Just throwing this out there. A long time ago (in the group I'm still in to this day) I was REALLY inconsistent on attending games because of my job loving to throw things at me with no warning on my day off, all of it "do it or you're fired" stuff. I was playing a really REALLY low intelligence character at the time, so if I couldn't play, my DM would just explain how I wandered off chasing something, or "thought I saw something". Then when I got to play again, I'd run back into the scene, usually holding a bug. It got to be enough of a running joke that, after I flat out quit that job and started showing up consistently, I'd still do the same, if only for restroom breaks, so me missing things while I was gone was still perfectly in character. (And didn't make the game have to stop while I stepped away, or anyone having to catch me up when I got back)
I love Scifi TTRPGs because "They are staying on the ship" works for a lot of character-based reasons, and you don't need to worry about the character needing to somehow travel by foot, alone, for days to catch up.
I'm the backup dm for my group and I've started a spell jammer campaign with this exact premise. I've just started, but the plan is to run one shot adventures with who ever is available when there isn't enough players for the main campaign.
Hopping from planet to planet also makes it kinda easy to be like "Umm... yeah, they're allergic to something on this particular world. Can't come near it" if you're looking to supply a reason why
"They Left, and It's a Good Story for Another Time" I actually just did this last month. At one point during our campaign, our Blood Hunter had a family emergency that he needed to take time away from the game for. So, at the end of the session before he had to leave, a dagger with a note attached flew through the window of the tavern and imbedded itself in the party's table. The dagger's pommel was shaped like a bird's claw, the symbol of the Blood Hunter's order, so he took the note, read it, immediately grabbed his sword and his pack, and said "I'll be back" in a tone that brooked no argument. They were gone for three sessions, then came back with a weird new ability that he refused to elaborate on, and we went along our merry way. Our campaign concluded in September, and our group was getting antsy waiting for the next campaign to start (someone else wanted to DM and they were still getting things ready), so I worked with them to brainstorm some ideas for a one-shot in the meantime. Nothing really jived with them until I mused "...Y'know, you never did find out where went when he left for a month." It was like a switch flipped and they were like "Ooooh yeah! Can we do that??" so I told them about his answering a call-to-arms from his Order to help push back an incursion from the Underdark. Long story short, everyone had a great time playing as part of a disciplined fighting force (with our Blood Hunter reprising his role and commanding the squad) rather than their usual ragtag bunch of misfits.
If a player knows they'll miss, I've had a lot of success giving them a Google Form asking some vague questions about what I have planned for the next session: "How does your character feel about This NPC? If a stranger offers your party a tit-for-tat exchange, does your character think they should go along with it?" Then, I'll use the "Special NPC" approach, but now I have a blueprint for how the character would act in specific scenarios, and the missing player still gets to feel like they're contributing instead of just leaving everything up to the DM/other players.
My husband is a teacher who helps run his school's Table-Top Game Club. What he uses to explain someone being gone is Pixies. Basically, random pixies came, grabbed their friend, and whisked them away. Then when the PC's player is back again, the pixies briefly came in, dumped the character back, and everyone continues on. It works for kids and it's hilarious.
This really compiles well with your last video about writing players out. I remember once my DM gave us a split path, and our Bard was gone that game. We had discussed before the game that my conscripted soldiers were making combat difficult to run (I had 4 soldier NPCs due to a faction feature in Ravnica), so I suggested that we send the Bard and my soldiers off one path, and we would take the other. When the two paths joined again at the start of the next session, the only survivor of a Roper attack was the Bard.
My DM has a variant of the gods-taking-heroes-away tactic. He has an otherplanar entity, I think it's called "The Keeper," who is utterly mysterious in his motives, but collects the characters without warning and takes them for an unknown task. When they return they almost never remember what they were doing, like remembering a dream, but they often have a new object in their possession as a token of that task. Also, they have more experience points, comparable with what the party had gained in the absence.
For over 40 years, my group has either parked characters 'back at camp' when narratively possible or they are absolutely there and vulnerable. That said, we have a homebrew system of fate points that can offset death in certain circumstances but if your character is there then they are there.
My players, early on, captured a doppelganger working for the Big Bad but they managed to escape from the party. Jump forward two months or so and a party member couldn't make it for a session. It was a perfect opportunity to get wacky. The party left that character sick in bed in the tavern and went out to complete a quest. I spoke with the missing player after that session and let him know what I was planning and he was all in. The session after he missed opened with the party returning to the tavern to see the Big Bad of the adventure standing there teasing their goblin bartender. After a conversation the Big Bad gets away and the party goes up stairs to find their sick party member sleeping off their illness and no worse for wear. To make a long story somewhat shorter the missing player and I swapped out his character for the doppelganger. Hijinks ensued and, per the doppelganger's orders, he managed to stall the party in town for nearly two full sessions. The reveal came when the party went to take out the Big Bad in his lair. They stumble on their party member, the real one, being interrogated. We entered initiative with most of the party still unsure of what was actually going on. When it came to the doppelganger's turn I looked at the player and asked what they would do. "Who's closest to me?" I pointed at the rogue player. "I attack her." At that point the jig was up and I took over running the doppelganger. I've only been DM'ing for about 8 months but that moment has been the highlight of that time. The entire table erupted into shock and laughter for a solid 10 minutes.
My favorite we came up with was that the paladin and fighter that frequently had to miss sessions had been tricked into investing in a time share. They were sharing it with a powerful but unwise Lich, a small orc horde, and a very polite halfling (who actually would leave it the messiest).
With consent there is always the too injured to fight excuse. They are there but right at the start of the fight or adventure a trap or a random lucky attack gave them an injury or broke them from the magic weave or something so that they'll stay safely back from fights and are more focused on their pain than contributing to group discussions. It'll heal. It just needs time.
My group played a lot of 2nd edition Planescape back in the day, and we always just joked that absent characters were summoned by a Wizard on the Material Plane
My group does a mix of "They left" and "They are needed elsewhere." For a wild amount of reasons, it's not surprising to wake up in our tavern hub to discover in the middle of the night one of us was arrested and somebody with the corresponding Sending Stone gets told about it (tyrannical city governments, amirite?) and at least for my character, you can never tell if I was hauled off to jail, my dad's patron was getting too close to comfort so I booked it, or if I'm doing recon over at a noble's house.
The two dms in my group have two approaches to this. DM 1 plays as the absent player but makes sure to never use stuff they can’t get back, additionally the character can’t die if their player isn’t there. DM2 says they’re sick but with the party, just staying in the back because they can’t fight
I recently had a player leave my campaign for a few months as he's off travelling. We set it up that he met a group of his kind (Goliaths) at a tournament, who offered him to go big game hunting. When the tournament was attacked, the rest of the party teleported out, while his character stayed behind to help fight off the invading forces. He's off with them, helping repel the forces in another country, helping the party from afar, until the player can return.
5:30 solution, They're Needed Elsewhere, has been explored in Pathfinder 1E. They had some really cool suggestions in the form of "metagame artifacts" in Artifacts and Legends. The artifact was called Scar of Destiny and it had the exact effects you describe here: hero disappears, helps people in another place (dimensions, plane, planet, etc.) and returns conveniently when the player is back at the table.
I made a magic item for 1 campaign. The orb of conviniance. It has cursed all the players and a number of NPC's over the years. The item randomly spits out random groups of people at random times. At the same time it teleports some of the released players back into the orb where they lie in stasis. The period of time is 1 game session but the characters might travel for weeks or have downtime or the session might be 1 large combat taking less than a few minutes. It also allowed me to give the character random NPC's to move or change the story, or even a new enemy. Was very useful for a group of 7 players who were somewhat unreliable.
I remember when the character you mentioned from CR almost died and the other players who were playing their character about lost it, well, one of them did lol. What I found most interesting was they talked about that very thing on the Talks Machina episode right before it happened and said “Oh no, Matt wouldn’t kill a character when the player wasn’t there.” I guess they didn’t run that by Matt though before the session lol A lot of really cool ways to explain or not explain the absence of a player/character and I think the reason chosen kind of depends on the type of session they have. I think Matt has dealt with Ashley’s absences using every method you have described in this video.
@@kelseyweber1791 Thank you! I know there were some moments in C1 jaegering, but i was also thinking about possible C2 moments with Laura and Liam away
In my last campaign, we had a player whose other obligations made him an inconsistant presence at the table. We basically just had his character (named "Twitchy") disappear. "Where's Twitchy?" is still something of a running joke in our group a few years out from the end of that campaign.
I send PC's to the Shadow Realm, a harmless but completely dark demiplane connected to our monk's dragonmark of shadow. It's easier than keeping track of absent player characters.
For one campaign, the GM duties were split between two friends, who played a brother and sister in the game. The one not currently GMing would be the one controlling both characters, and since they were basically on the same page for motivations and backstory (albeit a bit of a Sibling Rivalry going on), it was easy and felt pretty fair to have it work that way, giving us a consistent party without any worries about what the other character was doing or why.
