How does your group handle an absent player?

[BookTenTiger]

As long as I have two players I will run a game! Usually if only two can make it I'll do a little side quest or flashback adventure. I can be really fun to have a small group for a one-shot.

Otherwise I will create a few powers that other players can use to represent the participation of the character. So if the Barbarian is absent, a player can, on their turn, double their damage to represent the Barbarian helping out in combat. Usually there will be a number of "points" and once all those points are spent the character is no longer helping out.

 

[Blue]

Generally for both playing and running we meet online regularly weekly or bi-weekly on a weeknight. If we have 5+ we play one down, cancel if two down. Set rule, so no one feels "oh, you'll play without me but not without them". When I run, if you cancel at the last minute and people are gathering I'll leave it up to the group, we might play anyhow. Absent players characters are "unavailable", or as one DM I played with back in the 80s called it, had "Zombie Zonk" where they were invulnerable but unresponsive.

One issue that does come up is that there are married couples in the various groups, and often if one is unavailable they are both unavailable, leading to two down and an automatic cancel. This means that they almost never have a session run that they can't attend. I don't know if this is unfair to the other players who do miss sessions.

In another game, which was in-personal and scheduled monthly on a weekends, an absent player had their character played by another player, which means they were also at risk. It was considered bad form to kill off a character when the player wasn't there, but it happened at least once.

In all cases, every PC levels and gets rewards at the same rate. The player already lost the fun at being at a session, it's cruel to then penalize them in-game as well for some sense of verisimilitude that will not be a net positive experience at the table.

 

[delericho]

I've generally taken the view that we're quorate if 3/4 of the group are present; if not, we cancel. Unfortunately, I've now twice had groups shrink to the point where even a single absence took us below the threshold, at which point it becomes better to fold the group than to struggle on. (For the last campaign with the second of those groups, we took the view that the last few sessions were happening regardless of absences, which more or less worked, but I wouldn't do it long-term.)

We mostly treat the characters of absent players like Vaarsuvius' familiar - officially they're there, but they essentially pop out of existence when not directly observed. Which is weird, but with that last group it was the least-worst option. (That was just an odd group in a number of ways.)

If I know that a player is going to be absent longer-term, I'll find an opportunity to write them out of the story for a while, preferably in such a way that they can coincidentally reappear at a moment's notice.

Oh, and the characters of absent players still get a full share of treasure and XP. Which, again, is perhaps a bit odd, but I'd rather not deal with mismatched PC levels, so...

 

[kronovan]

how well (overall) does the partially in person/partially in "zoom" work? I might have to do that for one game, but I wasn't sure

IME it works well, but there's a few tricks and considerations to making it work best. As well, the ease of doing it varies depending upon whether you're running entirely TOTM or using maps. Regardless, I always run 2 instances of the VTT. One is my GM instance on my laptop and the other is a pseudo-player instance that's displayed on the big screen. TOTM is the simplest and I just display the VTT's feature for tracking combat order/initiative and ocassionally share images on the big screen. That makes for a terrific tool for displaying/managing encounter order at the table, while allowing the remote player to see the same. I have a mic and speakers at the table that are connected to the same Discord chat channel the remote player is.

When using maps, the big screen is a pseudo-player's view and I have the pseudo-PC's token on the map. That gives the in-person players a view of the map and shows where the remote player's PC is. If it's a setting in which some have the ability to see in the dark, or one with varying degrees of lighting, I compensate. In that I have the pseudo-PC match the party's PC with the best capability in sighting or lighting, and move the Pseudo-PC token where that PC is on the table.

My goal in doing all this, is to make the in-person table the primary focus and have the VTT a secondary, support tool. So, I'm hesitant to place in-person player's tokens on the VTT map. I find that in-person player's can become too distracted by the VTT map, viewing it instead of the table. That said, there's some situations where all tokens on the VTT is optimal, if not necessary. I.e. I run a SciFi campaign with Alpha Strike (simlpified Battletech) rules for combat. It's miniatures heavy for table combat and we play with a lot of 3D scenery props. For that it's better to have all Mech tokens (PCs and NPCs) and scenery objects on the VTT map, due to considerations like synergy, cohesiveness, sighting and demolished structures.

I also discourage mobile phone or tablet connections to the Discord channel, as I find it too much of an invitation to side chat. I have USB/XLR omni/directional mics, good portable speakers and a portable media interface - all of it fits into a small pack. So, even if I need to host at a different location (i.e. player's home or FLGS), I can provide all the audio needs. They just need a HDTV, or big computer Display that I can connect to.

 

[Valetudo]

It really depends on how deep we are in a campaign.If one person can't make it, I usually will still run the session. If 2 cancel I might run a one shot or play something else.

 

[Lanefan]

If I know that a player is going to be absent longer-term, I'll find an opportunity to write them out of the story for a while, preferably in such a way that they can coincidentally reappear at a moment's notice.

This brings up a new angle. Up to now we've been talking about occasional absences, whether foreseen or not.

But longer pre-planned absences are a different thing. In this case, if someone knows they're going to be away for an extended period I'll ask that they find a way to retire their character(s) before they leave; and if such can't be done due to in-fiction constraints then they'll retire at the first opportunity after the player leaves. If a large amount of in-game time passes before the player returns we might do a quick update to see what the character's been up to (if anything) on its own, and see if it gained any xp and-or loot in so doing.

If several someones know they'll be missing for a while (e.g. a couple going on an extended vacation leaving us with only two players) then I'll try to come up with a side mission for those remaining, or even have them form a new party from their spare characters in the setting*, and we'll play that instead.

* - everyone has those, right?

Oh, and the characters of absent players still get a full share of treasure and XP. Which, again, is perhaps a bit odd, but I'd rather not deal with mismatched PC levels, so...

Same here but for completely different reasons. Mismatched levels are an unavoidable and accepted fact of life here, so I don't care about that. What I do care about is integrity of the fiction, and a missing player's character is still present as part of the party and thus expected to do what it normally would if its player was present.