Using 13th Age's Montages to deal with players missing sessions

[Igor Mendonça]

Hello everyone,

I've been thinking about an interesting idea and would like to share it with you to get your opinions and suggestions. I have a Tales of the Valiant game, and unfortunately, sometimes players do need to miss sessions. Previously, I played 13th Age and learned about montages.

For those who don't know, (Roll20 - Running Montages) montages are narrative sequences used to quickly and collaboratively advance the story. They allow players to describe and solve challenges, contributing to the narrative construction of a game or story. In RPGs like 13th Age, montages help save time and keep the narrative fluid and engaging.

How Montages Work:

1. Starting with a Problem: The Game Master (GM) asks a player to describe a problem the group faces during a journey or activity, without offering a solution.

2. Creative Solution: The player to the left of the initial player describes how their character solves the problem in a creative or impressive way.

3. New Obstacle: The same player who solved the previous problem describes the next obstacle the group must face.

4. Continuation: The next player clockwise solves the new problem and then creates another obstacle. This cycle continues until all players have invented and solved a problem.

Those 4 steps are just the default idea, but it is completely flexible to adjust, change, simplify, etc.

My Question

I would like to know how these montages could be used for a situation where a player missed a session and returned in the next one. Let me give you an example:

In my game, there was a fight against zombies and a mid-boss level goblin (Koruvus), where the players had some difficulties but moved forward. The group's cleric couldn't play this day. Instead of having him participate in the fight, I simply adjusted the encounter's difficulty and removed him from the battle. In the next session, I did a retcon where he was in the battle, managed to defeat zombies, but had to spend Spell slots.

I thought it would be better to do a montage, asking how he would have participated, what interesting things he did, and what he suffered as a consequence.

In your opinion, how could this be done, without being too punitive or too silly?

Thank you for your ideas!

 

[Voadam]

"Why was your character not there and how did you get back to them?" Could be an alternative. A one step montage where they come up with the explanation.

A couple ideas if nobody can think of one:

Raptured for a quick meeting with an angel with a message then returned.

Hit with a time travel curse which jumped them ahead to the current time period.

Fell down a slide trap, which dumped me out here now. Its a long slide.

Kidnapped by fey. It has been a whole year for everybody else too right?