If the schedule looks like this:

1. AD&D
2. Mage
3. AD&D
4. Mage

…and your game is AD&D, and you have to miss (for example) week 3, I think the best approach would be to slot in AD&D for week 4 — giving you 3 weeks between the most recent session of each games, rather than 2 weeks for Mage and 4 weeks for AD&D.

Have you tried alternating games before, successfully or unsuccessfully? Have you lost a game (or games!) to “death by break?” Is there a “magic number” for how long your breaks can be before the game fizzles?

Some of our most successful campaigns were alternating weeks; AD&D one week, and Mage: The Ascension the other. It worked out very well for quite a while. The drawback is that missing “your own game” led to a month gap between games (running a game weekly), which did make catching up harder.

Death by break is common– and, as mentioned above, it’s often a non-confrontational way to quit something that’s no longer great fun.

I’m reaching burnout on my current campaign, so maybe that will be a welcome break.

The November/December thing really sucked for gaming last year. Because I was buying a house in September/October and moving in October/November, it bascically meant gaming was dead all fall…

Ah, gotta go.

Frank

Up until recently, this has been my “gold standard” for games — they run forever. I’m starting to see a lot of value in shorter, pithier games, and I really like the idea of the “stop in November” lifecycle.

One thing we have collectively learned as adult players with childern is to end all campaigns by Thanksgiving. I have ran “the final episode” of a game the first week of December, but that is an exception. Besides, its a nice break for everyone to recharge and kick off a new campaign in the new year. It also helps with that post-holiday feeling I get of “nothing to look forward to for a while” since it’s still winter and such. We play in Maryland and Jan-Feb are the coldest months. December is usually not too bad (which is why we rarely get a ‘white Xmas’)

In the last year, in order to stem DM burnout, help rotate players and DMs, and keep things fresh, we have agreed to limit all games to 4-6 months (but they can be picked up later). In the past we had ‘epically’ long games or the DM would simply run the game till it died out. I was the first DM in our group that said right from the beginning that the Campaign had a finite end, no matter what. I am sure a lot of DMs do have set endings, but in our group the players would want to play their chars ‘forever’ but sooner or later the DM’s batteries would wind down and the inevitable “break” (end of campaign) would occur.

When games die to breaks, I don’t sweat it, clearly folks just weren’t interested. And that means its time to find a new game or new people.

About 10 years ago, I realized the key thing for me to avoid burnout. I like running homebrews campaigns. I also like running other peoples’ stuff. Since then, with rare exception, I alternate a near-pure homebrew campaign with a near-pure published campaign. If I run a mishmash in the middle, I burn out. If I alternate focus, each is fresh for the length of the campaign.

One of the reasons this works for me is that the prep demands are very different. At the end of running a published campaign, I have practically no prep work, but am really itching to run my next homebrew. So I get a lot of homebrew prep out of the way early. In contrast, by the time the homebrew finishes, I’m running downhill on fumes. But I have relatively little to do to start the next campaign.

Well, all that and way our group is forced to all but abandon gaming for the 8 weeks or so around about Christmas, because of scheduling conflicts. That break doesn’t seem to have any of the negative effects listed for breaks, because our whole group quit fighting it a long time ago.

Good point — those two can be tied together pretty closely, sometimes.

In any case, I’m looking forward to alternating Eberron with Star Trek/X-Men, whenever you decide you’re ready to run that.

I have nothing to add but to say, “that’s me!”

I’ve constantly seen games die from breaks. Fortunately, rarely mine. Typically breaks are given as the reason when, in reality, it was waning interest in the game. A break is a convenient excuse to politely kill a game, I’ve found.

I’ve a theory that a game that suffers from too many breaks, especially those initiated by GM, are passive attempts to suicide the game, be it by players or the GM. People that want to play will find a way.

Okay, I guess I had a little to add.