#2 immediately made me think of the dwarves leaving lake town in the second Hobbit movie... 'that character just... over slept and missed the boat.' lol
I'm so glad you did a video on this. I struggle with it a lot when it crops up and it's nice to hear different approaches/ideas. So far I've handled it one of two ways in my games: either I or one of the other players has played the character for that session (this has happened mostly during wilderness travel when splitting up was dangerous/impossible), or I've had them break off to do something away from the group for a while and I've then run a 1 on 1 with that player to figure out what they did in that time. I think I might try out using the abscence as a plot hook sometime because that sounds fun. It would definitely fit with some of the locations in this world. But if anyone uses that trick of having the character break off to 'stay in the tavern' or 'wander off over there' or something- I really rec doing those 1 on 1 sessions. We've had so many good, crazy plot moments grow out of decisions characters made when isolated and it's made for some incredible sessions when the gang got back together.
In a campaign I run face-to-face for friends during the winter holidays, I tried a different approach that relies on both player and GM flexibility and works best in a mostly sandbox style. It was an Oriental Adventures style 3.5 game, with the large Shang Empire ruled by an evil emperor, based on an old D&D product called Dragon Fist but with a fair amount of adaptation. At the start of the campaign, I had everyone create two characters. To ensure they were not just the same character done twice, there were specific requirements: "Each player should create two characters. The two characters must be of different races (one human and one non-human) and backgrounds (noble, common, or barbarian birth). Players can play either or both characters, depending on the number of players available. Inactive characters will gain half experience doing off-stage stuff, and may be able to work at crafting items, being engaged in a profession, etc. Create two sets of ability scores to begin with and then develop the two characters from there." I had five nonhuman races available to pick from for their second character, all being races found in significant minorities within the empire: hengeyokai, kenku, korobokuru, spirit folk, and vanara. Race also determined background options. Humans also had to choose what type of human they were, which limited their background option, Shang (noble or common), Tung or Mixed (both common or barbarian). There were even two human languages, Shangi and Tungi. Some character class option were limited by background, for example samurai had to be noble, nomad (a variant of ranger) had to be barbarian, ninja had to be common, while some other classes were available for 2 or all 3 backgrounds. Because of various circumstances in that campaign, the number of available players could vary from 2 to 5. If only 2 players were available, I allowed both to play both of their characters, with the understanding that the adventure would be short enough that the character would be back in the city the party was based in at the end of the session. If 3+ players were available, they could play 1 character - and the party could go out on an adventure and not necessarily have to make it back that session. So it was possible to have the players playing two different subsets of their characters at any given time, due to different player availability. We would play about 3 times per week for 2-3 weeks, while I was in the area visiting. Keeping track of game time mattered, and some players really preferred one of their characters over the other, and that was perfectly fine. :) Characters that were unplayed got half experience as mentioned, but no treasure - in game, they were often simply doing various hinted at activities in or near the city that needed doing, and learning from those experiences, without needing details - they had a noble patron who facilitated such things. It was fun, sadly interrupted by the pandemic, but all the characters started at 2nd level, now 8 of the PCs are 8th level and 2 are 7th level. One cool thing it did was allow the players to find out about a job or task and then select a subset of the PCs best suited to the job. Wilderness trek? The two PCs with barbarian backgrounds definitely wanted in. Investigating strange events at an occupied castle? Gotta have a noble character or two to get in, and the skills of a ninja or yakuza might be handy!
Theres a published wotc adventure that I don't want to name for spoilers but the book specifically mentions "If a player is absent for a session, conspire with them and IF THEY AGREE" their PC could get kidnapped by the evil wizard who creates a simulacrum of them to rejoin the group as a spy, whom the player pilots until they rescue the imprisoned PC" and ideas like that or having a doppelganger replace them or even giving that player an npc or new character to pilot until the character is rescued can be cool ideas.
In our game, one of our players has a work schedule where he works a lot of our games, but is also free for most of them. My brother who is DMing the game had the idea and worked with the player to determine that in the character's backstory the guy pissed off a warlock's patron and was cursed to randomly turn into a doll, that way whenever the player is unable to be at game, the character has reverted into doll form.
If I'm not mistaken, it was Jacob from xptolevel3 that said he had an entity that was tasked with keeping breaks in reality from happening, so when a player couldn't show up and it was very hard to explain the character just leaving at that moment, this entity would appear and fetch the PC and deliver them back next session. I forgot the name, and I can't find the video where he talks about it, but I made one for me and I'm using it. I think it is a very fun idea, and this NPC can even be used in other situations around the world that would fit his job description, not only fetching players
There's also another alternative: Play something else or a Battle Royale. We have one-shots prepared so that if someone is missing we play a backup game. Only works if everyone is ok with it and the group meets on a regular basis.
Or "fight club" pick a big bad and run the party in a fight with no consequences ... test of tactics for both sides like learning new game; used that when in no start to run all the plots of main game effectively,
my table has "auto-pilot in case of absence" options that are basic 101s of priorities, IC actions and rundowns of resources that other players can use in case someone's not there for a battle or other important moment, along with the excuse of "[Character] has larangytis this week so talk to the rest of us instead!" We trust each other so it works out very well for us.
In my campaign, we have another player run the character if it's only one session. Generally that character just doesn't talk much during the session unless the group decides by consensus that it would make sense for the character to take a particular action. For longer-term absences, we find an in-game reason to write them out of the story. In the games I've played in, we generally use a mixture, usually a cross between glass box and "special NPC." Or if there is a convenient in game excuse that can take away the character for the session, that seems to be the gold standard.
In my group, it is extremely rare to have an absence that isn't known ahead of time, so often the answer is to write them out at the end of the session. It's always very situational, but we spend a lot of time in hubs (cities or travel methods), so there are often options, and it sometimes works in the "oh, before the group gathers in this session, blah blah left to run errands" way.
I'm joining my friend's campaign, and we basically made my character keeping in mind that I'm super busy and will sometimes have to miss sessions, so we made my character a ghost, but said that the ghost-ification process had gone wrong, so I keep getting randomly yeeted in and out of the afterlife
The FATE system has a rule for absent players: the PC leaves due to story reasons but when the player comes back they can choose to roll a check to gain something relevant to the story (knowledge for plot relevant information, endurance for healing, social skills to make some contacts, etc) or to gain a FATE point, which is just as valuable as a resource
My go to method is to run an ingame group or faction as if it were being run in a west marches style campaign even if the campaign is single party through and through. Have a group patron or faction as a main quest giver. That faction/patron sends the PCs out on missions. Whenever a player can't make one or two sessions their character was called back to base camp or portaled away because their specific backstory nonsense is needed for a mission being run by another group. This is also a good way to repeatedly introduce a rival party or "Linear Guild" to the PCs. They keep bumping into "those guys" out in the field, and they can't simply kill them because they're all part of the same mercenary company or expedition force or mage college or whatever.
At my table, we've used every method except for "they're here and their vulnerable". Most often, we have one or two present players "jager" the missing player's character with the understanding from the players that they won't use up any items and the understanding from the DM that the character won't be killed.
Since I usually end my sessions at a point where the party will be resting, or just after they've rested, I roleplay as the absent player's character and explain that I'll be remaining at the camp/inn to rest a bit longer and will catch up with the party later. In a future session when the absent player returns, I do a quick narration to go over their character following the party's tracks, then the session begins with everyone reuniting. I like taking this approach since I think it's a good middle ground. It still keeps the immersion and it's less work since the players and I don't need to track/run an extra character. That said, I'd also be open to that player's character doing some downtime activities during their missed session, as it could open up some interesting scenarios and story hooks.
I had to write out a PC for a session because they had to go to a wedding so I picked out a detail from the backstory and worked out to have it happen at the end of the session. The other PCs were shocked and confused as to why their paladin started a bar fight and only went after 1 person but that led into the mystery of the next session. The PC was being held in the temple's jail to figure out what kind of punishment would be appropriate as the party had to figure out what was going on while trying to get the villagers back on their side. It was a fun situation that helped the plot forward without having to wonder where the PC was. It was a nice side quest that filled a session. The person came back at the very end of our session to find that next session, his character was being released because of the success of the other players. Fast forward to later on the campaign when everything was revealed, they remembered that whole situation since they had some ideas of what happened and it all clicked. It was a great feeling seeing them so happy that they were so close to figuring it out even without some of the major clues. That was only really possible since I did have a week's warning to prep to write them out and not like 15 minutes. Another time, it was last minute so I had the idea of fleshing out a moment of downtime. To sort of go through the motions of a small mission that two of the paladins went on. There was another time where it was one of the paladins and his rowdy rogue friend and what happened on that drunken night that they couldn't quite remember. When a person can't make it the day of, I usually just ask the group if they want to expand on that kind of stuff or we can do a smaller game like one of those 1 page rpgs. I enjoy running a silly game of Tactical Waifu since the whole goal is leaning hard on anime cliques that I just find it hilarious and it doesn't matter what happened the last time you took it out because plenty of anime has completely retconned important things without explanation so no need to worry about it.
