How does your group handle an absent player?

[kronovan]

If I'm the GM/DM, I have a VTT on a big sceen at/beside the table for players that have to be home, but still able to play remotely. For 2 of the tables I GM, half the players have young families, so the VTT has been a terrific aid for accomodating them. Most of those player's spouses play too, so it isn't uncommon for them to hot-seat a few times over the course of the evening.

Otherwise, for players that can't make a session for another reason, we usually have another player run their PC if the owner is willing. All of my players' sheets are replicated in the VTT and updated weekly. So, with the ability to display any PC sheet on the big screen, it's minimal effort for another player to play them.

It's worked, because it's typically a minimal number of players (1 or 2) that can't make a session in-person. I've had the odd player that's consistently tardy, or wants to play from home more often than in-person. For them, I just suggest they move to one of my online VTT campaigns, which they have. I can't stress how much using a VTT like this has helped my IRL tables remain active/viable. Not to mention I get to use the VTT (FG or Foundry) running on my laptop as a GM screen.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Basically “went back to town for supplies”.

IE got called away to do something else.

 

[Thomas Shey]

With a single player, we almost always hand off the character to someone else; in rare cases we might have a character have a committment come up so they don't set off on a mission/job/adventure, but often there's enough specialization in character functions that this can leave an unfillable hole in the group's function, so we don't do it.

(I'm always a little startled when I hit people online who find this utterly unacceptable (as in "No one plays my PC but me"), as I've never hit that in the wild, but I'd guess it has something to do with other selection criteria tending to screen out people who are likely to feel that way.