Flaky Fighter
So you’re cruising through the adventure, slaying evildoers and plot points with equal dispatch. You’re gaining experience, uncovering secrets of the universe, and inching your way ever closer to the climactic fight against the BBEG. Only problem is that Bob couldn’t show up this week. That’s cool though. You’ll just play some Catan with the rest of the group and wait for next session. But next week rolls around and Bob is still MIA. Then the week after that Carl has to go to his cousin’s wedding. He’s really sorry. Which is what you’ll say to the judge after you murder Carl.
Here’s the secret though: Carl and Bob are not jerks. They’re just real people with real lives that don’t always intersect with the gaming group. The problem isn’t with your friends. The problem is with the way you tell stories.
If you’ve got to structure a campaign such that every one of your players must be present in order to proceed, you’re setting yourself up for frustration. I figured that out early on in my current megadungeon campaign, and decided to make some adjustments. Rather than running it as a plot-centric game, I decided to make things a little more episodic. Less focus on in-town shenanigans and more on dungeon exploration. I also introduced a plot device where, thanks to a PC’s connection to the mythos, eldritch powers from beyond time and space could teleport the actually-present-players into the dungeon and the absent players away. After all, what could better represent the chaos and caprice of the elder gods than player attendance? I’ll have to pay off that little contrivance at some point, but in the meantime it’s removed a lot of the stress of building adventures around specific characters who might or might not show up.
How about you guys? How do you solve flaky player syndrome? Do you use cardboard cutouts? Metagame artifacts? Vicious beatings? Sound off with your ideas in the comments.
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I’ve used almost the exact same thing in a D&D game before. It works pretty well.
Other times we just did the old (somewhat confusing) standard of just ignoring the issue entirely and playing without whoever was missing as long as we had most of the group around. Sometimes this was awkward. Somehow once it wasn’t awkward in a Shadowrun campaign even though we were quite often missing our matrix experts.
Had a long running TFOS game where people were constantly missing, but we had an episodic rotating GMs thing going on and the setting lends itself very well to “this person isn’t here because they’re doing something else at the moment, like that homework we all probably should be doing right now”.
For serious? You had eldritch beings teleporting your PCs in and out of the dungeon according to player attendance? Small multiverse.
I wonder if our groups’ respective characters ever shared the same interdimensional waiting room.
That would explain why they sometimes came back missing items or with new ones. =P
It would also explain the premise of my next Rifts game.
I usually use the line, “Player X’s character appears to have contracted the sleeping curse/sickness. They are now protected from harm but may not interact with the environment until Player X is present.”
So…how does the party carry around the sleeping PC? I bet the sleeping curse/sickness also causes the afflicted to become weightless. That way you can just tie the poor mook to your saddle like a balloon.
Did something similar with DnD campaign where, taking advantage of the higher number of deaths that usually accompany beginner low lvl PCs, I had a powerful wizard pick them up after their first TPK (around lvl 2-3) and since then they’ve been indebted. When someone is missing the wizard just teleported him out to do some chores for him. Sometimes their away time is played out in a one-on-one session with them and they get some cool stuff.
Obvious plot device? Of course. Better than the alternative? Definitely. I’ll take suspending my disbelief over not playing any day.
We always state that the character is in the “character bag of holding”. Getting none of the benefits, and none of the bad that the group befalls. Came in handy during a Call of Cthulhu game where we had a TPK, but the one player not present was able to recruit some new investigators, to see where the others in the party went….
Optimal strategy: Rotating “skip game night” duty. It sucks not having Bob this week, but at least we’ll survive!
playing Sepent‘s Skull we just left the characters in the exploration camp. We started with 6 players and played whenever at least 4 players agreed on an evening and later when at least 3 where actually present. it went downhill rather quickly as 3 usual suspects didn‘t feel like they should even try to be present all the time.
It’s especially tough to manage when you’re in a big dungeon complex.
“So your character just tromps back through three dungeon levels of random encounters before hiking solo through the haunted forest back to town?”
“Yup.”
ಠ_ಠ
Currently binging from start to finish, so please pardon the late late late comment.
In my current game, I’m the one most likely players to have to miss a session, so I designed a Warlock of the ArchFey. My patron is notorious for yanking me for an assignment with no regard for what’s happening at the time.
Popping in and out at random times has also led to some comedy – our Rogue wrote up a quit-claim document for the treasure found during one of my jaunts.
Welcome to the comic. Please enjoy your binge. 🙂
I dig your built-in justification. Metagame problems leading to in-world creativity is one of my favorite things. And no doubt that Archfey are every bit as mercurial as elder gods.
I give reward points if people are present. They get one for being early and one for making the session. Once they get ten, they get a magic item.
Back in my day, gaming was the reward. Rabble rabble. 😛
What’s your in-universe justification for sudden magic items? Good karma presents form the gods?
In our games, when player couldn’t get to the game, we said that their character succumbed to polymorph into green sheep disease.
we usually say either they “just fucked off somewhere”, “vanished into the backrooms”, or just plain “went to take a piss”
Once, when I was joining a campaign I knew my attendance would be spotty in, I designed my character around it. He was caught in a weird magical experiment, and now he teleports randomly and has magic powers. (It sounds better with more context.
Of course, the campaign was episodic enough that it wasn’t really necessary, and my schedule stabilized before too long. Ah well.
My best explanation was that, much like we use conjuration/summoning spells to bring fey over to serve us, they have the capability to do the same in reverse. Whenever a fey uses a summoning spell, it can target a random mortal on the prime material plane, but sometimes they choose favorites.
You can either fill in the details in a brief narrative or simply explain it away with a wiped memory.
I’ve heard a number of folks talk about the “reverse summoning” concept. Makes me wonder if there’s an adventure out there that uses the idea.