How do you handle players who arrive late and players who leave early?

[nai_cha]

I'm assuming the reason the OP is asking this is because they've got a repeat infraction offender.

No. Sorry, I should've been clear about that. The reason I'm asking is because, like I said above, all our schedules are such that we all work around someone having to arrive later than everyone else and others having to leave a bit earlier because it's either that or we wait for an available long weekend or don't game at all. It's always going to be that way, that's the way our lives are. In fairness to everyone, all the people in the group tell each other "I'm available from x o'clock to y o'clock" then we work from there. There's no one being a douche showing up late or jetting early without telling us beforehand or just because.

Perhaps I should have phrased it clearer, but I just want to have other options aside from handwaving away the player's presence (no offence to those who choose to do that, though, and I'm definitely going to end up doing that sooner or later) or having someone else play the character (they're cool with that on occasion but we'd like to mix it up a bit). Like I mentioned earlier, in another game the player being late was turned into an adventure hook. I'm looking for solutions like that.

ETA: [MENTION=1956]Shin Okada[/MENTION], thanks for the link. Looking into it for ideas.

 

[the Jester]

If your DM says you arrive at -x- time and you're 30 minutes late when the group is in DEEP, I assure you, certain DMs would go to such an extreme... and if you're going to leave an 30 minutes to an hour before it's time to leave and your class is critical to the campaign, why would you even bother coming in the first place?

I guess that's fair as long as the group is willing to bend over backward to start late, quit early or cancel when a single player has another commitment, but you know what? Then you cut your playing time in half. Forget that. Accept that people have lives and things happen in those lives and just deal with it. Sometimes someone is late; sometimes they leave early. Fade in, fade out. Or the dm can npc their character. Or they can assign another willing player to run their character. But I think penalizing the character for the player's actions is counterproductive.

That said, I absolutely agree that players should inform the group if they aren't going to make it for some reason. That's simple courtesy.

We currently have an issue that one of our players has changed his class / race four different times in four different weeks and refuses to listen to anyone regarding the synergy within the group as to what we need.. and they're too stuck in their own ways and won't listen to anyone except for themselves despite the fact that the last week we played, they had a class that was doing extremely well for them and they claim that they "didn't see it" even though everyone else did..

While I agree that having a player change his class and race every session gets old really fast, it sounds like you guys are trying to exert a lot of control over another player's character, which is a big no-no to me. But different groups have different social contracts- you might want to talk about your group's style of teamwork explicitly if you want this guy to get it.

 

[Leorix]

I believe it all depends on how you relate to your hobby. In the early years as a player I played in games where the date & time were set haphazardly (usually at the end of the current session). I found it frustrating and it caused many problems because the players didn't have diaries with them or forgot or had something else come up.

When I took over as DM 10+ years ago I made sure we set a fixed date & time each month (first sunday @ 12 noon). Everyone knows it and schedules other things around that fixed date. On the odd occasion where someone can't make it or informs us they'll be running late they need to select another player as proxy for them. This has worked fabulously.

Sometimes we have had to shift the weekend by a week or so when multiple players couldn't attend but went back to normal schedule for the following month. I also created a yahoogroups where all players joined and set the calendar to send reminder emails 1 week & 3 days prior to the session.

Roleplaying is a fun creative outlet for all of us and we take our fun seriously

Lastly, whenever a new person wants to join I casually "interview" them and make sure that they can commit to the schedule before they get too involved.

 

[jbear]

I'd hand wave it as well. Everyone in my group including myself is a mother or father with kids, a job and a vast and complex life beyond d&d. When someone misses a session they choose the player they want to run their character for them under the condition they are never deliberately put into a position of unecessary danger and the player running their character uses their own character to protect them with their lives. If two people are going to miss, we cancel and reschedule.

But what the OP seems to be looking for are some creative solutions to use when this happens. I'm not sure this is the cleanest way, since this is going to happen everytime you play ... but anyway ...

What if their character regularly leaves the group to do scouting missions or gather information. You could slip him/her a piece of paper with the information he has aquired that upon arrival s/he needs to share with the group. This way you can get across plotlines or descriptions of the area, and details that the PCs may have missed, or of course provide them with new adventure hooks.

Leaving early: The PC is cursed and if he doesn't leave and find a quite place every so often, where he performs a small ritual of some nature inline with his character/backstory, then he condemns one of his family member's to death or slowly destroys their soul, or weakens their life essence. One day s/he will free them, if only they can be found, but until that day, despite what is going on around him/her, s/he will continue preserving their life by negating the destructive power of that fateful curse!

