D&D 5E What to do about flakes?!

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Though I have to admit if a friend who knows what effort I put into getting the game together is always treating my time like its meaningless I have to wonder how good of friends we are. I do not like to waste my friends time if I can avoid that. Just tell me if you are not able to make a regular game so we are not planning around you being there.

 

[Lanefan]

Other posters have suggest character sheets are kept by the DM.

I don't suggest it. I mandate it.

Sorry no. Very few people will be happy with this solution especially if their pc gets hurt.

Never had a problem with it here...it's known by all that your character is still a part of the party (and thus game) whether it has a player attached that night or not. If you know you can't make a session, leave instructions. They'll be followed as best we can.

We've all had characters get hurt, lose valuable gear, or even die when we're not there...it happens.

Lanefan

 

[jasper]

I don't suggest it. I mandate it.
Never had a problem with it here...it's known by all that your character is still a part of the party (and thus game) whether it has a player attached that night or not. If you know you can't make a session, leave instructions. They'll be followed as best we can.

We've all had characters get hurt, lose valuable gear, or even die when we're not there...it happens.

Lanefan

Hmm. Well Lanefan, since you have such excellent players who are never beep. Um who are never goobers when playing other people's pcs. I just going have to tax you due to your good fortune. That will be a $5 tax per person, per pc , per year they played at your table. I take Amazon gift cards. A partial year counts as a whole year. I am grandfathering the tax back to when "Chainmail" came out. Please send the tax to the following address ( removed). And please remember to pay your tax every January 26Th.

 

[Bradley Hindman]

Some of the players in our group can't come every time, others get sick, or things come up. We just pretend like their characters don't exist. When they come back the next time, the DM makes up a brief story of "the character was sick", or asleep, or got lost, or was locked in a closet the whole time, or whatever. There's usually some funny roleplaying for a minute when the character rejoins the group, but mostly we just ignore it and play on like normal. One player suggested we turn him into an NPC familiar-like creature when he's gone.

I once ran a campaign where the player of the wild-magic sorcerer was absent due to illness. The player suggested that a wild magic surge turned her character into a small statuette (easy to carry, hard to damage, etc.). When the player showed up the following week for the next session, boop, the character returned to normal. Apparently, her curse was contagious. All later absences were explained by being turning into tiny statues. One of the other players carved a holder for the little statues on the front board of his wagon . . .

 

[JacktheRabbit]

D&D is such a fun game, but i swear, i just hate it when players cancel at the last moment! it makes me want to stop playing sometimes!

You are lucky, I have several douche bags that are too lazy to even communicate that they are not showing. It sending a text message that difficult?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I don't suggest it. I mandate it.
Never had a problem with it here...it's known by all that your character is still a part of the party (and thus game) whether it has a player attached that night or not. If you know you can't make a session, leave instructions. They'll be followed as best we can.

We've all had characters get hurt, lose valuable gear, or even die when we're not there...it happens.

Lanefan

Same here. I've had players PC killed while they were gone, they knew how the game goes and it was never a big deal other than the player giving the group some lip for a bit.

Take a chance of getting killed vs no XP for stuff your PC wasn't involved in, easy choice at my table.

 

[Lanefan]

Hmm. Well Lanefan, since you have such excellent players who are never beep. Um who are never goobers when playing other people's pcs.

That's because the most basic and simple goober-prevention policy is unwrittenly in place: what goes around, comes around.

If you goober someone else's character, fine. But sooner or later you're gonna miss a session...

Rare if ever happens the goober.

I just going have to tax you due to your good fortune. That will be a $5 tax per person, per pc , per year they played at your table. I take Amazon gift cards. A partial year counts as a whole year. I am grandfathering the tax back to when "Chainmail" came out. Please send the tax to the following address ( removed). And please remember to pay your tax every January 26Th.

Good thing the address was removed...whew! Off the hook!

$5 per PC per year...that would be a frighteningly big number.

Lan-"in other news, legislators today introduced a per-character gaming tax..."-efan

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't suggest it. I mandate it.
Never had a problem with it here...it's known by all that your character is still a part of the party (and thus game) whether it has a player attached that night or not. If you know you can't make a session, leave instructions. They'll be followed as best we can.

We've all had characters get hurt, lose valuable gear, or even die when we're not there...it happens.

Lanefan

Your personal experiences notwithstanding, I've had this problem at several tables.

But I take the approach that your characters are your responsibility. I take a copy of your latest sheet for simple accounting, but beyond that I won't mandate your character gets played just because they're part of the party. If you have a trusted friend you allow to play your character, great. But this cannot become a recurring event otherwise Good Friend is basically getting to play two characters, and that's not cool.

Frankly, I think mandating that your character must get played reduces the desire to attend. If your character is going to go on cool adventures while you're not present, collect XP, fight bad guys and you don't even have to show up, that's a lot of incentive thats gone away.

I once ran a campaign where the player of the wild-magic sorcerer was absent due to illness. The player suggested that a wild magic surge turned her character into a small statuette (easy to carry, hard to damage, etc.). When the player showed up the following week for the next session, boop, the character returned to normal. Apparently, her curse was contagious. All later absences were explained by being turning into tiny statues. One of the other players carved a holder for the little statues on the front board of his wagon . . .

I used a similar trick in my Planar Overlay campaign. The boundaries of the plane were incredibly thin (and outright broken in some places) players who didn't show up were simply phased out of our plane. Since this could happen to any creature or NPC at any time, it made for a variety of interesting plot points.

 

[Lanefan]

Your personal experiences notwithstanding, I've had this problem at several tables.

But I take the approach that your characters are your responsibility. I take a copy of your latest sheet for simple accounting, but beyond that I won't mandate your character gets played just because they're part of the party. If you have a trusted friend you allow to play your character, great. But this cannot become a recurring event otherwise Good Friend is basically getting to play two characters, and that's not cool.

Playing multiple characters at once is nothing unusual here to begin with.

I'd rather the in-character situation be consistent and continuous, rather than have characters unpredictably phasing in and out in mid-dungeon just to reflect presence or absence of a player. I'd also rather the game go ahead (if I'm the player who won't be there that night) if possible, so others can enjoy it as usual; and I just have to accept the consequences if any.

Frankly, I think mandating that your character must get played reduces the desire to attend. If your character is going to go on cool adventures while you're not present, collect XP, fight bad guys and you don't even have to show up, that's a lot of incentive thats gone away.

Depends why you're showing up. Me, I'm there for the entertainment that ensues when we go on cool adventures etc.; and I don't get that entertainment if I'm not there.

Lanefan

 

[Dausuul]

In my group, we have a couple of dads with four kids apiece, and a small business owner, and everyone has many other interests, which makes it... challenging.

Our solution: We don't run on a fixed schedule. We typically have the next 2 sessions scheduled. At the end of each session, we check the calendar, confirm that everyone is still good for the next one, and schedule another one after that. Our rule is that a date is good if the DM plus 3 out of 4 players can make it. If you're the one who can't make it, you pick someone else to play your character that session.

Sometimes this means we don't game for three or four weeks, usually around the holidays when everyone is going out of town or has family obligations. But people are good about showing up once they've committed to a session. There's one guy who flakes out once in a while, and even he usually manages a week's notice or so. The rest are solid (barring real emergencies): If they say they're gonna be there, they show.

Anyone who repeatedly flaked at the last minute would be out of the group. Carving out time to game is not easy. If we make that effort and then have to cancel because someone couldn't be bothered to keep their word, that someone does not get to come back.