LilMissKittyn said:
And now for my first naive question:
What's the best way to work transient PC's into a campaign? (People that can't play all the time, but still want to be able to play).
This is a tough one. If you are planning a campaign and you know some of the PCs will be transient, then you can try to incorporate that into the campaign.
Stage the campaign in a city where transient PCs are able to join and leave easily without breaking the suspension of disbelief.
Or stage it in a limited geographic area where the PCs hardly ever get further than a day's journey from town.
If this is an established campaign and you know that a PC will be transient for a short term period, than move the current adventure into a locale such as the two above.
If this is an established campaign and you have players that have developed scheduling issues, then you can leave their characters onstage, but in the background. The PC doesn't do anything unless the player is there. The drawback to this is that the PC isn't fighting, casting spells, using skills, etc. Depending on the group, this could seriously affect the dynamics of the party and will change the challenges they can cope with.
Another alternative would be to allow another player to play the PC. I suggest only doing this if everyone is comfortable with it. I have seen some people become petulant because they don't think another player did a very good job playing their PC.
In my campaign, if I know the player can't make the session, and the group is someplace convenient to leave the PC behind for a short time, I choose that. Otherwise, the PC is onstage and inactive. I have no problems running groups with different experience levels so if the player isn't there, the PC isn't gaining experience.
I had one campaign where the paladin's player had scheduling issues for a while. Since we generally do not like to play other people's PCs, the paladin spent some sessions watching the horses until the party got back to town. Then the paladin ended up doing some work for the church until the player could return to the game on a regular basis. He was a bit lower level than the rest of the group, but we did a little story background for what he was busy with and I let the player do some writeups to close a little bit of the experience gap. He never caught up, but he did fine overall through the campaign.
