Absent Players and their PCs

[Bhaal]

I'm a fairly new DM but have been gaming for quite a few years. In my campaign there are 4 PCs so everyone is pretty much carrying their share of duties. One of the players is out of town this weekend, but the rest want to game. It would be much tougher for them to play without that character (they're doing a classic dungeon crawl and the character in question is a rogue), It got me to thinking about what ways you can go about dealing with an absent PC. With other DMs I've noticed two major options:

1. The PC is "on perimeter watch" meaning they will be in the same place/predicament as the party (or will soon be inserted) when they return, but they simply aren't there to act or be acted upon for the session that they miss.

2. Somebody "drives" that PC. It can be the DM, so they are effectively used as an NPC, and will most likely only come into play when the party has no other options. The other variation is allowing another PC to control that character in addition to their own. The DM will obviously stop any abuse to the PC, and the PC "driving" will get a bonus to experience to their character for the session (typically the absent character gets half the experience they would normally receive, and the other half goes to the controlling character).

Does anyone employ these methods, other methods? I'm looking for options to deal with this since it may come up once and a while (everyone's fairly busy). Personally, I'm leaning towards the variation of the 2nd option, where another PC gets (monitored) control over that character with an experience bonus as incentive. It works well in another gaming group I'm in, though it requires a good amount of trust and confidence in the other players for it to work. The first option I can see as applicable in some cases as well, but I suppose it all depends on the situation the party is in, and I'd like to stick to one method as a DM to stay consistant. Any thoughts?

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

My group allows someone to play the character of the missing player(s). No XP penalty to the character of the missing player, no XP bonus for the character of the person playing the extra character. It's all self-monitored and no one abuses another's character for the following reasons:

1) We're all friends.
2) We act like adults.
3) It may be you that has that wedding, business trip, or is sick the next time and someone will play your character so you should show respect to the one you're playing.

 

[Balgus]

there is always a problem when you play a player's char. What if it dies? what about the treasure and XP? are you playing him tru to his char? or are you messing his char up? will anything happen that will come back to haunt him?

I always prefered to say that he is off doing his own thing- either training, stealing for money or just resting. That way, he can't complain about you using his char for the wrong reasons.

As for the group, give them an out. Drop hints that there is a local thief (NPC) looking for a good job that pays well. He can be combat deficient, but loaded up on spt and search checks.

Orif they are high enough level, have one of them pick up[ a cohort.

I would give them an NPC tho- or even each an NPC for a day. So that you are not playing favorites, and you dont' have to give away any secrets if THEY do not find any hidden doors... and it is their fault if they choose to get two clerics and a sorc rather than a rogue like you intended...

 

[Umbran]

What you do depends on a number of things...

If your game is really role-play and plot heavy, it's often best to not play, or to play a one-shot with different characters when someone cannot make it.

If your game is a bit more hack and slash, havng the character around with a bit of scrip immunity usually works well enough. He's there, his skills are available, but he's mostly passive. He probably doesn't take large risks unless there's no other way to do a thing. He carries his weight in fights, but isn't going to be in the front lines, that sort of thing.

In this latter case, who runs him is probably not all that important, really. The missing player's character is more of a tool than a PC. I've often best seen it done with the DM taking the reins, because that offers the character a bit more "script immunity", making him a bit harder to kill off accidentally.

 

[MerakSpielman]

The problem we run into in our group of 8 busy adults is that more often than not sessions end in the middle of dungeons, where there really is NO plausable way to account for the sudden absence of a character (dungeon crawls have been known to take up to 8 sessions in our group - average 4 hours per session). Generally, a player who is missing will find somebody to play their character for them. Generally, this is restricted to combat. That character does nothing noteworthy roleplaying-wise that game.

In one of the (three!) campaigns we have running we are a rogue-heavy party in a generally urban adventure. Each character has loads of secret agendas and items that nobody else knows about. This campaign makes it particularly hard for a missing player. The player who has to miss will designate the player who knows the most about their secrets to play their character for them while they're gone.
If we're in a situation where the absence can be explained, they "go solo" for the night and work out what their character did with the DM via email.

 

[Mercule]

We view things a lot like an ensemble TV show. When the player can't make it, the character remains around and is assumed to be doing whatever the character would normally be doing, it just happens off-camera. That may mean in a completely different place or just at the periphery of the lens (usually the latter).

