Story Hour Authors: What do you do with pcs who aren't there?

the Jester · Jan 20, 2003

How do you write pc absence into your story hours?

Sniktch · Jan 20, 2003

I either have another PC run them if its critical for continuity or I have the character come down with the flu and sit back at camp for the session. This happened frequently in my Prelude, but in CotSQ there have been no good times for PC's to sit out and they've been run by the other players.

ForceUser · Jan 20, 2003

I run them as NPCs. If the (N)PC gets killed while the owner is away, them's the breaks. Show up next time.

Celtavian · Jan 20, 2003

Re

You forgot the option of "We play different characters if someone doesn't show up." In my campaigns, it is usually the same person that does not show up, so we have made alternate characters that we run when the person in question does not show or maybe we play a different game.

Silver Moon · Jan 20, 2003

We keep copies of the characters sheets, so that if someone is missing the other players just play them as an NPC. If several players missing I usually come up with an excuse to temporarily split the party up into two groups, and just focus on the ones that are there.

We once had a player who was away at college, and could only make the occassional game. His character liked to drink, and soon acquired himself a Pooka, which worked as a great plot device to remove and then reinsert the character.

Maidenfine · Jan 21, 2003

In my current campaign I have a lot of NPCs created and all the PCs have jobs within the campaign. It makes it easy to just say "hey, Bob had to work today so he wasn't with us when we killed the bad guy." Of course, that only works because I run a city based campaign. If they ever left the city it would be a whole lot harder to write up things like that.

pogre · Jan 21, 2003

Knocking on wood...

Everyone knows when the game is and no one has missed. We do have planned weeks we do not play such as during the holidays, etc.

Capellan · Jan 21, 2003

Company of the Random Encounter is built around the premise of a rotating player line-up (we even have rules to force people to miss sessions) so writing characters in and out of the game usually occupies the first post of any adventure in the story hour.

We've only played one session of In Hextor's Name thus far, so it hasn't been an issue whether people were there or not. However, should someone miss a game, Kull will no doubt mention it in disapproving tones during his next report to his superiors