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

[Kai Lord]

I voted Other:

In the early 90's we used to play in a weekly Robotech campaign where we'd rotate GM's every week. Well, one time when one of the players couldn't make it the GM had his character turn out to be the serial rapist we were hunting for on the SDF-3 (the usual busywork for veritech pilots) and had him publicly beheaded.

Strangely the absent player wasn't too happy when he returned the next week.

 

[Nifft]

The one PC who left my game "ascended" -- he'd merged with a fragment of the One Tree, and was slowly becoming a half-celestial, so when disaster struck he was enlisted as an NPC by a desperate Astral Deva.

It's a plot-related going away event, but not a death.

-- Nifft

 

[pogre]

I agree with Datt - mysterious disappearance.

 

[Norfleet]

Headshot. The beauty of a headshot is that it leaves little room for debating about survival, and when you're using monster snipers, kobolds being my favorite, can strike at any time nearly without warning.

It's my tried and true method of dealing with a permanently departed player: His character is granted redshirt ensign status and is used the next time I need a redshirt to warn the party about the presence of snipers.

Stepping on a land mine is also an effective strategy. If the character is blown to bits as a result of a deadly trap that he has now disarmed, this also neatly solves the problem.

Maybe it's just me, but I like neat, permanent solutions, and being shot in the head or blown to bits qualifies as fairly permanent.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I recently ran into this situation. There had been a rivalry between a couple of the characters, so after the player decided he had to drop out, it was decided that the other player's character was going to poison him in his sleep. The funny thing is that while I (the DM) dropped clues about what had truly happened, the other players who weren't in on it never even suspected that the poisoning was not at the hands of a monster.

 

[AuroraGyps]

Other:

I'd have the Ranger decided to just go off on his/her own right from where the prty is. Maybe it's a vision or dream that makes it happen.

 

[danzig138]

Run as an NPC until what seems to be an appropriate place for the character to depart from the group appears, or until the character gets killed.

 

[Kweezil]

Usually, run as an NPC and fade them into the background. They might or mgiht not turn up again depending on how things go. Once, I've killed an ex-PC when the player quit, but that was mroe to do with the player being annoying [d20 Star Wars - he wanted to take Force Sensitive next level. Why? What in-game reason had spurred this attunement with the force? "I want it to get the cool powers." ] Player was unavailable, or no longer interested in the game any more, I never got a straight answer about it. His PC has an ignominious accident involving a malfunctioning airlock.

 

[GenLang]

When our druid left the group, I simply wrote her out of the storyline. Druid had a dream and felt she was needed elsewhere, and headed off. We did a party loot split at that point, and off she went. No fuss, no muss.

There's a potential for the cleric in the other game to have to leave for awhile, if work hours shift. If that happens, I'll write her out too, the Church repurchasing her contract from the group so she can do somthing more directly Church oriented.

 

[Morpheus]

I actually had this happen quite recently (Sir Osis of Liver fled Florida). I made the character into an NPC who joined a caravan to travel "away". A few weeks later we got a new player and, Voila!, Kariff returns from the trip to rejoin the party. Of course, it helped that the player was a 3e newbie and the already created character made it easier for him to jump in and start playing (the two-headed dog animal companion didn't hurt either).