Depends. If the party is some variation of 'in town', it is fairly easy to just assume the missing character(s) are sleeping it off or studying or similar. The rest of us go do interesting stuff. If party is already in a scenario, we either ghost the character(s) or someone runs them. Or we skip the RPG session and dig out a board or card game. We WILL game, something.
How does your group handle an absent player?
- Thread starter gnarlygninja
- Start date
Previous campaign: the PC is presumed to still be there, but “off camera,” and fights were rebalanced so their fair share of monsters are also off-camera.
Current campaign is a very silly megadungeon called The Grande Temple of Jing. When players are absent, a slot in the floor opens and their characters are literally get sucked into the floor like it’s a pneumatic tube. When the player comes back, they’re ejected from the ceiling in the same way, covered in slime, and must make an Acrobatics check or take falling damage. (Sometimes, characters return in the middle of a fight, and with a high enough Acrobatics check, land on top of the monsters for a free attack.)
While gone, they’re in stasis and don’t get the benefits of rests. When the players turn in money for experience, which is the only way to get XP, it’s divided among the PCs that are present. There’s no attempt at balancing fights, let alone rebalancing them… players have learned to be cautious.
One player dropped out, so next session his character was sucked out of his clothes, Looney Tunes style, leaving all his possessions to scatter on the ground for the rest of the party to collect.
Current campaign is a very silly megadungeon called The Grande Temple of Jing. When players are absent, a slot in the floor opens and their characters are literally get sucked into the floor like it’s a pneumatic tube. When the player comes back, they’re ejected from the ceiling in the same way, covered in slime, and must make an Acrobatics check or take falling damage. (Sometimes, characters return in the middle of a fight, and with a high enough Acrobatics check, land on top of the monsters for a free attack.)
While gone, they’re in stasis and don’t get the benefits of rests. When the players turn in money for experience, which is the only way to get XP, it’s divided among the PCs that are present. There’s no attempt at balancing fights, let alone rebalancing them… players have learned to be cautious.
One player dropped out, so next session his character was sucked out of his clothes, Looney Tunes style, leaving all his possessions to scatter on the ground for the rest of the party to collect.
Li Shenron
Legend
Ideally, I would use the "fade to background" idea and have the rest of the players continue without the missing player's PC, with occasionally (rarely) having the DM step in and "use" the faded PC in special cases due to narrative or emergencies. All while granting the missing PC immunity, but without earning XP. This is what I would probably do in a long-term campaign.
But since I haven't played or run a long-term campaign for a very long time, and XP tracking don't matter much, we usually let another player control the missing player's PC (with immunity) if we are not just rescheduling the game.
TheHand
Hero
In our games, when a player has to miss a game we often let them nominate another player to drive their character. In larger groups, we might also have the absent character go on an off-camera side adventure, or guard the camp, or head back to some safe area to tend to other business. We’re all friends and life happens, so there’s never any kind of penalty or loss of XP or anything of the sort.
Ulorian - Agent of Chaos
Legend
Ejected into space.
Ulorian - Agent of Chaos
Legend
I play (and host) Texas Hold'em games and tournaments. Randomly assigning seats is the norm here so that players can't strategically position themselves relatively to strong or weak players. I usually do it by selecting a number of cards matching the number of players ahead of time, dealing out those cards to the seats, then having the players pick from a second set of cards which match the dealt cards. The players then take the seat whose card matches the one they drew. Poker initiative!
I've never heard of this being used in an RPG before though! The crinkle of Cheetos bags must be deafening as everyone picks up their kit and shuffles around the room.
Ulorian - Agent of Chaos
Legend
Crack 'em over the head with a shovel. I like it.
djotaku
Explorer
Your last sentence is the thing I wanted to highlight - I first saw Bob the World Builder mention this and I think it's important (especially for newer groups) to keep the sanctity of the scheduled night. Otherwise it's easy for the group to dissolve as at least one person always has something else more important they need to do on game night.
In the one game where I get to be a player, when we were going to have lots of absences over the summer, I volunteered to run some silly one-shots (Faster Purple Worm, Kill! Kill!) to keep the game night going without worrying about the overall plot moving forward without someone. During our regular campaign, the GM will run absent player characters during combat so that she doesn't have to rebalance the encounter for the missing person.
By the time I ran my first table that didn't consist of family members, I'd come across lots of advice from YT, Reddit, and various GM Core/Guide books. So for our session zero we talked about it and agreed that from our group of 6 players, if at least 4 could make it, we would play. We ALSO use this rule for scheduling. For various reasons, 4 hour sessions didn't work for our group, so we do 2 hour sessions every 2 weeks. So, to make sure we can make our schedule, we can't only play when all 6 folks are available. As for how we handle it when someone is gone - it depends. One of our players knew he wouldn't make it and he came up with an in-story reason for why he had to abandon the group for that session. Other times like others have said here, the PC doesn't contribute to the story or combat, but is assumed to be moving along with the group. We don't RP hard enough that it bothers people, story-wise; I could definitely see certain personalities not being able to deal with that idea.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
We try to avoid this by scheduling the next session immediately at the end of the current session, we all bust out our calendars, start at 3 weeks out and move ahead 5 to 7 days at a time until we find a date within 5 weeks that we can all make it. This has worked for us as I can count on one hand how many times we have played a person down in the last 5 years of this group's existence (maybe literally 1 and if there were more, I can't recall). However, in the post-pandemic period, sometimes something comes up (like someone tests positive for COVID) and we just zoom them in.
However, if someone really can't make it, we play without them and I (as DM) will make (as few as possible) choices for the absent player, but someone else is assigned rolling dice for them, but in general we do our best to keep that character out of the spotlight for the session (if possible by having them do something on their own in town).
That said, I have had someone's character die in their absence (though that was back in the 90s).
However, if someone really can't make it, we play without them and I (as DM) will make (as few as possible) choices for the absent player, but someone else is assigned rolling dice for them, but in general we do our best to keep that character out of the spotlight for the session (if possible by having them do something on their own in town).
That said, I have had someone's character die in their absence (though that was back in the 90s).
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