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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 3310035" data-attributes="member: 2205">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.</blockquote>

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