I have accidentally fallen into the role of coordinator for my group. How do you guys like to organize? I’ll describe the ideal app I’d like in the event you guys know of one that fulfills it.
I’d like a shared calendar application that we can all see. I’d like some way for discussions about the events to happen. Like it has a discussion page per event. Discord integration of some kind would be awesome.
EDIT: I ended up using the discord bit called Raid Planner. It has a web UI calendar and has automatic thread creation.
“Next session is Sunday at 2. Be there, suggest an alternative that works for everyone, or be okay with missing a sesh.”
It’s worked for my group for years, but I’m lucky and have very considerate players. Personally, I think it’s helpful to just pick a day that works for most people most of the time so that they can reserve a slice of the week/month for games.
I don’t have a great solution for you, but here’s two ways I’ve done it. First one is just using google calendar. As long as the organizer has everyone’s email, you just send out a meeting invite and they can set up their own reminders. I personally don’t like this way, but it works for others. Works best when you always play on a particular cadence so people can look at their calendar and be reminded that they are busy those days.
The way I do it today is a simple “schedule” channel in our discord server where I post the next session’s date. Each player is tagged with a role for the game they’ve in so I post “@group our next game is 8/10 at 9pm. React 👍 if you will be there” and then everyone uses reactions to say if they are good with that date or not. We play basically bi-weekly but not always, so it’s nice to have a channel that clearly states the next session. Sometimes we use that channel to say things like “oh that day doesn’t work for me can we do xyz instead” or that sort of thing.
You could always use Outlook’s calendar if you wanted to add to people’s schedules via emails. It’s a little “business-y” for my taste, but it is effective at reminding people there’s a game happening. It also has Teams integration for a searchable chat option, a file storage system, video chat, etc. Discord is pretty bad if you want an archive-able chat.
Alternatively, you could also try Matrix, which is the open-source version of Discord and has a ton of integration options available. It does require that everyone download something, but any coordination effort is going to require some amount of buy-in from the players. Let us know what works!
When I ran more impromptu or loosley scheduled stuff I used a site called Doodle. I entered when I could run and potental participants could mark available etc on them. Worked well enough. Would have loved something where sessions could be suggested but that never really became an issue. You could do that with a google calendar. Someone adds a potential session, sends invites to everyone who then can mark their availability. Should work. You could also look into workplace meeting or planning apps.
Nowadays I never ever, not even if bacon flies, reschedule. Cancel sure but never reschedule. I don’t have the time and most of those I play with don’t have the time. To keep things running I recruit to five, have an ideal group size of four and run if three or more are available. Barely ever any cancellations. Only ones if I’m not available or if there is SIGNIFICANT plot development.
I have a set time and day of the week, that we always play on. Sometimes we cancel if stuff happens.
I haven’t used it yet (there hasn’t been any event where I could bring this up), but crab.fit has good features to check everyone’s availability for a single event.
