Dealing With Absent Players

[Herzog]

This may be totally out of the question, but:

Why not just play two-weekly, instead of every week?
You can keep your current campaign going like you do now, and the Father Player can keep up with that schedule.

Should the other players REALLY want to play weekly, one of them could start the alternating campaign.
Playing every week is not a requirement. It's a privilige. And if you already think playing weekly is not possible for you to keep up with with your current campaign, what makes you think another campaign would be less work?

I am, of course, assuming that the players enjoy your current campaign and would like to keep playing in it.

Herzog

 

[Li Shenron]

It's a tough decision, but I'm more inclined to suggest to keep the 2 campaigns separate.

IMO dealing with a player that can come only 50% of times will end up causing more problems. He definitely won't enjoy a game where he loses 50% of the events and needs a summary every time.

It sounds easier to keep the current situation, and try to improve the "separation" between the different campaign with some creative adjustments. For example, you can move the adventures of your homebrew (which is easier, since you're not using a published adventure) to a place that is remarkably different from the other campaign's centre of attention.

If the published adventure is for instance set in a town, move the other campaign into the wild or viceversa.
Otherwise, move the action of your homebrew into (1) a desert, (2) arctic regions, (3) high mountains, (4) planar locales, (5) seafaring... Anything that is strikingly different from the other campaign will definitely help the players remember which is which.

 

[Merkuri]

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.

Did you play in different places and with different people? Playing two campaigns with the same group of people in the same place (especially if they're in the same setting as well) can get confusing, with people mixing up the details of both campaigns. Playing two campaigns, each with a different group of people and/or in different places can help separate them in the mind of a player. It's a context thing.

It obviously depends on your group as far as whether you want to keep going weekly with one campaign or stick with the one bi-weekly campaign, but if you get in a position where Father Player has to bow out of the game session regularly then you should come up with some IC excuse for the character to be gone, physically or mentally. Perhaps he picks up a cursed artifact that causes his character to become an empty shell at random moments. He'll obey orders like a golem, but he just sorta blanks out. Anything like this will probably smell of deus ex machina, but it's better than just handwaving the character out of the game or NPC'ing him every other session.