How to believably deal with missing players??

[Wonger]

So let's say you have a party of six, and you game a few times a month with a fairly consistent continuous storyline. But if your six players, typically only five can make any given session, and who happens to be the one that can't changes almost every time.

In general, you can still have a consistent story and the missing man can easily get up to speed the next time. But, how do you explain the character's absence in game? Is there any way to make it semi-believable so that it doesn't seem so cheesy that during this important mission the Bard has to study at his college and when the party is summoned by the King, the Cleric has to tend to temple duties rather than come with?

Anyone discovered any creative solutions?

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

If it's just one, I'd have one of the other players play him as an NPC. More than one and that gets complicated. And of course, this would make it vital for the DM to have copies of each PC's character sheet.

 

[Malar's Cow]

I still have the character involved in the story and either run them myself as an NPC, or ask one of the players present to handle the missing player's PC. Normally if one of our group knows they won't be at the next game, they'll leave some general instructions about what their character wants to accomplish during the main session.

Fortunately, nobody's character has died while they were absent. Yet.

 

[Psion]

Nega-Bands!

From:
http://capmarvel0.tripod.com/powers.html

They also allow Captain Marvel and Rick Jones to switch places between the Microverse and the regular universe.

Replace Captain Marvel and Rick Jones with the absentee characters, and the Microverse (negative zone in my day...) with a plane of your choice.

 

[Crothian]

End each session in place that a player can wondering around in and get lost or just do something else.

 

[Ozmar]

In one of my current games, the DM has copies of all our char sheets, and if someone isn't there, his character is run by another player. The duty gets passed around, and usually people are good to avoid playing them "out of character" (at least, not extremely so). No special protection lays on the NPCed PC, and we've had several PC deaths occur while they are being played by other players. It happens. Its a risk. Personally, I try to make sure I am at every game!

Ozmar the Responsible Player

 

[Zandy]

My group used to tap around this issue as well. When we had a VERY long campaign with multiple DMs taking turns, their PC would be an NPC. When someone would be missing, that would be two extra PCs run by the rest of the group.

But lets face it; any time a player has to run more than one character, it takes time, effort and energy away from his main PC. This makes the game less than it could be. Plus, through no fault of the fill-in player, we've had absent PCs get croaked. Let me tell you, that makes for angry players when we fill them in on what happened.

So, at least when I DM, if I can't come up with a logical reason for the absence in game, we just ignore that PC for the session. Honestly, does it really make a difference? Unless the PC is the MAIN plot thread in the game, it usually isn't critical if some PC "just isn't there". I'll just slightly modify the encounters on the fly; a few less HP, one or two less monsters, etc...

 

[random user]

I also have another player run the PC for the session. It has worked pretty well so far.

 

[Wonger]

Replace Captain Marvel and Rick Jones with the absentee characters, and the Microverse (negative zone in my day...) with a plane of your choice.

I said hold the cheese!

As for the have someone else run him - a good idea, but, that just doesn't fly in our gaming group...never has. And if I ran him or brought him along, it would wind up like the Gamers movie where he is just sitting in the background doing nothing, or acting totally different for one adventure - maybe as bad or worse than the cheese I was trying to avoid!

Ending at a point where the PCs can seperate works ok, but sometimes the party is summoned by the King or Ally or Whatever and it seems ludicrous that he would not be joining them because he was on an errand.

Then there is the worst scenario where you end an adventure mid-session because you run ot of time and finish it the next time with a guy missing, or even worse the one missing before is back and a different player has gone AWOL! How to explain that one on the tenth level of the Dungeon of Doom?!?

I'm getting the feeling there is no silver bullet...

 

[Planesdragon]

Anyone discovered any creative solutions?

Have a "base camp"--and at least one NPC camp follower. Any missing PCs stay at "base camp", and if they're all there the NPC takes over.

The missing PC misses some XP, but gets more downtime. (This is important IMC, as healing and mana retention rates have been slowed as a literary preference.)