Attendance Policy

Adventuring Commitment

StartPlaying was created to make scheduling easy and fair for game masters and players.

However, when players cancel late or miss sessions often, it disrupts the story, hurts committed players’ enjoyment, and negatively impacts the game master as a professional.

Long-form campaign groups are best suited to dedicated players who are willing to put in a level of commitment equal to what they might anticipate when joining a community band, recreational sports league, or local theater performance.

While all hobbies are voluntary, some require a certain level of commitment from all participants to ensure the hobby functions as intended. Even an exceptionally talented member of a group, team, or cast could be cut if they never show up (or continuously show up late) to practice, rehearsal, shows, and games.

This agreement does NOT override StartPlaying’s skip/leave policy or refund policy, which the game master always honors and abides by. This agreement is an extension of StartPlaying's standard attendance policies, and is an expectation for continued service with The Narrative Alchemist specifically.

By honoring this standard, you help create a dependable table where every player’s time, creativity, and investment are respected.

1. Attendance Expectations

Players are expected to attend sessions regularly and on time to ensure consistent storytelling, balanced gameplay, and fairness for your fellow adventurers.

Game sessions are usually scheduled up to one month in advance.

New schedules are typically released during the final week of each month.

Campaigns that meet weekly take scheduled days off, typically once every six weeks, to help off-set game master burnout.

Always check your StartPlaying calendar regularly for the latest updates. If the game master ever needs to cancel a scheduled session, the group will be notified promptly. No charges will apply.

2. Early Campaign Commitment

Early inconsistency is one of the strongest predictors of campaign instability.

Committed players are depending on everyone to show up so they can have a fulfilling game experience. Play time for committed players tends to be taken advantage of, or lost entirely, by less committed players who don’t reliably show up to games.

A part of the game master's job is to remove potentially unreliable players from the game early.

To ensure a strong foundation, all players are expected to maintain 100% attendance during the first four (4) play sessions after onboarding to establish themselves as a committed member of the party.

Missing a session for any reason (including sickness, emergencies, or absences with advanced notice) during this critical beginning phase will mean the player has surrendered their seat and will be removed from the game to protect the overall experience.

This removal is procedural and done without discussion.

Players removed in this way are welcome to join a new game when they are certain they will be able to commit more reliably to a campaign.

3. Ongoing Attendance Standard

After proving initial commitment, occasional absences are understood and manageable as long as they’re communicated promptly. However, even when absences are excused, the impact on the table is the same.

Players who miss more than two (2) play sessions within any rolling eight (8) session period will be asked to step down from the campaign.

Tardiness (defined as lateness past the 10-minute grace period at the beginning of a session) is counted as one absence for the purposes of ongoing attendance standards.

If a table is consistently falling below five (5) attending players, we will discuss next steps, whether re-zeroing the table, switching back to Pending status, or fast forwarding the campaign to a satisfactory ending.

4. Reliability-Based Discretion Clause

Players who have proven reliable over a minimum period of 90 days may request planned time off (such as vacations or temporary schedule conflicts) without losing their seat.

This exception is granted solely at the game master’s discretion and requires that:

The party is comfortable with the player’s temporary absence.
The player reserves their seat by paying for all missed sessions during their time away.
The arrangement does not disrupt campaign flow, group trust, or scheduling stability.

If any of these conditions are not met, the standard attendance policy applies.

5. Communication & Responsibility

Players are 100% responsible for:

Updating their attendance through StartPlaying at least 24 hours in advance.
Understanding that late cancellations or no-shows will result in a non-refundable charge, per StartPlaying platform policy.
Openly communicating any attendance updates in your party chat to help your party plan and maintain group cohesion.
Notifying the game master as soon as possible in the case of emergencies.

6. In-Game Absences

If absent, a player character fades into the background and does not appear in roleplay, and they won’t be targeted or used in combat.

Additionally, party members will not have access to the absent character’s abilities, spells, or inventory.

Other players may not run, use, or benefit from your character in any way in your absence.

7. Game Master Availability & Communications

The game master does not operate "on-call" and has scheduled business hours for responding to player questions.

Always check the game master’s schedule in the Discord server, and please wait patiently for a response if it is their day or time off.

Unless you wish to discuss a personal matter, your party chat in the Discord server is best suited for discussions involving rules and mechanics, character building, backstory connections, absences/skips, and stars/wishes.

If you require assistance for additional character building, backstory writing help, mechanics briefing or similar, please reach out to schedule a meeting with the game master during regular, non-game business hours.

8. Quality Assurance

Campaigns are sustained not only by attendance, but by active participation and players with matching playstyles.

The game master reserves the remove one or more players who are not a good fit, or retire the campaign entirely to prevent burn-out and protect the quality of the StartPlaying experience.

The most common, but not the only, example of this are tables that contain many spectator-style players that consistently lack engagement or cooperative energy.

Players who always wait passively for direction, avoid interaction with the world or each other, and prefer to observe rather than play the game place additional strain on the game master to keep things interesting and moving forward.

Sessions are structured to rely on collaborative engagement from all participants. The game master is not in the business of providing solo performances.

Players are expected to bring energy, curiosity, and collaboration to each session, including roleplaying with their fellow party members and taking initiative in the story.