My warlock has an Arch Fey patron. Any time I am gone, we said my warlock got pulled through a portal and when he reappeared he would get pushed out again, sometimes from 30 feet in the air. It was hilarious.
What I like is between the tavarian answer and the side quest answer. First scene of the absent session finds the character missing with signs of a struggle. A second scene occurs based on what the characters are doing to search where a n p c way out of the character three thanks. 1) Firstly something to the effect of rhyme on it and there's nothing you can do till I do my part. 2) Not to tip at the big players I making either you think of it or not being obviously searching in the meantime. This instruction will at least strongly imply the the party should complete their current operation if they're on one. 3) The major MPC will also say that the competition is unlikely to underestimate the pcs. That they should therefore look for the sign that the big believe there are believes when they have an opportunity to tip. The balance in the missing pc"s favor. I give the returning player. A gurgled version of their abduction that leaves them not entirely clear on what happened and contains plot hooks and/or clues that didn't have an obvious other way to bring to the pcs. This leaves a dilemma of weather to follow up the new clues right away or take a side quest to figure out what happens to the pc while they were missing
My groups have a rule; if you let us know you can't make a session three days or more in advance, we'll try to reschedule. If you don't, we're going on without you. (Usually- if it's a very plot important session or that specific character is explicitly needed, we might just cancel and try again another time). Regardless, we usually take an approach that mixes together "They're here, they're fine, don't worry about it" and "they're a special kind of NPC." The DM doesn't roleplay the character, and doesn't have them do anything outside combat aside from an occasional stealth roll or dex save or the like when the whole group is called to make one. But the DM does play the character in combat. The reason for this is to save stress and headache for the DM in balancing combats. In the games I run especially, combat is uncommon but brutal when it happens. I balance my combats for the number of players I have, and stretch them to the ends of their resources to make it feel like they're really fighting for their lives. Having one less player would throw off my balance and force me to make some frantic last minute adjustments to my encounters.
I played a campaign where my 6 year old wanted to play as well. We let him but part way through sessions he would get up and walk away for a bit. Sometimes he'd come back for combat, sometimes he was just done. We decided that in game he had narcolepsy and would fall asleep randomly.
The first session I had a player miss the start of a storyline, I had it so their character went missing. This prompted the party to investigate a shady group who were also exploring the dungeon. The next session when the player was back I had the character appear in the dungeon under mysterious circumstances. Later on I cut to the shady group torturing that player's character away from the rest of the party. The player had to make a dramatic escape. When the rest of the party asked, "if he is over there, then who is this with us?" that's when I took over roleplaying as that character. Until that point I had the player roleplaying as their own perfect doppelgänger without them knowing. Fun twist, the missing player got to learn a lot of information about the villains, have a solo encounter and didn't have to wait around for their turn during what would have otherwise been a split party situation. Granted, everyone else had to wait during the dramatic escape, so not a perfect plan. It was fun, though.
Guess I'm a hard ass! I tend to the final solution. Though I'm clear it up to them, weather they fade away or give control to another player. I make sure to tell them if a TPK happens because they're character was not there to help, then they also need to roll a new character. This is usually enough encouragement to let the other players run their character.
For druid characters I've done: A) the druid gets stuck in wildshape. This explains why the character didn't participate in conversations and why the party can use the druids gear. B) when druid uses conjure beasts spell it is possible that another druid is summoned and forced into wildshape. This is my variant of being called by the gods. [This is part of an ancient pact between the primal animal spirits and the first druids. Rumor has it that the more abusive a druid is with conjure animals, the more likely that druid is to be forced into wildshape and summoned. ]
One of my players was having a baby so we had her character get kidnapped and used for a cult to use as a vessel for a powerful devil. players stopped that branch of the cult and saved her (4 months worth of sessions. she got a sword meant for the devil as a reward) and now theyre currently following leads to find out who the cult leader is
I have a player who can't be in game for whole sessions, so we crafted someone crazy. This guy in a mask is disguising his chaotic madness as theatricals and flashy magics, he has a lot of fans in universe and the players also love him, but he often leaves without notice, sometimes even mid-combat because... he thinks it's funny.
I usually do either method 1 or 2 based on which suits the situation best. But for option one we just say all their attacks miss (and they only cast cantrips they’re a spell caster) and that this makes them non-threatening to enemies so they don’t get attacked either
My players had been stuck in the way ancient past for a few months worth of sessions and when they finally were going to go back to 1927, one of our players, our Monk, had a bit of medical trouble and couldnt make the session. Her Monk has had some severe mental trauma in the campaign however cuz she died and was brought back to life with a nagging pumpkin demon creature in her head filling her with doubt and its kinda been eating away at her. Then she nearly died again right before transporting back so I just told the other players that she seemed to be on autopilot until they found their sort of surrogate son, at which point I just had her leave with him back home, while the rest of the party handled other RP and logistical stuff. The next session our Druid couldnt make it, but the Monk was able to make it, so we did a little mini dungeon where we ran through her head, fighting the pumpkin monster and trying to get her confidence back a little bit. But she nearly died again, leaving the mental projections of her friends to fight off her demons for her. Hopefully tonight we get to explore the consequences of all of that and the doubts in her characters head.
I can very easily see that as a good ol Power of Friendship Aesop. "You can't fight your doubts alone, but with the help of your friends anything is possible"
I once ran a campaign where my shtick to explain missing players was that they found a mysterious obelisk in session 1 that granted them a small buff to constitution, but which also cursed them. They would, at no specific intervals, turn into a small statuette. So the players who were present would carry the statuette around. My friends all looked at me with that "I see what you did there" look in their eyes, but they were totally on board and enjoyed it!
In my first game I had one of the player left in the middle of the game because an urgent matter at home. Decided that during the battle he will be in combat (controlled by one of the players) but wasn't attacked and the only resource he used (a javelin) he could get it back. So, I'm happy to see I wasn't off tracks.
I've seen a solution where DM played the absent player's character as an NPC until the player was able to return. It was a pretty interesting solution and the DM also explain that the character was tired and had a quiet day and therefore didn't speak during their session. And when the player returned, then the character had to take a short rest before it could speak again.
Yeah, I've used almost all of these methods. My go to is that they become a Special NPC with a dash of vulnerable, they can lose stuff, but they cannot die.(I never allow a PC to die when they are not present). Another go to is they go into the "No-Space" where they're around but we don't worry about it or make use of them, and then we come up for what they were doing while everybody was busy, usually they've got a stomach bug or something. I also do a version where they are vulnerable, and still present (they still cannot die) but they are unconscious for some reason or another, and now the other PC's have to take care of and lug around this passed out pal of theirs. In that case they can make use of their gear to a degree, but I'm pretty insistent on there being role playing consequences to that, and it's lead to pvp a couple of times (which was a good outcome actually). I also tend to have traps that teleport people away, or turn them into dolls or something happen to come up when I know a PC is going to be absent all of a sudden. But they're all good options. Mostly I think people overthink it.
My group started a Ravnica campaign this past weekend that’s taking the place of Cyberpunk for awhile. My best friend couldn’t make it due to real life shit so my DM came up with the excuse of a higher up in her character’s guild getting her out of the job the others were doing as the reason for her character not being there and he’ll probably work in a moment for her character to join the party next session. It’s a bit rare that one of us will control another’s character but it has happened before, usually if we’re in the middle of exploring a dungeon or some such and it’s usually just been done for combat. I’ve missed two sessions due to being out of town. In one, my character had previously died so it wasnt a big deal. Of course that session also ended in a TPK so everyone started with new characters when I got back. In the other I’d left a short list of what I wanted my character to do while the party was exploring an area. Stuff like ritual casting detect magic and having her bat familiar act as a scout as well as keeping her at a distance during combat because squishy wizard. However another player was also absent that day so the rest of the group spent the time chatting
I am very much a "If the player misses a session the characters there but isn't" GM. It's the easiest way to do it and my players know not to ask for the missing player to heal them or anything. Im already running a lot during encounters both social and combat without trying to figure out what someone's complex multiclass build with a motivations I might not fully understand is doing. I I'd do the "Oh they left" angle but this becomes a problem if the players go to a new area or if they're somewhere dangerous or locked off when the player returns. It can be tough to write them back in.
My groups always have the short hand of "they're standing in the background picking their nose" as the explanation for when a player is away, which is fun because I feel like we all have days where we're just not focused and kind of just vibing.
