Dealing With Absent Players

[Retreater]

A little background before my question.

There's a player who has been in my group for close to 8 years. He brings a lot of experience to the table (has been in the group longer than anyone else).

In the past 18 months he has gotten married and had a child (refer to Father Player). As a result, he has decided to miss every other session to spend time with his family - which we're all totally cool with.

Our group has had the good fortune to have two DMs who love DMing (me and another guy). We have been alternating sessions, with Father Player playing in Alternate DM's campaign. Problem is that the Alternate DM is moving in a month or two. So I'll be DMing full time.

Other players in our group are already experiencing a little trouble keeping up with the dual campaigns and remembering what happened in the previous session. The more mystery/investigation modules we run, the worst they remember; however, they prefer those to combat-heavy adventures.

Ok, so here's my question. And I know I'm going to have to ask Father Player himself, but I figured I'd through it out to you guys first for your opinions.

Should we go to one unified campaign for the benefit of the majority and let Father Player come whenever he can, filling him in on previous sessions' activities (instead of taking a week or more off and having to catch up 5 other players every time)? Should I keep things separate but attempt to cut down on catching up everyone by giving notes to players out of game time via email? Should I just juggle two similtaneous campaigns, consisting of all the same players, except one campaign also includes Father Player?

What do you guys (gals) think?

Retreater

 

[AFGNCAAP]

A few more questions about the games:

• Are the campaigns by different DMs in the same setting?
• Is there anyone who plays in both games?
• If there are folks who play in both games, which character would they get to keep playing (or would they keep both)?
• Do the players have a preference for 1 campaign over the other?
• How viable would it be to have both campaigns converge into 1 campaign? (For example, the both sets of PCs are hird by the same noble for the same task, with a few PCs [the second PC of a player who plays in both] are to stay with the noble.)
• Is a completely new campaign out of the question?

 

[Retreater]

Are the campaigns by different DMs in the same setting?
No. Alternate DM is running a published mega adventure in another campaign setting, while I'm running homebrew. My writing homebrew adventures and detailing the campaign setting will likely change when I begin DMing full-time.

Is there anyone who plays in both games?
Everyone except Father Player plays (or DMs) in both games. At present, that includes 6 other individuals.

If there are folks who play in both games, which character would they get to keep playing (or would they keep both)?
Well, when Alternate DM moves away, that campaign will likely end except for the occassional guest DM session. Since he is moving over 3 hours away, that won't happen often. So they would keep the characters in my homebrew setting, but as I wrote above, I'm probably going to ditch that campaign anyway due to the time commitments of preparing a weekly gaming session.

Do the players have a preference for 1 campaign over the other?
If they have a preference, they haven't told me. However, unless I were to take over Alternate DM's campaign (in which I'm now a player), the point is kind of moot.

How viable would it be to have both campaigns converge into 1 campaign? (For example, the both sets of PCs are hird by the same noble for the same task, with a few PCs [the second PC of a player who plays in both] are to stay with the noble.)
It's probably not too viable at this point. Alternate DM doesn't want to officially end his campaign, as he thinks he can still Guest DM often enough to keep it going. I have my doubts, however, that his schedule will permit this.

Is a completely new campaign out of the question?
No. In fact, I'm prepared to start two new campaigns if I must. I've purchased Ptolus and subscribed to War of the Burning Sky, so we shouldn't have a want for adventures (or campaign settings). I'm more than ready to drop my homebrew and run at least one of these settings. The question is to run one of them full time or run both on alternating weeks.

Retreater

 

[loki44]

The DMs of the games I play in have established forums for us to discuss things in character and out of character. They post experience and session summaries on those sites too. Yahoo groups works just fine for this sort of thing. We've had times when not every person can be there, in fact it happens a lot, but it's not hard to stay caught up with the bulletin boards in effect. The DMs allow the missing players options too. Let another player run their character in their absence with the risk of dying, let the DM run it also with risk, or have the DM put the character into a sort of lurk mode where there is no risk but also no xp gained.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Are the campaigns by different DMs in the same setting?
No. Alternate DM is running a published mega adventure in another campaign setting, while I'm running homebrew. My writing homebrew adventures and detailing the campaign setting will likely change when I begin DMing full-time.

Is there anyone who plays in both games?
Everyone except Father Player plays (or DMs) in both games. At present, that includes 6 other individuals.

If there are folks who play in both games, which character would they get to keep playing (or would they keep both)?
Well, when Alternate DM moves away, that campaign will likely end except for the occassional guest DM session. Since he is moving over 3 hours away, that won't happen often. So they would keep the characters in my homebrew setting, but as I wrote above, I'm probably going to ditch that campaign anyway due to the time commitments of preparing a weekly gaming session.

