Oh, and rituals are great. Not only do they provide a clear start time, they can go a long way to establishing the mood of a game.

I’ve found it very important to change the expectation, both internally, and for the group. The days of finishing a town session, geting to an adventure, and then getting part-way through it in one session are over, once you go to shorter sessions. So it becomes important to set that expectation.
On the surface, setting the expectaion that less will get done makes it easier to play. But at a more subconsious level, if this is done properly, players will treat the time more preciously.

And as Lee mentioned, we keep the (very important, but distracting) socializing to dinner, but once the dice come out, it’s down to business.

There’s always a period of catching up while we get ready, but as soon as I type “COLD BLOOD Episode 28″ (or whichever), and a one-sentence recap, everyone knows it’s time to get into character. If I finished strongly enough last session (either with a cliffhanger or foreshadowing), that’s all it takes – unless a fight was about to start, in which case we roll initiative and I set the scene with something like *There are three of these creatures, loosely surrounding you.*

My first thought is that you might need to move to a more reasonable starting time. From what you wrote, it sounds like people have problems making it on time. It might save you some aggravation if you push the start time back 30 minutes or even an hour (it’s less time to play, but it sounds like that’s what you’re doing anyway).

I’m less concerned about your extremely late player, because it doesn’t sound like a chronic issue. We all run late occasionally, and she did call (some people tend to be overly optimistic in time estimates when running late).

One thing I do is create a game log on a WordPress blog after each session. I started out writing a narrative of the session, but the long sessions made that impossible. (A shorter session might make that do-able.) I’ve found that this helps the players think about the game in between sessions, which makes them more eager to play when the next session happens.

I’m looking at starting a recap sort of thing, after reading your tips. Maybe something using Powerpoint?

Good tips!

Regarding set starting times:
What are your thoughts on starting without a player when you know that someone’s going to be late? That’s been an issue several times in my game, and it was only last week (after waiting for about twenty minutes after my revised starting time after she’d called to say she was late) that I finally said without prompting, “Look, she’s later than I’d expected, and I hate to start without her, but the rest of you guys are ready to go and I can bring her character in later. I’m going to start this game now.” Everyone else agreed, which was gratifying and made me feel less like a jerk. Also, she came in about… oh, twenty minutes or so later, and she didn’t mind that we’d started without her. I’m going to remember that next time it becomes an issue, and go ahead and start within a reasonable interval of my starting time even if we’re short a person.
(Also, ending the last game on a cliffhanger seems to have helped.)