Funnily enough, we had to do accommodate a missing player recently. Just before a fight our druid had to collapse unconscious (for a thematic in game reason) while the player had real life to do. We had split the fight over two nights so he conveniently woke up at the start of the next session. :)
I've had terrible luck with missing players, even with the flexibility that online play offers. Here are a couple of options you can add to your list that are even more drastic solutions to the problem. In a group that played weekly, a certain player had frequent scheduling conflicts. We tried to run their character as a kind of NPC, but it wasn't a great solution since it happened consistently. Eventually we decided to create a set of side characters for everyone consistent. That party was doing things on the other side of the same world, so there were familiar aspects to the world, but we wouldn't interfere with the other story line. When I GM, the groups are usually small, so I prefer for none of the players to miss a session. I've seen groups where unavoidable absences line up with important party choices and that is never a fun thing to miss. The option I've had the most luck with, anytime we are missing a player we play a one-shot or some other kind of rules lite RPG. We recently tried SKULLBOX and it was a good single session RPGish option.
The table I play at does the last option, or maybe something kind of between the last two. Generally the missing player's character won't be actively targeted in their absence, so character death is unlikely unless the overall combat goes incredibly poorly, but it's on the table. I think resurrection would definitely be on the table if a missing player's character died unless there was a full TPK though.
Seemingly gone are the days of, "If you aren't here, your character isn't and gets no XP unless someone plays them for you." People don't like varied levels. I grew up treating the PC of an absent player as being down with dysentery. Nowadays, we usually just don't play unless everyone's present.
I think some of this is that 5e is generally played less episodically than, say 2e. Combat, especially at higher level, can be very time-consuming, and sessions are generally shorter than they were a few decades ago. It's much more common to pause in the middle of dungeon and pick up where you left off rather than end every session with the party heading back to town and beginning every session with the party heading back to the dungeon. "What do I do about the player who isn't here?" is more of a problem when you end sessions on a cliffhanger before a big dungeon fight rather than ending them with the party getting as much treasure as possible back to town. Keeping everyone the same level is also heavily influenced by most of the modern 5e modules using milestone or story-based progression instead of XP leveling -- it's much harder to only give xp to players who were there when you're running on DM fiat to level.
In one of my games, the rogue couldn't make it for the last 2 sessions, and the cleric couldn't make it for the last one, so we said they both got sick.
There's another, that works better for home games and online sessions than APs. Reschedule, and maybe do something else as a group. Particularly if the group's small so the absence of one person means a third of the group's missing.
Thieves’ Cant isn’t a full natural language. It’s basically Cockney Rhyming Slang (much of which was used in Planescape slang) plus hobo signs. Other people can hear or see it and learn bits and pieces, though they aren’t fluent.
Laura was absent and had Travis piloting her character. They were crossing a rickety bridge, and they had no idea what was on the bottom. Poor Stealth checks resulted in repeated Wisdom saves, and if they hadn't tied eachother together in preparation several characters would have fallen off into something unknown. Sam made a choice to sever his character, whose low strength score made them vulnerable, and determined her solo Stealth would be enough. Unfortunately she failed a Wisdom save and ran off into the pit, of what turned out to be a amorphous body of monsters. Laura began spamming Travis's cell, watching the game from home, and he didn't want to make her character do as she intended, because he felt this would kill her character. After some OOC persuasion, Travis had Jester jump into the darkness after the Goblin, and after taking some damage, she grabbed the party member and used Dimension Door to teleport both characters back to 'relative' safety. I find this example hard to weigh playing an absent player's character, because in Laura's case, "Its what her character would do." And the weight of those choices foisted onto someone with less knowledge or less confidence, can't be easy in a game of variables, long term consequences, or even in Travis's case a percieved irl consequence.
I’ve been creating my own pantheon and having a lot of trouble making it interesting or fun to work on. Could you make an episode on how to deign a good one?
TL;DR: Each player writes a table (1d6 or 1d10) of general in and out of combat options for their PC that the DM uses in their absence. In my play-by-post campaign, we made an agreement that the PCs would control the missing char, but at some point it was troublesome, because since "everyone" owned it, no one actually took the time to get to know the missing PC's sheet (because we play by post, when someone can't play it's usually for a couple of days or even a full week). Then we agreed that the DM, me, would control and it flowed better. But while watching your video I thought of a different approach, much like several rules in 5e, each player could create a table of actions (1d6 or 1d10) that their PC would perform in and out of combat. It could be general-direction sentences, and also distribute them unevenly to account for probability (say 4 options in the 1d10 table as opposed to 10). A similar approach would be a simple IA just like monsters in the D&D boardgames have: if next to an enemy attack, otherwise move into melee range of the nearest enemy, etc. But all of those should be responsibility of the player, they would need to provide those pointers, and ultimately how comfortable with resources (don't use spell slots, only cantrips).
Some time ago i had problem at my job at because of that i could only attend every second session in my DnD group so I departed my current PC and create a new for this time (because i knew it was only temporarily). So I created warforged who had the ability to transform himself to a chest with wheels and everytime i was out of a table I had malfunction and I had to transform Myself and just follow the PCs. Eventually my job problem got resolved but by that time i fell in love with this character and in the story we fix that malfunction problem and I play this character till today and never came back to my orginal one...
I can't see myself joining a group/DM'ing myself in a way other then 'if they are gone they T pose in a corner' which is both funny and non intrusive. In the end, I just like that we all know that we are playing a game and taking a breather from it is just as good as being sucked into at time. There are some questions that sometimes come up in the table I play at when the character with all the potions leave if they can use it (which is always an understandable no), but I think if I ever DM again that I will allow them to use them, but leave it to the player that left if they are actually used. If they say no in this case, I will just have them charge a gold fee per potion used so it is not just free healing. This, of course, will not work for anyone, but I do think that sometimes you can give the player gameplay ultimatums above the table and being clear about it what the ramifications are, etc etc
Does anyone have a good way to handle one player missing sessions the most besides just playing with people who's schedule align? I had this happen in the past and we just didn't play in that case because I didn't wanted her to become disconnected/disinterested from the campaign by missing critical sessions and not fully knowing what has happend.
For the “NPC” options, as a player, I really don’t like these. It may preserve immersion for the game, but it breaks it in some ways for me. The idea of an “I did what?” moment kind of sours me, even if it’s not “bad”. Character choices are very individual, and many times, even the DM may not realize or remember parts of my constructed backstory or personality. If I return to a game to find out that my character did things that I would consider out of character, it doesn’t sit well with me. Even if this is just stupid jokes, or brawling, or seducing a bar maid kind of stuff, if my character wouldn’t do those things, and they did, it’s not good. Conversely, if my character was present and didn’t act in some way in a situation, that also can be immersion-breaking. So, if you’re going the NPC route, don’t just consider what’s good for the overall game, but what’s good for that player. I know plenty of players who probably wouldn’t care, as long as they don’t get killed. I (often) do care (depending on the character I’m running).
Geezer here... Have been tagged by scammers 6 times in the last year. All claimed I won something. All asking me to contact through the Telegram app. How can anyone fall for this? On no video or the channel home page was any contest mentioned. Wakey up people. With my rant out of the way....... We just don't worry about it. The players that show have a character. Those that show are members of the party. The no-shows, we worry not. Not very narrative, just effective. Gaming on.
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The longer I play the more I use randomisers, and more sand box the game style. My players will always poke at something interesting and the skills are there now to improvise more around it. And it pushes more creativity out of me. "The imprisoned goblin necromancer is the good guy in this castle?..."
Always! There used to be an amazing site called Abulafia that had a billion great generators. I used it for everything, all the time, I just had a tab open whenever I was running something. But the site broke and the guy running it didn't have time to fix it....sigh. Now I hunt down other stuff, but it just isn't the same.
Just throwing this out there. A long time ago (in the group I'm still in to this day) I was REALLY inconsistent on attending games because of my job loving to throw things at me with no warning on my day off, all of it "do it or you're fired" stuff. I was playing a really REALLY low intelligence character at the time, so if I couldn't play, my DM would just explain how I wandered off chasing something, or "thought I saw something". Then when I got to play again, I'd run back into the scene, usually holding a bug. It got to be enough of a running joke that, after I flat out quit that job and started showing up consistently, I'd still do the same, if only for restroom breaks, so me missing things while I was gone was still perfectly in character. (And didn't make the game have to stop while I stepped away, or anyone having to catch me up when I got back)
If someone makes a character like this with a VTT, it calls for a random d100 table to pick what they ran off chasing during the break lol
I love Scifi TTRPGs because "They are staying on the ship" works for a lot of character-based reasons, and you don't need to worry about the character needing to somehow travel by foot, alone, for days to catch up.
I'm the backup dm for my group and I've started a spell jammer campaign with this exact premise. I've just started, but the plan is to run one shot adventures with who ever is available when there isn't enough players for the main campaign.
