Gah. Feh. Bleh. [Venting]

ForceUser · Sep 28, 2004

I have a great player group these days. Honestly. Newbies, they aren't too concerned with rules crunch, they just roleplay their characters and have a good time. Which means I have a good time wowing them with amazing encounters and dazzling monsters they've never seen nor heard of, such as the dreaded "gnoll" and fearsome "ghoul" - whatever those are.

But lately, due to a random series of scheduling conflicts and family emergencies, I - the DM - am now roleplaying half the group as NPCs. In the wilderness and on an important quest as they are, I have no reasonable way to dump said NPCs-cum-lately off at the local tavern until their players are available again. Gah. How annoying.

A typical combat encounter:

Bob the wizard acts.
Bill the fighter (played by moi) acts.
Jill the bard acts.
John the monk acts (me).
Jane the rogue acts.
Monsters act (me).
Trent the NPC retainer acts (the only true NPC in the group - me again).
George the druid acts.

Bleh. Feh. Grrrr.

Chimera · Sep 28, 2004

Dump the characters off on the players. Let them run two each during the interim. Perhaps changing them up each session so that they get some experience with different character types. Might be fun for them.

Just give them the caveat that you reserve the right to over-rule their actions to stop blatantly stupid or suicidal moves.

Might take some extra time on your part on the up-front - helping them with spell selections and tactics, but in the long run it should make things a bit easier on you.

Just don't give another spellcaster to the spellcaster, etc. Let the Wizard player take on the fighter for a session or two.

Richards · Sep 28, 2004

Why don't you farm out the PCs that you've been having to run to the other players? Let Bob and Bill be run by one player, Jill and John by another, or whatever. Let the players know that this is only temporary, until the missing players return and can take over their own PCs again.

I played an AD&D 2nd Edition game with 4 PCs but only 2 actual players for years. We had great fun.

Johnathan

Edit: Chimera must have won initiative!

LondonReign · Sep 28, 2004

I had this problem a long time ago with one of my first groups of players -- one, and often two, of the players would frequently be missing for one reason or another.

The best solution we had was to assign a "backup" to run a person's character if they were absent. And, knowing someone would one day run *that person's* character, they did their best to keep their adopted PC alive.

With newbies, I would imagine this would allow them to experience running different character classes as well.

Oh, and as a side note, the adopted character only earns 1/2 experience, while the person running two characters gets a bonus.

Gah. Feh. Bleh. [Venting]

ForceUser

Explorer

Chimera

First Post

Richards

Legend

LondonReign

First Post

Similar Threads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Recent & Upcoming Releases