If we get into combat, the DM controls what the character does, but it's usually pretty basic. The character get half XP for the session, just like any NPC.

 

[Dagger75]

In the dungeon, have the thief try to disarm a trap, fail and gets trapped in another room waiting for rescue from the party. When my party was in the underdark and player couldn't show there was a nasty habit of cave-ins seprating that person from the party only to find his way back when he returned to the game.

Cheezey yeah but it worked.

 

[Wil]

I usually find a reason for the PC of the absent player to not be around for the session and then either "blue-book" the intervening time with the player (i.e., PC of absent player: "Ooops, I need to go do something. Gotta go!" and then narrate why they had to leave after the fact) or use the absence as a plot complication ("Svargol? Svargol? Where'd he go...he was just here a minute ago. Guys? We need to find Svargol, he has the bon-bons for when we make camp!!").

I also very often use the absences to torture the PC later on. So, Svargol met up with a pretty Fae hottie, ran off with her for a few hours game time and three days later she shows up with his fully grown half-Fae son...who's being hunted down by the Goblin-King and needs to be protected. Who better to do it than Daddy?

 

[Airwolf]

It sounds like my group is in the minority compared to others that post on these boards. Here is how we do it.

If a player can’t make a session their character does not play, does not get any experience points, and does not get any ‘game’ knowledge from that session. This can mean that some players will fall behind when it comes to levels and experience points. Over time (our characters range from 12th to 15th level) it seems to even out. The primary DM and I are the only people to make every session, but neither of us plays our characters while we DM (I DM about a third of the time) our characters are the lowest level (12th). To my knowledge (makes knowledge ‘D&D session’ check) no one has ever requested that his or her character be played by another player when the player is going to be absent.

The reason behind this is that everyone in the group believes that the adventure/campaign belongs to the DM, while the characters belong to the player. It is up to the player to see that the character is played, as it should be, not for someone else to do the role-playing, adventuring, or fighting.

Has this caused hardship for the group? Sure it has. Have the remaining players had to work harder to overcome situations? Yes. Does it make the players better at gaming? I think it does. I know I feel a larger sense of accomplishment when I am playing with a group short handed and we are able to overcome what the DM has set before us.

Our group consists of six players and the DM. One of the characters has leadership so we often have a cohort running around with us as well. This does give us some breathing room since some of the skills and abilities overlap between character classes. I also realize that in a group of only four characters a missing player could cause some serious hardship. If I played in a group with four characters I still would not want my character played by someone else, even the DM.

Well, that’s my take on how to deal with a missing character. ta ta.

 

[Azure Trance]

Another Q:

Our games start up at 7:30 PM to roughly 12 AM or 1 AM. One of my players has class that ends at 8:20 PM. Is it worth keeping him in the game if he would be chronically late?

Also, something somewhat related...

The first night we played a few weeks ago someone stayed and watched. She was listening attentively to what was happening. The next session, she comes with a character that another DM made for her (who plays a different day of the week) and wants to join. I was very hesitant at that time because:

• I have 6 people and promised a 7th who will join us next session, and had to reject a potential 8th. I'm wary of large groups of PCs with the limited time I have and my experience.
• She's very new. As a matter of fact, up to that night she hasn't played any RPG before.

But by a stroke of luck, 3 players were out. One had class (above), another couldn't make it, and (as it happened) the last was just really late. With ubercombat coming up I said, OK. You can play for tonight. The game didn't go that well, because sleep dep made everyone go into video game mode for about half an hour before I snapped out of it. I also found out later on that the DM made her a 6th level character for our 1st level group, which I didn't notice because she was rolling poorly.

A few days later - specifically, yesterday, one of my PCs told her to make a new 1st level character to join the game. I riled up at that. There were two other games which were running at higher level I tried suggesting to her but no bite. I had a talk with the guy who de facto made her a new member and decided to try it out for the next session (only) with him godfathering her, which he agreed to.

Regardless, I'm still strongly inclined to relegate her to observer status after the session unless something miraculous happens during it. Now, this may feels like I'm newbie hating (which it may sound like above), but I'm really not in the mood to have a totally new person to my game after we started. My feelings are probably magnified because I have some superb roleplayers and don't want to spoil the atmos of the game, but I think I'm justified in doing this since I wasn't going to let her continue after her first session anyway. How do I break it to her without sounding like an evil ogre whose an elitist snob?