Hopping from planet to planet also makes it kinda easy to be like "Umm... yeah, they're allergic to something on this particular world. Can't come near it" if you're looking to supply a reason why
"They Left, and It's a Good Story for Another Time"
I actually just did this last month. At one point during our campaign, our Blood Hunter had a family emergency that he needed to take time away from the game for. So, at the end of the session before he had to leave, a dagger with a note attached flew through the window of the tavern and imbedded itself in the party's table. The dagger's pommel was shaped like a bird's claw, the symbol of the Blood Hunter's order, so he took the note, read it, immediately grabbed his sword and his pack, and said "I'll be back" in a tone that brooked no argument.
They were gone for three sessions, then came back with a weird new ability that he refused to elaborate on, and we went along our merry way. Our campaign concluded in September, and our group was getting antsy waiting for the next campaign to start (someone else wanted to DM and they were still getting things ready), so I worked with them to brainstorm some ideas for a one-shot in the meantime. Nothing really jived with them until I mused "...Y'know, you never did find out where went when he left for a month."
It was like a switch flipped and they were like "Ooooh yeah! Can we do that??" so I told them about his answering a call-to-arms from his Order to help push back an incursion from the Underdark. Long story short, everyone had a great time playing as part of a disciplined fighting force (with our Blood Hunter reprising his role and commanding the squad) rather than their usual ragtag bunch of misfits.
If a player knows they'll miss, I've had a lot of success giving them a Google Form asking some vague questions about what I have planned for the next session: "How does your character feel about This NPC? If a stranger offers your party a tit-for-tat exchange, does your character think they should go along with it?" Then, I'll use the "Special NPC" approach, but now I have a blueprint for how the character would act in specific scenarios, and the missing player still gets to feel like they're contributing instead of just leaving everything up to the DM/other players.
Last session our Bard was absent, we explained it away as her staying behind to help boost morale for a town that had recently been raided.
Nice!
My husband is a teacher who helps run his school's Table-Top Game Club. What he uses to explain someone being gone is Pixies. Basically, random pixies came, grabbed their friend, and whisked them away. Then when the PC's player is back again, the pixies briefly came in, dumped the character back, and everyone continues on. It works for kids and it's hilarious.
This really compiles well with your last video about writing players out. I remember once my DM gave us a split path, and our Bard was gone that game. We had discussed before the game that my conscripted soldiers were making combat difficult to run (I had 4 soldier NPCs due to a faction feature in Ravnica), so I suggested that we send the Bard and my soldiers off one path, and we would take the other. When the two paths joined again at the start of the next session, the only survivor of a Roper attack was the Bard.
My DM has a variant of the gods-taking-heroes-away tactic. He has an otherplanar entity, I think it's called "The Keeper," who is utterly mysterious in his motives, but collects the characters without warning and takes them for an unknown task. When they return they almost never remember what they were doing, like remembering a dream, but they often have a new object in their possession as a token of that task. Also, they have more experience points, comparable with what the party had gained in the absence.
For over 40 years, my group has either parked characters 'back at camp' when narratively possible or they are absolutely there and vulnerable. That said, we have a homebrew system of fate points that can offset death in certain circumstances but if your character is there then they are there.
My players, early on, captured a doppelganger working for the Big Bad but they managed to escape from the party. Jump forward two months or so and a party member couldn't make it for a session. It was a perfect opportunity to get wacky. The party left that character sick in bed in the tavern and went out to complete a quest. I spoke with the missing player after that session and let him know what I was planning and he was all in. The session after he missed opened with the party returning to the tavern to see the Big Bad of the adventure standing there teasing their goblin bartender. After a conversation the Big Bad gets away and the party goes up stairs to find their sick party member sleeping off their illness and no worse for wear.
To make a long story somewhat shorter the missing player and I swapped out his character for the doppelganger. Hijinks ensued and, per the doppelganger's orders, he managed to stall the party in town for nearly two full sessions. The reveal came when the party went to take out the Big Bad in his lair. They stumble on their party member, the real one, being interrogated. We entered initiative with most of the party still unsure of what was actually going on. When it came to the doppelganger's turn I looked at the player and asked what they would do. "Who's closest to me?" I pointed at the rogue player. "I attack her." At that point the jig was up and I took over running the doppelganger.
I've only been DM'ing for about 8 months but that moment has been the highlight of that time. The entire table erupted into shock and laughter for a solid 10 minutes.
My favorite we came up with was that the paladin and fighter that frequently had to miss sessions had been tricked into investing in a time share. They were sharing it with a powerful but unwise Lich, a small orc horde, and a very polite halfling (who actually would leave it the messiest).
With consent there is always the too injured to fight excuse. They are there but right at the start of the fight or adventure a trap or a random lucky attack gave them an injury or broke them from the magic weave or something so that they'll stay safely back from fights and are more focused on their pain than contributing to group discussions. It'll heal. It just needs time.
My group played a lot of 2nd edition Planescape back in the day, and we always just joked that absent characters were summoned by a Wizard on the Material Plane
My group does a mix of "They left" and "They are needed elsewhere." For a wild amount of reasons, it's not surprising to wake up in our tavern hub to discover in the middle of the night one of us was arrested and somebody with the corresponding Sending Stone gets told about it (tyrannical city governments, amirite?) and at least for my character, you can never tell if I was hauled off to jail, my dad's patron was getting too close to comfort so I booked it, or if I'm doing recon over at a noble's house.
The two dms in my group have two approaches to this. DM 1 plays as the absent player but makes sure to never use stuff they can’t get back, additionally the character can’t die if their player isn’t there. DM2 says they’re sick but with the party, just staying in the back because they can’t fight
I recently had a player leave my campaign for a few months as he's off travelling. We set it up that he met a group of his kind (Goliaths) at a tournament, who offered him to go big game hunting. When the tournament was attacked, the rest of the party teleported out, while his character stayed behind to help fight off the invading forces. He's off with them, helping repel the forces in another country, helping the party from afar, until the player can return.
5:30 solution, They're Needed Elsewhere, has been explored in Pathfinder 1E. They had some really cool suggestions in the form of "metagame artifacts" in Artifacts and Legends. The artifact was called Scar of Destiny and it had the exact effects you describe here: hero disappears, helps people in another place (dimensions, plane, planet, etc.) and returns conveniently when the player is back at the table.
I made a magic item for 1 campaign. The orb of conviniance. It has cursed all the players and a number of NPC's over the years. The item randomly spits out random groups of people at random times. At the same time it teleports some of the released players back into the orb where they lie in stasis. The period of time is 1 game session but the characters might travel for weeks or have downtime or the session might be 1 large combat taking less than a few minutes. It also allowed me to give the character random NPC's to move or change the story, or even a new enemy. Was very useful for a group of 7 players who were somewhat unreliable.
I remember when the character you mentioned from CR almost died and the other players who were playing their character about lost it, well, one of them did lol. What I found most interesting was they talked about that very thing on the Talks Machina episode right before it happened and said “Oh no, Matt wouldn’t kill a character when the player wasn’t there.” I guess they didn’t run that by Matt though before the session lol
A lot of really cool ways to explain or not explain the absence of a player/character and I think the reason chosen kind of depends on the type of session they have. I think Matt has dealt with Ashley’s absences using every method you have described in this video.
Can I get a hint of this. I remember a couple of candidates but can’t pin it down and it’s bugging me!
@@willn9568 The one instance I was talking about is in episode 83 of the first campaign. Hope this helps!
@@kelseyweber1791 Thank you! I know there were some moments in C1 jaegering, but i was also thinking about possible C2 moments with Laura and Liam away
The arrival of scammers is a big milestone in the growth of every RUclips channel, congrats!
Lol I still don’t think it’s happened in my comments yet but no harm in getting out ahead of it :)
In my last campaign, we had a player whose other obligations made him an inconsistant presence at the table. We basically just had his character (named "Twitchy") disappear. "Where's Twitchy?" is still something of a running joke in our group a few years out from the end of that campaign.
😂
I send PC's to the Shadow Realm, a harmless but completely dark demiplane connected to our monk's dragonmark of shadow. It's easier than keeping track of absent player characters.
For one campaign, the GM duties were split between two friends, who played a brother and sister in the game. The one not currently GMing would be the one controlling both characters, and since they were basically on the same page for motivations and backstory (albeit a bit of a Sibling Rivalry going on), it was easy and felt pretty fair to have it work that way, giving us a consistent party without any worries about what the other character was doing or why.
#2 immediately made me think of the dwarves leaving lake town in the second Hobbit movie... 'that character just... over slept and missed the boat.' lol
I'm so glad you did a video on this. I struggle with it a lot when it crops up and it's nice to hear different approaches/ideas. So far I've handled it one of two ways in my games: either I or one of the other players has played the character for that session (this has happened mostly during wilderness travel when splitting up was dangerous/impossible), or I've had them break off to do something away from the group for a while and I've then run a 1 on 1 with that player to figure out what they did in that time.