Do the players have a preference for 1 campaign over the other?
If they have a preference, they haven't told me. However, unless I were to take over Alternate DM's campaign (in which I'm now a player), the point is kind of moot.

How viable would it be to have both campaigns converge into 1 campaign? (For example, the both sets of PCs are hird by the same noble for the same task, with a few PCs [the second PC of a player who plays in both] are to stay with the noble.)
It's probably not too viable at this point. Alternate DM doesn't want to officially end his campaign, as he thinks he can still Guest DM often enough to keep it going. I have my doubts, however, that his schedule will permit this.

Is a completely new campaign out of the question?
No. In fact, I'm prepared to start two new campaigns if I must. I've purchased Ptolus and subscribed to War of the Burning Sky, so we shouldn't have a want for adventures (or campaign settings). I'm more than ready to drop my homebrew and run at least one of these settings. The question is to run one of them full time or run both on alternating weeks.

Retreater

Well, IMHO, I'd say go with a new campaign and let everyone start fresh, or stick with your old campaign and have Father Player's PC in your game be a cohort to one of the other PCs (to account for the character's continued presence despite player absence). I think the other players may prefer sticking with an existing campaign, unless they're just sick of it all and want a fresh start in the first place.

But player opinion should have some impact.

 

[Desdichado]

Our group has a fair amount of misses--two guys are recently first time fathers, and the rest of us have committments which occasionally have us missing sessions. The only one that actually calls the game is when the DM can't make it, or if enough other people miss it to make the session non-viable. It is a very, very rare session when everyone in the group is actually together, though. We also meet on average once every other week, not every week, which gives us all more time to devote to our other commitments.

I think the collapsing to a single campaign will probably be easier on everyone except Father Player, who will just have to deal. We tend to just quietly assume that the absent player's character is keeping a really low profile but then he mysteriously steps up and starts acting again the next session if his player is here. Worrying too much about in-game rationalizations of what's happening to all these characters is the road to madness, IMO. We don't bother with it.

Another thing that would be helpful--set up an email distribution list for your group. Maybe even set up a group on Yahoo! Groups or something. And post brief notes/summaries of each session between sessions. That'll help everyone remember what happened better, and it'll keep Father Player in the loop without having to spend time getting him up to speed each session that he does come.

Although we typically do spend the time, and it's not just to the absent player's benefit--we find that spending 5-10 minutes reviewing the last session helps everyone get back on the same page about where we were, what we were doing when we broke, and just in general getting everyone's heads back in the game.

We've also, on account of the much absenteeism, simplified XP towards arbitrary DM fiat. We all get the same XP whether we were actually in the session in question or not. Otherwise, XP and leveling becomes a book-keeping nightmare, not to mention that the busiest of the players would start to lag terribly behind the others in level.

 

[sniffles]

I find it curious that your players are having a hard time keeping everything straight between just two different campaigns. I play in 3 ongoing campaigns currently and in the past have been involved in up to 6 campaigns, and never had that much trouble.

I suppose it's a matter of getting accustomed to it, though. I've been doing it so long it just seems normal to me.

Our group does have Yahoo! groups set up for correspondence between players and tracking things like loot distribution and dangling plot threads. I also maintain Story Hours for most of our campaigns here, so the players can read up on what happened last time and hopefully refresh their memories.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

I say let him make it when he can. Thats what I would do. No sense in ruining your game for one players sake.

 

[delericho]

The first thing to consider: is the player still serious about playing? If not, it might be best just to let him gradually fade out of the group. (There's no shame in this - people's priorities rightly shift when they have children, and if that shift means RPGs aren't really his 'thing' any more, then so be it.)

If he does want to continue, based on the little I've heard, I recommend running a single campaign, and having him play a low-maintenance support role (a Cleric or Bard perhaps). In those weeks he's not here, either play the character as an NPC who fades into the background, or have another player treat the character as a cohort of sorts.

Either way, I recommend giving the character a full share of XP and treasure, so you don't have to compensate for him 'falling behind', and either sending the player updates on events between sessions, or expanding your recap of last session at the start of each game.

 

[kensanata]

I'd play one campaign only. We also have lots of players missing weekly sessions. One thing I do is keep a campaign diary. In-game, all players basically belong to a big group of people travelling together from town to town. If a session starts away from the inn, the characters of absent players will be sent home at the earliest occasion on some pretext (healing, praying, helping somebody else, relaying messages), and characters of players that were not there last time will be "catching up" or "decided to come anyway". It works quite well, but I told players that this is how it was going to be: The group would have to play a big circus troupe, a bandit gang, a rebel group, or something like that, where we would have a strong "base camp" from which to make small forays.