My anxiety with the game and player numbers is quite known by all! I need my 5 PLAYERS! The funny thing is there has never been any inadequate player composition at the game in my 40 years of DM'ing! There's always been a full table or close to one but never a short table. How the hell is that possible? How have I DM'd for 40+ years and never had a game where there were insufficient players at the table.
Now, don't misunderstand my post. Of course there are times when you have 5 players and 2 miss and you're playing with 3. There could even be that ecepotionally rare time when 3 of the 5 players miss and you play with 2. Regardless that doesn't mean that you don't have those 5 players coming week to week.
The post is about my DM'ing career and never having less than a core 5 players coming to the game. Yes, maybe for a short period there has been 4 as we searched for a 5th but damn I have been exceptionally lucky to have all of you and my previous players for allowing this. A never ending abyss of gaming! What more could anyone ask for!
I do feel bad that we could not add someone else to the table. I feel that if we even tried it would drasitrically have a negative impact on the game by slowing it down. Plus there would be a time for him to aclimate to the group. I like that we have Tom coming back becasue he knows all of us already. He also will bring a lot to the table withou negatively impacting it. Every gaming group should be as lucky as we are with our group. We have an amazing game with depth and stability.