I think I might try out using the abscence as a plot hook sometime because that sounds fun. It would definitely fit with some of the locations in this world.
But if anyone uses that trick of having the character break off to 'stay in the tavern' or 'wander off over there' or something- I really rec doing those 1 on 1 sessions. We've had so many good, crazy plot moments grow out of decisions characters made when isolated and it's made for some incredible sessions when the gang got back together.
In a campaign I run face-to-face for friends during the winter holidays, I tried a different approach that relies on both player and GM flexibility and works best in a mostly sandbox style. It was an Oriental Adventures style 3.5 game, with the large Shang Empire ruled by an evil emperor, based on an old D&D product called Dragon Fist but with a fair amount of adaptation.
At the start of the campaign, I had everyone create two characters. To ensure they were not just the same character done twice, there were specific requirements:
"Each player should create two characters. The two characters must be of different races (one human and one non-human) and backgrounds (noble, common, or barbarian birth).
Players can play either or both characters, depending on the number of players available. Inactive characters will gain half experience doing off-stage stuff, and may be able to work at crafting items, being engaged in a profession, etc.
Create two sets of ability scores to begin with and then develop the two characters from there."
I had five nonhuman races available to pick from for their second character, all being races found in significant minorities within the empire: hengeyokai, kenku, korobokuru, spirit folk, and vanara. Race also determined background options.
Humans also had to choose what type of human they were, which limited their background option, Shang (noble or common), Tung or Mixed (both common or barbarian). There were even two human languages, Shangi and Tungi.
Some character class option were limited by background, for example samurai had to be noble, nomad (a variant of ranger) had to be barbarian, ninja had to be common, while some other classes were available for 2 or all 3 backgrounds.
Because of various circumstances in that campaign, the number of available players could vary from 2 to 5. If only 2 players were available, I allowed both to play both of their characters, with the understanding that the adventure would be short enough that the character would be back in the city the party was based in at the end of the session. If 3+ players were available, they could play 1 character - and the party could go out on an adventure and not necessarily have to make it back that session. So it was possible to have the players playing two different subsets of their characters at any given time, due to different player availability. We would play about 3 times per week for 2-3 weeks, while I was in the area visiting.
Keeping track of game time mattered, and some players really preferred one of their characters over the other, and that was perfectly fine. :) Characters that were unplayed got half experience as mentioned, but no treasure - in game, they were often simply doing various hinted at activities in or near the city that needed doing, and learning from those experiences, without needing details - they had a noble patron who facilitated such things.
It was fun, sadly interrupted by the pandemic, but all the characters started at 2nd level, now 8 of the PCs are 8th level and 2 are 7th level. One cool thing it did was allow the players to find out about a job or task and then select a subset of the PCs best suited to the job. Wilderness trek? The two PCs with barbarian backgrounds definitely wanted in. Investigating strange events at an occupied castle? Gotta have a noble character or two to get in, and the skills of a ninja or yakuza might be handy!
Theres a published wotc adventure that I don't want to name for spoilers but the book specifically mentions "If a player is absent for a session, conspire with them and IF THEY AGREE" their PC could get kidnapped by the evil wizard who creates a simulacrum of them to rejoin the group as a spy, whom the player pilots until they rescue the imprisoned PC" and ideas like that or having a doppelganger replace them or even giving that player an npc or new character to pilot until the character is rescued can be cool ideas.
In our game, one of our players has a work schedule where he works a lot of our games, but is also free for most of them. My brother who is DMing the game had the idea and worked with the player to determine that in the character's backstory the guy pissed off a warlock's patron and was cursed to randomly turn into a doll, that way whenever the player is unable to be at game, the character has reverted into doll form.
If I'm not mistaken, it was Jacob from xptolevel3 that said he had an entity that was tasked with keeping breaks in reality from happening, so when a player couldn't show up and it was very hard to explain the character just leaving at that moment, this entity would appear and fetch the PC and deliver them back next session. I forgot the name, and I can't find the video where he talks about it, but I made one for me and I'm using it. I think it is a very fun idea, and this NPC can even be used in other situations around the world that would fit his job description, not only fetching players
There's also another alternative: Play something else or a Battle Royale. We have one-shots prepared so that if someone is missing we play a backup game. Only works if everyone is ok with it and the group meets on a regular basis.
Or "fight club" pick a big bad and run the party in a fight with no consequences ... test of tactics for both sides like learning new game; used that when in no start to run all the plots of main game effectively,
my table has "auto-pilot in case of absence" options that are basic 101s of priorities, IC actions and rundowns of resources that other players can use in case someone's not there for a battle or other important moment, along with the excuse of "[Character] has larangytis this week so talk to the rest of us instead!" We trust each other so it works out very well for us.
In my campaign, we have another player run the character if it's only one session. Generally that character just doesn't talk much during the session unless the group decides by consensus that it would make sense for the character to take a particular action. For longer-term absences, we find an in-game reason to write them out of the story. In the games I've played in, we generally use a mixture, usually a cross between glass box and "special NPC." Or if there is a convenient in game excuse that can take away the character for the session, that seems to be the gold standard.
In my group, it is extremely rare to have an absence that isn't known ahead of time, so often the answer is to write them out at the end of the session. It's always very situational, but we spend a lot of time in hubs (cities or travel methods), so there are often options, and it sometimes works in the "oh, before the group gathers in this session, blah blah left to run errands" way.
I'm joining my friend's campaign, and we basically made my character keeping in mind that I'm super busy and will sometimes have to miss sessions, so we made my character a ghost, but said that the ghost-ification process had gone wrong, so I keep getting randomly yeeted in and out of the afterlife
The FATE system has a rule for absent players: the PC leaves due to story reasons but when the player comes back they can choose to roll a check to gain something relevant to the story (knowledge for plot relevant information, endurance for healing, social skills to make some contacts, etc) or to gain a FATE point, which is just as valuable as a resource
My go to method is to run an ingame group or faction as if it were being run in a west marches style campaign even if the campaign is single party through and through.
Have a group patron or faction as a main quest giver. That faction/patron sends the PCs out on missions. Whenever a player can't make one or two sessions their character was called back to base camp or portaled away because their specific backstory nonsense is needed for a mission being run by another group.
This is also a good way to repeatedly introduce a rival party or "Linear Guild" to the PCs. They keep bumping into "those guys" out in the field, and they can't simply kill them because they're all part of the same mercenary company or expedition force or mage college or whatever.
At my table, we've used every method except for "they're here and their vulnerable". Most often, we have one or two present players "jager" the missing player's character with the understanding from the players that they won't use up any items and the understanding from the DM that the character won't be killed.
I prepare one shots for player absences. Give players a chance to try out something different.
Since I usually end my sessions at a point where the party will be resting, or just after they've rested, I roleplay as the absent player's character and explain that I'll be remaining at the camp/inn to rest a bit longer and will catch up with the party later. In a future session when the absent player returns, I do a quick narration to go over their character following the party's tracks, then the session begins with everyone reuniting.
I like taking this approach since I think it's a good middle ground. It still keeps the immersion and it's less work since the players and I don't need to track/run an extra character. That said, I'd also be open to that player's character doing some downtime activities during their missed session, as it could open up some interesting scenarios and story hooks.
I had to write out a PC for a session because they had to go to a wedding so I picked out a detail from the backstory and worked out to have it happen at the end of the session. The other PCs were shocked and confused as to why their paladin started a bar fight and only went after 1 person but that led into the mystery of the next session. The PC was being held in the temple's jail to figure out what kind of punishment would be appropriate as the party had to figure out what was going on while trying to get the villagers back on their side. It was a fun situation that helped the plot forward without having to wonder where the PC was. It was a nice side quest that filled a session. The person came back at the very end of our session to find that next session, his character was being released because of the success of the other players. Fast forward to later on the campaign when everything was revealed, they remembered that whole situation since they had some ideas of what happened and it all clicked. It was a great feeling seeing them so happy that they were so close to figuring it out even without some of the major clues. That was only really possible since I did have a week's warning to prep to write them out and not like 15 minutes. Another time, it was last minute so I had the idea of fleshing out a moment of downtime. To sort of go through the motions of a small mission that two of the paladins went on. There was another time where it was one of the paladins and his rowdy rogue friend and what happened on that drunken night that they couldn't quite remember. When a person can't make it the day of, I usually just ask the group if they want to expand on that kind of stuff or we can do a smaller game like one of those 1 page rpgs. I enjoy running a silly game of Tactical Waifu since the whole goal is leaning hard on anime cliques that I just find it hilarious and it doesn't matter what happened the last time you took it out because plenty of anime has completely retconned important things without explanation so no need to worry about it.
