How to deal with time differences?

I'm in the military and stationed in Japan. How do other military members deal with that? Any Japan timezone friendly groups willing to put up with someone who has next to no experience?

Roll20 works around the world and surprisingly, there are players who can play at almost any given hour across various time zones. Do you want to play in the night or the day in Japan? 7PM evening in Japan would be 11AM London UK, so there's some people you can play with (people in Japan who want to play at night mixed with people in the UK who want to play mid-day). 10PM in Japan would be 9AM Boston USA, so if there are any morningtime American gamers, that might also be a time match if you can play late. When you join a game or create a campaign, the campaign details page will automatically calibrate the "Next Game Time" for your time zone, so it's easy to see in local-time.

I understand that. But besides all that I still have conflicting time schedules. Being in the military can make my schedule erratic so I was just wondering if there were groups that would be easier to set up a time and be more lax on changing schedules. I don't want to get into a group and ruin the fun because of my schedule.

I run a game in a format I call "open table". My campaign of this format is using Basic Fantasy RPG rules, so maybe not what you are looking for, but the terminology might help in your search. Other names for open table style are: pick-up games, one-shots. Another guy on here described it as being like a basketball gym. So there are groups running campaigns where you can come & go as you please, irregular schedule. Of course you can always apply for the weekly campaigns and just tell the GM about your schedule and see if it's acceptable, case by case. Otherwise, maybe some other gamers with similar schedules and interests will answer and make your own group!

Thank you I appreciate the help. I'll look into those

I set up my low level game so that each session starts and ends at the local bar. This allows players with actual lives to play when they can make it. N.B., eventually I will ask them to commit or quit if they are rarely there.

My brother in law is in the Military, currently stationed in Hawaii and the rest of us are in the Eastern US Timezone. Our games typically happen around dinner time for him, but much later in the night for us. And we are all older guys (by that I mean in our 40's), so we understand life happens. If someone can't make it, we either just continue without them, or we play a different game that is basically a One-Shot for the night. Our games typically start around 10p Eastern Time (GMT -4:00 so I guess 2a GMT?). If that works for you, PM me and I'll talk with the guys and see if they want to bring another guy in...

Yeah, it can be worked out. Even if you change duty or watch sections. As long as you can all agree to work around it, it's cool. There's a lot of veterans here plus some active duty. When I was on a ship on active duty we'd be good for some months, then duty sections and people in them might change so the group would be on hold till we could meet again, or we'd pick up different players, and press on. Thanks for serving, Pat M. I have gamer friends who are ex-pat civilians living in Tokyo, teaching English, and I trained with some people that ultimately went to P-3 ASW patrol Sqdns out of Yokusaka. The key to finding games here is be specific about games and genre, and what times you are available, from what zone, and like Gold says, try and match up what to what via UTC. I game with people in UK at 4 hours later than my East Coast time, and farther out in Madcedonia. So I start my games at 4 PM EDT, till 8. It ends in UK at midnight and Macedonia pretty early AM. Welcome to the community.

Rule of thumb is, don't do it. I know it's harsh sometimes, but I'm sorry, I just can't run my games at 8AM because some guy in Australia wants to play in the group. When recruiting, I try and make sure everyone is okay with a time and that they can commit to generally being free at that set time and able to play. I understand life comes up, but as a GM I'm just not able to play my games in the early morning or way late at night just to accommodate people that far out of the time zone. It's not that I don't want to, it's that it's just not feasible.

Askren, you don't need to run your game at 8AM. If you run your game at your regular time & people from other Time Zones can still join if it works for them. Not everyone around the world wants to play in their nighttime. I don't see why you would suggest not to play with people in other time zones if it would be no inconvenience to you.

I'm not saying don't let people play if they're out of your time zone, they certainly can. However, I can assure you that every time I've had someone from Europe attempt to play in my early-evening EST games, when they insist they're fine with it and can play, they end up asking to stop two hours in because it's 3AM for them and they're tired. I don't want to say it can't be done, but you're right in the statement that I wouldn't be able to adjust the time of my games to accept people on the other side of the world, though it's certainly been requested many times.

I say just be clear on when you game will start and stop, and if they can fit it, fine. If it ends up they need to stop because it's 3 AM for them, and they signed on for it knowing that, then it's a case of they've misled themselves or the DM. In that case, it's simple to say "if it's too late for you good luck, because this is the time we're running it." This evening we had a case where all asked me to run an hour over, but one player had to go at 45 minutes into that hour, so we closed the session, til next week. I think flexibiluity is the key, but yes, I would not run a game at 3 AM unless I had day shift work and it fit my schedule to accomodate 6 guys from Australia. I have played with people from australia and they were logging in early 6 AM to play in US afternoons. And we make sure before we recruit what block of time each specific player has. So I've hardly ever experienced time zone or time blocks as a problem. Mine has been players being rude or arguing. or story hogging at the expense of other players.

I'm always up front about my schedule because I don't wanna ruin others experiment by never being there. My problem is having prior still let me in their game after they hear my schedule. It's not just being in japan that makes it rough, it's the fact I'm in the military and new as well. I don't know for sure, but I don't think people are that willing to go out of their way to accommodate someone new. I have had a couple a people do that and I appreciate it a lot but I wouldn't expect the majority to be so accommodating. I just wish I could find a solid long term group in this time zone to make it easier.

You could try starting a thread discussion on the Looking For Group sub-forum , and mention Japan / time zone , in the subject line. That might be a good way to find people for forming a solid long term group in your time zone, as you never know when someone else is searching for the same. You may have already done this, just adding another idea to the thread.