how would you deal with the character of a player who leaves the game?

[alsih2o]

in the game i dm one of the players is quitting. this leaves me with his ranger to deal with and i am looking for good ideas.

the party is far from any civilized land, and quite lost. they are also stocked, they have 6 players taking quite a few roles, so the missing character will not make a huge difference.

how would oyu deal with it?

 

[MojoGM]

I'd run the character as a NPC until they reach civilized lands, then have the character leave the group to pursue other interests.

If the character was really interesting, I'd keep them around as a recurring NPC. If not, they vanish into the ether...(and who knows, maybe the player in question will return some day).

Now, while running him/her as a npc, if they happened to die, so be it. Might be very dramatic. But I'd not do it on purpose.

 

[Pielorinho]

I said dramatic death, but it really varies.

If it's a dramatic death, I'll try to do it in such a way that it advances the plot. Maybe the PC will be killed off by a villain the other PCs let escape, so that the remaining ones know that she's still a threat.

I might move them into background NPC status: the party wizard gets a job researching and cataloguing the library of the destroyed cult. The PCs might occasionally get messages from her that act as plot-hooks.

I might send him into a different adventuring party: the barbarian can't stand travelling in the spirit world, so he returns to the normal world where he becomes a mercenary demonkiller-for-hire.

If I think the player might ever come back, I'll generally try to keep the PC alive somewhere. Otherwise, I'll do whatever I think is most interesting storywise.

Daniel

 

[Dalamar]

I'm currently running a Play by Post game at the boards here, and two of the original six players have disappeared. So the characters have done likewise, I just don't post their happenings anymore and they're not there.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Run as an npc (very passive) until you reach civilization, then give the character an ending as perscribed by the player. If the player has no perfered retirement method, think of something that fullfills or completes the character as it's been run.

(if the most fitting end for the character as its been run is dramatic death, work that in)

Kahuna Burger

 

[Datt]

The ranger would scout ahead only to get lost and never seen or heard from again. That is what we usually do anyway. The character just goes off somewhere and never makes it back. As a matter of fact my character has a twin brother that used to be a part of the group. The player quit, much to my saddness, so my brother just went back home and has only really made cameos from time to time. This leaves it that just in case the player wants to return at a later date the character is still there, somewhere. Plus if they do return it leaves openings for lots of plot hooks!

 

[hong]

in the game i dm one of the players is quitting. this leaves me with his ranger to deal with and i am looking for good ideas.

the party is far from any civilized land, and quite lost. they are also stocked, they have 6 players taking quite a few roles, so the missing character will not make a huge difference.

how would oyu deal with it?

I would ask the player. They tend to get all attached to characters for some reason....

 

[The_Gneech]

Hand the character sheet to another player (one who could handle it, hopefully) and say, "Here, will you make the rolls for Emrikol The Totally Absent until we get to a convenient point for them to leave?"

Then let the dice fall where they may.

-The Gneech

 

[S'mon]

In my campaign if a player leaves the game his/her PC leaves the group as soon as reasonably possible. I don't kill them off, they just leave, for whatever reason.

 

[RigaMortus]

For me, it depends more on the current situation that is going on in-game and what that character's actions were (did they leave to find someone? Were they sleeping at the Inn? Did we stop in the middle of combat and the player decided not to come back? these are all factors.). What wouldn't be a factor to me is how or why the PLAYER left, but what was going on in the campaign and the CHARACTER.