2. We did the chaos fog back in high school. Think of the fog which transports you to Ravenloft.
My warlock has an Arch Fey patron. Any time I am gone, we said my warlock got pulled through a portal and when he reappeared he would get pushed out again, sometimes from 30 feet in the air. It was hilarious.
What I like is between the tavarian answer and the side quest answer. First scene of the absent session finds the character missing with signs of a struggle.
A second scene occurs based on what the characters are doing to search where a n p c way out of the character three thanks. 1) Firstly something to the effect of rhyme on it and there's nothing you can do till I do my part. 2) Not to tip at the big players I making either you think of it or not being obviously searching in the meantime. This instruction will at least strongly imply the the party should complete their current operation if they're on one. 3) The major MPC will also say that the competition is unlikely to underestimate the pcs. That they should therefore look for the sign that the big believe there are believes when they have an opportunity to tip. The balance in the missing pc"s favor.
I give the returning player. A gurgled version of their abduction that leaves them not entirely clear on what happened and contains plot hooks and/or clues that didn't have an obvious other way to bring to the pcs. This leaves a dilemma of weather to follow up the new clues right away or take a side quest to figure out what happens to the pc while they were missing
I hadn't been getting youtube notifications for whatever reason so I've just binged your last 4 videos. Super happy for you for the teleprompter!
Thank you!
My groups have a rule; if you let us know you can't make a session three days or more in advance, we'll try to reschedule. If you don't, we're going on without you. (Usually- if it's a very plot important session or that specific character is explicitly needed, we might just cancel and try again another time). Regardless, we usually take an approach that mixes together "They're here, they're fine, don't worry about it" and "they're a special kind of NPC." The DM doesn't roleplay the character, and doesn't have them do anything outside combat aside from an occasional stealth roll or dex save or the like when the whole group is called to make one. But the DM does play the character in combat. The reason for this is to save stress and headache for the DM in balancing combats. In the games I run especially, combat is uncommon but brutal when it happens. I balance my combats for the number of players I have, and stretch them to the ends of their resources to make it feel like they're really fighting for their lives. Having one less player would throw off my balance and force me to make some frantic last minute adjustments to my encounters.
Thank you Karl and Stef
I played a campaign where my 6 year old wanted to play as well. We let him but part way through sessions he would get up and walk away for a bit. Sometimes he'd come back for combat, sometimes he was just done. We decided that in game he had narcolepsy and would fall asleep randomly.
The first session I had a player miss the start of a storyline, I had it so their character went missing. This prompted the party to investigate a shady group who were also exploring the dungeon. The next session when the player was back I had the character appear in the dungeon under mysterious circumstances. Later on I cut to the shady group torturing that player's character away from the rest of the party. The player had to make a dramatic escape. When the rest of the party asked, "if he is over there, then who is this with us?" that's when I took over roleplaying as that character. Until that point I had the player roleplaying as their own perfect doppelgänger without them knowing. Fun twist, the missing player got to learn a lot of information about the villains, have a solo encounter and didn't have to wait around for their turn during what would have otherwise been a split party situation. Granted, everyone else had to wait during the dramatic escape, so not a perfect plan. It was fun, though.
Guess I'm a hard ass! I tend to the final solution. Though I'm clear it up to them, weather they fade away or give control to another player. I make sure to tell them if a TPK happens because they're character was not there to help, then they also need to roll a new character. This is usually enough encouragement to let the other players run their character.
For druid characters I've done:
A) the druid gets stuck in wildshape. This explains why the character didn't participate in conversations and why the party can use the druids gear.
B) when druid uses conjure beasts spell it is possible that another druid is summoned and forced into wildshape. This is my variant of being called by the gods. [This is part of an ancient pact between the primal animal spirits and the first druids. Rumor has it that the more abusive a druid is with conjure animals, the more likely that druid is to be forced into wildshape and summoned. ]
My druid goes walkabout, and the sorceror (low con), is sleeping off a hangover somewhere. Usually
One of my players was having a baby so we had her character get kidnapped and used for a cult to use as a vessel for a powerful devil. players stopped that branch of the cult and saved her (4 months worth of sessions. she got a sword meant for the devil as a reward) and now theyre currently following leads to find out who the cult leader is
I have a player who can't be in game for whole sessions, so we crafted someone crazy. This guy in a mask is disguising his chaotic madness as theatricals and flashy magics, he has a lot of fans in universe and the players also love him, but he often leaves without notice, sometimes even mid-combat because... he thinks it's funny.
I usually do either method 1 or 2 based on which suits the situation best. But for option one we just say all their attacks miss (and they only cast cantrips they’re a spell caster) and that this makes them non-threatening to enemies so they don’t get attacked either
i still like how matt handled tiberius after you know who left
I do as well, it’s really well-handled
My players had been stuck in the way ancient past for a few months worth of sessions and when they finally were going to go back to 1927, one of our players, our Monk, had a bit of medical trouble and couldnt make the session. Her Monk has had some severe mental trauma in the campaign however cuz she died and was brought back to life with a nagging pumpkin demon creature in her head filling her with doubt and its kinda been eating away at her. Then she nearly died again right before transporting back so I just told the other players that she seemed to be on autopilot until they found their sort of surrogate son, at which point I just had her leave with him back home, while the rest of the party handled other RP and logistical stuff. The next session our Druid couldnt make it, but the Monk was able to make it, so we did a little mini dungeon where we ran through her head, fighting the pumpkin monster and trying to get her confidence back a little bit. But she nearly died again, leaving the mental projections of her friends to fight off her demons for her. Hopefully tonight we get to explore the consequences of all of that and the doubts in her characters head.
I can very easily see that as a good ol Power of Friendship Aesop. "You can't fight your doubts alone, but with the help of your friends anything is possible"
I once ran a campaign where my shtick to explain missing players was that they found a mysterious obelisk in session 1 that granted them a small buff to constitution, but which also cursed them. They would, at no specific intervals, turn into a small statuette. So the players who were present would carry the statuette around. My friends all looked at me with that "I see what you did there" look in their eyes, but they were totally on board and enjoyed it!
In my first game I had one of the player left in the middle of the game because an urgent matter at home. Decided that during the battle he will be in combat (controlled by one of the players) but wasn't attacked and the only resource he used (a javelin) he could get it back. So, I'm happy to see I wasn't off tracks.
I've seen a solution where DM played the absent player's character as an NPC until the player was able to return. It was a pretty interesting solution and the DM also explain that the character was tired and had a quiet day and therefore didn't speak during their session. And when the player returned, then the character had to take a short rest before it could speak again.
Yeah, I've used almost all of these methods. My go to is that they become a Special NPC with a dash of vulnerable, they can lose stuff, but they cannot die.(I never allow a PC to die when they are not present). Another go to is they go into the "No-Space" where they're around but we don't worry about it or make use of them, and then we come up for what they were doing while everybody was busy, usually they've got a stomach bug or something. I also do a version where they are vulnerable, and still present (they still cannot die) but they are unconscious for some reason or another, and now the other PC's have to take care of and lug around this passed out pal of theirs. In that case they can make use of their gear to a degree, but I'm pretty insistent on there being role playing consequences to that, and it's lead to pvp a couple of times (which was a good outcome actually).
I also tend to have traps that teleport people away, or turn them into dolls or something happen to come up when I know a PC is going to be absent all of a sudden.
But they're all good options. Mostly I think people overthink it.
I use the 1st method. It saves me a lot of headaches, specially with a bigger group (6-7 players)
My group started a Ravnica campaign this past weekend that’s taking the place of Cyberpunk for awhile. My best friend couldn’t make it due to real life shit so my DM came up with the excuse of a higher up in her character’s guild getting her out of the job the others were doing as the reason for her character not being there and he’ll probably work in a moment for her character to join the party next session.
It’s a bit rare that one of us will control another’s character but it has happened before, usually if we’re in the middle of exploring a dungeon or some such and it’s usually just been done for combat.
I’ve missed two sessions due to being out of town. In one, my character had previously died so it wasnt a big deal. Of course that session also ended in a TPK so everyone started with new characters when I got back.
In the other I’d left a short list of what I wanted my character to do while the party was exploring an area. Stuff like ritual casting detect magic and having her bat familiar act as a scout as well as keeping her at a distance during combat because squishy wizard. However another player was also absent that day so the rest of the group spent the time chatting
I am very much a "If the player misses a session the characters there but isn't" GM. It's the easiest way to do it and my players know not to ask for the missing player to heal them or anything. Im already running a lot during encounters both social and combat without trying to figure out what someone's complex multiclass build with a motivations I might not fully understand is doing.
I I'd do the "Oh they left" angle but this becomes a problem if the players go to a new area or if they're somewhere dangerous or locked off when the player returns. It can be tough to write them back in.
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
My groups always have the short hand of "they're standing in the background picking their nose" as the explanation for when a player is away, which is fun because I feel like we all have days where we're just not focused and kind of just vibing.
