How to handle missing players?

[DarkJester]

How do you handle the situation when one or more players doesn't make it to the game? I don't like to cancel if I have at least 4 of the 6 players, but sometimes an important character's player makes it a no show. We really havn't had a problem with this until this weekend, the clerics player (and in this particular part of the campaign, the one in the spotlight when we left off) didn't show and didn't give notice. His character ended up dieing in the end (I was letting another player play his character). The other player played the cleric remarkable well to character (as the cleric had acted before in character) and as a result he ended up being killed by a thought to be standard N.P.C (actually a dragon polymorphed....group still doesn't know).

The clerics player got really mad at both me and the player playing the cleric at the time when he found out. Everyone told him to chill, he knew the protocol for when you weren't there. He is still mad, I don't really care though, it's nobodies fault but his.
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It made me think though. Is there a better way to handle running a game when 1 or more people are missing from the table?

 

[kreynolds]

Well, if somebody can't make it to a game I'm running, the game gets cancelled. I don't like running with missing players. Consequently, I have a solo game (at least one) for every single player, and a few paired games with a mixture of my players, all in addition to any other bigger games I run.

I tell ya'. My players are pushy.

 

[Crothian]

With my current group, we cancel the game if a player can't be there. In the old group, we just made do with who ever showed up and the missing PCs went into the gimp suit.

 

[takyris]

I'll try to avoid killing a PC if the player isn't there that week, but then, I don't go out of my way to kill anybody. And to, say, target the Death Spell on someone who was THERE that night is sort of silly.

Basically, my fudging for people who aren't there is that if they're knocked down and dying, they're more likely to stabilize than normally. I try to have monsters take that PC out of useful combat quickly (with Hold spells and such), which makes my job easier but doesn't KILL the PC in question.

Really, the big problem here seems to be your player not showing up and not having the manners to tell somebody that he wasn't showing up. That's just rude -- and if he's getting angry because his character, the spotlight character for the night, died, then he has no one to blame but himself.

People can generally see how a campaign is going -- if you're gonna be the spotlight person (ie, the cleric in the undead-nest, the rogue in the break-in, the fighter in the gladiatoral games), either SHOW UP or give the DM enough time to plan something else.

-Tacky

 

[Limper]

the missing PCs went into the gimp suit.

Now that is an intertesting way to put it!

We've always put the noshow in the "gimp suit"... noshows also have a good chance of becoming tonights "redshirt".

 

[Black Omega]

I tend to go on. We only get to play once a week, so even when characters fairly central to events aren't there, there is always something to do. I sometimes have to adjust encounters on the fly, which can get annoying. More so for my players since sometimes that makes an expected easty enoucter much tougher. I also have a file of basic characters stat blocks for unexpected encounters. Pays to be prepared.

 

[Lordnightshade]

Once there was a player in one of my games who was often absent from the game.

I never like making another player, play the absent players character, so I would always try to come up with reasons that the character had to temporarily bow out. This was never really that hard to do because most of my players have excellent attendance.

However, this particular game was at a bad time for the player in question so he could only make it about half the time.

So I worked out with him a creative way to deal with this. Every time he missed a game his character would mysteriously disappear.

Turns out he was being summoned by a wizard far away who he had made a dire agreement with, part of that agreement was that the wizard could summon him whenever he wanted the services of a high level rogue.

It worked into the story well as for a while the party thought he was sneaking off to betray them whenever he disappeared.

 

[Lordnightshade]

wow, heavy RBDM presence in this thread!

 

[DarkJester]

RBDM?

 

[the Jester]

I try to phase pcs who aren't there out with any of a number of reasons: down with the flu, stayed behind to watch the mounts, guarding prisoners, drunk at the inn, taking a dump, etc. Scouting ahead (in the wilderness) and watching the entrance (to a dungeon) also work fairly well.

The exceptions are when the entire party is wiped out, when they are in an "impossible situation," etc. If we end a session with the whole party captured and the next game the party all dies, the guy who didn't show up this time died with them. (Or maybe is still a captive at the best.)