This is just a create way of handwaving I guess, which in the end will probably lead to more adventure!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I would handwave it or use companion characters.

 

[chriton227]

You have to use common sense with the 'punishment' that you hand out.

Remember, I said repeat infractions, it's entirely up to the DM to decide what is a severe infraction or not... and how much of of a punishment should be handed out, if any

Your group has a radically different philosophy on play than mine, ours is a group of friends as equals, with the DM acting as the rules arbiter and plot driver, but not as an authority over the group. Several of us have kids or work commitments or other interests that interfere with the schedule, but when that happens, we talk it over as a group (usually in email) and come to a compromise together. Sometimes that means cancelling a session, or altering our schedules (maybe switching to the opposite ever-other-Sunday), or rescheduling just one session, or playing without someone there (sometimes the PC is there and played by someone else, sometimes not).

We have had a player who needed to drop out of the campaign due to job changes, and although his character was central to the main campaign plot, we kept going with no problem. Another player several years ago started becoming less reliable, frequently missing games without notice, we talked to him about it like adults and it turned out that more important things in his life had come up and he didn't know how to tell us. One of our players is a big fan of the local college football team, he will sometimes go out of town to away games, in which case his roommate plays his character. But our group has been stable since the 3.0-3.5 transition, usually with at most one player entering or exiting the game each year.

If you don't set groundwork for a rule basis, you'll have people coming and going like the wind in the trees and one week you'll have a great group.. the next week you'll have maybe two people show up..

This is a false dichotomy, there are plenty of groups that have a stable and consistent player base without resorting to formal attendance rules. The most formal rule any group I've been in has had is an unspoken "we are all friends, treat each other with respect".

 

[Minifig]

Your group has a radically different philosophy on play than mine, ours is a group of friends as equals, with the DM acting as the rules arbiter and plot driver, but not as an authority over the group. Several of us have kids or work commitments or other interests that interfere with the schedule, but when that happens, we talk it over as a group (usually in email) and come to a compromise together. Sometimes that means cancelling a session, or altering our schedules (maybe switching to the opposite ever-other-Sunday), or rescheduling just one session, or playing without someone there (sometimes the PC is there and played by someone else, sometimes not).

I didn't say at any time my current group plays like this.. Where did I say my current group plays like this. Can someone show me where I did? I don't know where people got that impression.

I've had a DM do that, and it came abundantly clear to the group that I was playing with at the time that the DMs time was valuable, and was not to be trifled with, if you messed with HIS time, he messed with yours. It was to be understood.

My current group is a lot more understanding, but.. I'm just saying, everyone leaping on me for saying this is my current group should just slightly ease off a bit because it made the most amount of sense to me when I grew up playing when I was 10-17 years old.

I'm 29 now, and because of that one DM, I have a great and entire respect for DMs everywhere, no matter how hard of a DM they may be or may not be.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Does that make sense?

No. And I'll stop there before I get red-inked.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

snip

It depends why your players come late or go early. If it is because they are just not interested in staying, you should not bother penalizing their behaviour, but speak with them about that and maybe even boot them out of the group.

If however there are meetings which are irregular and just can happen occasionally, and the players rather come late than not at all, you can be happy to have them.

Can´t you just shorten the session or do thigs that don´t necessarily involve those characters actively?

In non combat situations one less player is hardly noticed, and you as a DM should just let them do something which does not interfere too much with the current situation. Maybe you can just send them a mail and ask them what their characters do... researching something in a bibliotheque, searching for herbs etc are time consuming thing ingame and the players really would not have to do a lot even if they were there.

In combat situations, the best approach has always been for me, to just let them hang around in the back, fighting their own enemies. Depending on the outcome of the rest of the battle, you will narrate their combat and let them be rescued if the combat was too easy and let them help, if the combat was too hard. (Maybe drop a healing word here and there if the mssing PC is the healer.)

The most important thing to remember is not sending too much time on missing players. Actually there can always be a sudden reason, that someone does not show up, and haveing a standard procedure does help a lot. And don´t allow other players to play them...

 

[nai_cha]

If however there are meetings which are irregular and just can happen occasionally, and the players rather come late than not at all, you can be happy to have them.

DING DING DING! This is precisely the group's situation. Thank you for keeping that in mind with your reply.

This really isn't a case of problem players, or people disrespecting the DM or the rest of the group's time, or players being immature and "standing up" the DM and the group. It's simply, if we want to play, this is what I have to work with, any suggestions aside from the usual?