Funnily enough, we had to do accommodate a missing player recently. Just before a fight our druid had to collapse unconscious (for a thematic in game reason) while the player had real life to do.
We had split the fight over two nights so he conveniently woke up at the start of the next session. :)
I've had terrible luck with missing players, even with the flexibility that online play offers. Here are a couple of options you can add to your list that are even more drastic solutions to the problem.
In a group that played weekly, a certain player had frequent scheduling conflicts. We tried to run their character as a kind of NPC, but it wasn't a great solution since it happened consistently. Eventually we decided to create a set of side characters for everyone consistent. That party was doing things on the other side of the same world, so there were familiar aspects to the world, but we wouldn't interfere with the other story line.
When I GM, the groups are usually small, so I prefer for none of the players to miss a session. I've seen groups where unavoidable absences line up with important party choices and that is never a fun thing to miss. The option I've had the most luck with, anytime we are missing a player we play a one-shot or some other kind of rules lite RPG. We recently tried SKULLBOX and it was a good single session RPGish option.
The table I play at does the last option, or maybe something kind of between the last two. Generally the missing player's character won't be actively targeted in their absence, so character death is unlikely unless the overall combat goes incredibly poorly, but it's on the table. I think resurrection would definitely be on the table if a missing player's character died unless there was a full TPK though.
Seemingly gone are the days of, "If you aren't here, your character isn't and gets no XP unless someone plays them for you." People don't like varied levels.
I grew up treating the PC of an absent player as being down with dysentery. Nowadays, we usually just don't play unless everyone's present.
I think some of this is that 5e is generally played less episodically than, say 2e. Combat, especially at higher level, can be very time-consuming, and sessions are generally shorter than they were a few decades ago. It's much more common to pause in the middle of dungeon and pick up where you left off rather than end every session with the party heading back to town and beginning every session with the party heading back to the dungeon. "What do I do about the player who isn't here?" is more of a problem when you end sessions on a cliffhanger before a big dungeon fight rather than ending them with the party getting as much treasure as possible back to town.
Keeping everyone the same level is also heavily influenced by most of the modern 5e modules using milestone or story-based progression instead of XP leveling -- it's much harder to only give xp to players who were there when you're running on DM fiat to level.
In one of my games, the rogue couldn't make it for the last 2 sessions, and the cleric couldn't make it for the last one, so we said they both got sick.
There's another, that works better for home games and online sessions than APs.
Reschedule, and maybe do something else as a group. Particularly if the group's small so the absence of one person means a third of the group's missing.
We have a pc who’s pretty flaky but her character is a cheese seller so whenever she isn’t there she’s busy setting up shop
Lol that’s a great solution!
Thieves’ Cant isn’t a full natural language. It’s basically Cockney Rhyming Slang (much of which was used in Planescape slang) plus hobo signs. Other people can hear or see it and learn bits and pieces, though they aren’t fluent.
Right, I was imaging the written marks when I referenced it in the video
12:56 I remember one example, I'll reply to my comment to avoid spoilers up front.
Laura was absent and had Travis piloting her character. They were crossing a rickety bridge, and they had no idea what was on the bottom. Poor Stealth checks resulted in repeated Wisdom saves, and if they hadn't tied eachother together in preparation several characters would have fallen off into something unknown.
Sam made a choice to sever his character, whose low strength score made them vulnerable, and determined her solo Stealth would be enough. Unfortunately she failed a Wisdom save and ran off into the pit, of what turned out to be a amorphous body of monsters.
Laura began spamming Travis's cell, watching the game from home, and he didn't want to make her character do as she intended, because he felt this would kill her character. After some OOC persuasion, Travis had Jester jump into the darkness after the Goblin, and after taking some damage, she grabbed the party member and used Dimension Door to teleport both characters back to 'relative' safety.
I find this example hard to weigh playing an absent player's character, because in Laura's case, "Its what her character would do." And the weight of those choices foisted onto someone with less knowledge or less confidence, can't be easy in a game of variables, long term consequences, or even in Travis's case a percieved irl consequence.
I’ve been creating my own pantheon and having a lot of trouble making it interesting or fun to work on. Could you make an episode on how to deign a good one?
TL;DR: Each player writes a table (1d6 or 1d10) of general in and out of combat options for their PC that the DM uses in their absence.
In my play-by-post campaign, we made an agreement that the PCs would control the missing char, but at some point it was troublesome, because since "everyone" owned it, no one actually took the time to get to know the missing PC's sheet (because we play by post, when someone can't play it's usually for a couple of days or even a full week). Then we agreed that the DM, me, would control and it flowed better.
But while watching your video I thought of a different approach, much like several rules in 5e, each player could create a table of actions (1d6 or 1d10) that their PC would perform in and out of combat. It could be general-direction sentences, and also distribute them unevenly to account for probability (say 4 options in the 1d10 table as opposed to 10).
A similar approach would be a simple IA just like monsters in the D&D boardgames have: if next to an enemy attack, otherwise move into melee range of the nearest enemy, etc. But all of those should be responsibility of the player, they would need to provide those pointers, and ultimately how comfortable with resources (don't use spell slots, only cantrips).
I've written up battle instructions for my character: bless on round 1, cantrip and healing word.
@@DVDMaster2009 That sounds nice! Actually it reminds me of Matt Colville's Action Oriented Monsters, which makes total sense when you think about it
Some time ago i had problem at my job at because of that i could only attend every second session in my DnD group so I departed my current PC and create a new for this time (because i knew it was only temporarily). So I created warforged who had the ability to transform himself to a chest with wheels and everytime i was out of a table I had malfunction and I had to transform Myself and just follow the PCs. Eventually my job problem got resolved but by that time i fell in love with this character and in the story we fix that malfunction problem and I play this character till today and never came back to my orginal one...
I can't see myself joining a group/DM'ing myself in a way other then 'if they are gone they T pose in a corner' which is both funny and non intrusive.
In the end, I just like that we all know that we are playing a game and taking a breather from it is just as good as being sucked into at time.
There are some questions that sometimes come up in the table I play at when the character with all the potions leave if they can use it (which is always an understandable no), but I think if I ever DM again that I will allow them to use them, but leave it to the player that left if they are actually used.
If they say no in this case, I will just have them charge a gold fee per potion used so it is not just free healing.
This, of course, will not work for anyone, but I do think that sometimes you can give the player gameplay ultimatums above the table and being clear about it what the ramifications are, etc etc
Not a DM myself but I will be sure to discuss these tools with my DM in a future gane
Perfect timing haha, one of my players is gonna be gone for like 2 months.
He stayed at the tavern because he came down with the flu. He should be fine in a few days.
Hurrah for new toys!
Porta-potty ex machina aka. the turdis.
(Any/all)
This is happening to me right now lol. Then your video popped up at that moment.
Rocks fall on head. New character required.
(this is why no one plays with me)
Does anyone have a good way to handle one player missing sessions the most besides just playing with people who's schedule align? I had this happen in the past and we just didn't play in that case because I didn't wanted her to become disconnected/disinterested from the campaign by missing critical sessions and not fully knowing what has happend.
For the “NPC” options, as a player, I really don’t like these. It may preserve immersion for the game, but it breaks it in some ways for me. The idea of an “I did what?” moment kind of sours me, even if it’s not “bad”. Character choices are very individual, and many times, even the DM may not realize or remember parts of my constructed backstory or personality. If I return to a game to find out that my character did things that I would consider out of character, it doesn’t sit well with me. Even if this is just stupid jokes, or brawling, or seducing a bar maid kind of stuff, if my character wouldn’t do those things, and they did, it’s not good. Conversely, if my character was present and didn’t act in some way in a situation, that also can be immersion-breaking. So, if you’re going the NPC route, don’t just consider what’s good for the overall game, but what’s good for that player. I know plenty of players who probably wouldn’t care, as long as they don’t get killed. I (often) do care (depending on the character I’m running).
Geezer here...
Have been tagged by scammers 6 times in the last year. All claimed I won something. All asking me to contact through the Telegram app. How can anyone fall for this? On no video or the channel home page was any contest mentioned. Wakey up people. With my rant out of the way.......
We just don't worry about it. The players that show have a character. Those that show are members of the party. The no-shows, we worry not.
Not very narrative, just effective.
Gaming on.
lets see if you really do hang around the comments...
How are you doing?
Pretty good!
Do you ever use randomizer tools to generate names/info for your D&D games?
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The longer I play the more I use randomisers, and more sand box the game style. My players will always poke at something interesting and the skills are there now to improvise more around it. And it pushes more creativity out of me. "The imprisoned goblin necromancer is the good guy in this castle?..."
Always! There used to be an amazing site called Abulafia that had a billion great generators. I used it for everything, all the time, I just had a tab open whenever I was running something. But the site broke and the guy running it didn't have time to fix it....sigh. Now I hunt down other stuff, but it just isn't the same.