeah, well we do that pretty often. It's a little too often, but it's yeah, keep us us going on, us playing much more infrequently as than most tables. Lets us do that. It's like, hey, next week instead where we're like, we're not really losing anything, but yeah, totally fine as well. And it's going to come as a shock to a lot of listeners, but there's other things to do then play D and D. It's true, we just lost ten subscribers. Okay, you can go to the theater and watch a show about Dada. You can go back an episode or possibly two, depending on how I feel. Listen to Jim's synopsis on that go outside, slow down, Joe, all right, relax, Okay, we speak like, that's cool if that's what you want to do. But yeah, dude, thanks so much for sending you a question, you can send yours in that you can need the email us at Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, or you can leave a voicemail just like Karen did at Hello Adventurers Podcast dot com slash voice that'll bring you to a little web page you can do right from your phone without actually having a dial anything. It's literally one button. It cannot be any easier. Because we love to hear your questions. Will we try to do a mail back show where we enter them a bunch of these, but this particular question warranted its own episode. So and if you got

36:45 something that is that's that deep and that also, we will set up an episode for that as well. I think it's going to wrap it up right. Yeah. Cool, So, Jim, Joe, thanks for hanging out with me, Thanks for having me, and thank you for listening to Hello Adventurers. We are your host Jason Tiso, Jim Crocker and Joe McCall, producer, editor and engineer Jason Portiso and used by Nick Spurrier, Artworth, Battison Broderick. You can reach out to us with any feedbackward suggestions by emailing Helloa Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Helloadventures is a JTP audio production Goodbye Adventures,