Player canceling sessions last second - are we being hypocritical?
So here's the situation: I am a player in a group of 5+DM. We've been playing together for almost 10 years, starting in-person but have transitioned to online 6 years ago when we all moved long-distance.
We play weekly, every Friday evening for roughly 4 hours.
DM and Barbarian are roommates.
Monk and Cleric are a couple but don't live together.
Sorcerer and I are a couple and live together, and we now live in a different country from the rest of the group.
We are all in our late 20s-early 30s and have jobs, but none of us have kids.
We generally don't make a big deal out of people cancelling, but we have always elected not to play if someone couldn't make it. We decided on that because since we have 2 couples and a pair of roommates, often when 1 can't make it it means 2 can't make it, and it's worked okay for us.
Usually when 1 or 2 people can't make it and tell us in advance we still get together but we do a one-shot or play a video game instead.
But recently, in the past year or so, Barbarian has been canceling a lot of sessions last-minute, for reasons that we feel should have been communicated in advance. Sorcerer, Cleric and I specifically have talked about it a lot and have been getting quite annoyed at them for it.
Examples include:
- They were traveling out of town for a Pride event in another city. They had known about it for weeks as they had booked a hotel and train tickets, but didn't tell us they were canceling until I messaged our group chat asking for clarification on a magic item, the morning of the session.
- They had a friend staying over. The visit had been planned weeks in advance, but they only messaged the group chat about it a couple of hours before the session.
- They got invited by another friend to go to the cinema a few hours before the session and decided to do that instead of playing.
- It was their brother's birthday. They obviously knew about their brother's birthday in advance, but only told us about it on the day of the session.
- Their character had died the previous session and they hadn't made a new one yet, so they asked if we could wait for them to make their character before starting. It took them over an hour, and by the time they were done we were all doing other things and ended up not playing.
- One of their friend who is a streamer was doing a stream event and they decided to take part in it, they told us literally 10 minutes before the session that they wouldn't make it.
- It was the evening before Valentine's day and they wanted to go for a date with their partner. They knew they wanted that date specifically, but they only told us they were canceling when Cleric asked the group chat for confirmation on the time we were gonna play a few hours before.
- Their mum got a new kitten, and they decided to travel out of town to meet the new kitten for the weekend, leaving on the Friday evening. They only told us of that plan about an hour before the session, despite knowing about the kitten for a week.
Overall, we felt like there was a pattern of them having things planned in advance and not informing us that they wouldn't make it to sessions until the day of, or sometimes until being prompted by someone else on the day of. We were annoyed at it, since we have all been blocking out our Friday evenings for dnd for so long, and not knowing that dnd got canceled until a few hours before has prevented us from making a lot of other plans.
We brought this up to the group chat, Sorcerer wrote a message asking for people to be a bit more thoughtful and to try to announce cancelations earlier if possible. His message wasn't aggressive or mean in any way.
But Barbarian obviously took it very personally, and reminded us of a time a few years ago where we had to cancel a lot of sessions in the span of 3-4 months, mostly because of me, and no one made a fuss about it.
The situation 2 years ago:
Week 1: Sorcerer and I got stuck on the highway for 6 hours due to a car accident, didn't make it to the session.
Week 2: My Granddad passed away that morning, I was busy doing family stuff and wasn't exactly in the mood anyway.
Week 3: That was the day of Granddad's funeral, so I once again wasn't able to make it, I informed to group as soon as the date of the funeral was set, so 3-4 days before I think.
Week 4: we played!
Week 5: Cleric and Monk cancelled (not last minute) because it was Monk's brother's wedding.
Week 6: we played!
Week 7: Sorcerer and I cancelled (not last minute) because we were on a family vacation and our plane was landing Friday evening, so we weren't sure we'd have time to make it back home for the session if the plane was late.
Week 8: Someone tried to break into Sorcerer and I's house that day and broke our lock. By the time we got home and the session was about to start we were locked outside, and had to deal with locksmiths and police before we could sit down, had to cancel last minute.
Week 9: I was on an important business trip, and would be sharing a hotel room with someone so couldn't make it to the session, had to cancel (not last minute).
Week 10: Cleric had a medical emergency and had to be taken to hospital the day before. Monk didn't remember to tell us until the morning of the because he had been very worried about her.
Week 11: DM was ill and had lost his voice, had to cancel.
Week 12: There was a massive storm that hit where Sorcerer and I live, and our power got cut about 10 minutes into the session. We weren't able to get back online except on our phones for several hours, so we had to drop out as we weren't able to use roll20 or really hear the session properly.
Week 13: we played, and that was the end of that streak of bad luck.
We feel like most of these cancellations were not our fault, it was just exceptionally unlucky that they all happened in such quick succession.
We're not best pleased at Barbarian for using those as an excuse to keep not informing us of their plans, especially as they were quite callous in comparing my Granddad dying to them having a friend over as similar situations.
Basically, Barbarian is not denying that their excuses for canceling are flimsy at best, and has said that they'll try to be better, but they are saying that we're being hypocrites because our excuses were not any better, and they were being the better person for not being mad at us at the time.
So, are we the assholes for thinking that not all sets of circumstances are equally as valid as far as reasons to cancel sessions go?