What do you do when players don't show?

[Nareau]

If someone doesn't show, and doesn't give ample notice, I kindly let them know they better not do it again. If it happens more than once, I'll chew them out and possibly kick them from the game. Picking up a phone is really, really easy.

Usually, I just have their character fall ill or decide to stay in town. Occasionally I'll use their absence as an excuse to screw with their character, involving them more deeply in the story.

Nareau

 

[KB9JMQ]

The group I DM has 6 players in it, as long as I have 4 of them we will play. The missing players character's are usually ran by another player.
The only exception to this is if my wife is one of the missing players. If she is then one of the other players runs on of her games and I get to be a player rather than DM.
In the latter example we will game with as few of three of us.
We know ahead of time how many people will be at the session so no shows are rare.

 

[fanboy2000]

If the missing person is my friend Peter, I send a Dragon after the group. For the longest time everytime he had to miss a game session (usually because his girlfreind wanted to go to all the school dances, which were always scheduled on our game nights) it was a night I had a dragon encounter planed and ready.

In general, when one or more players goes missing, a Blue Orb comes down from the sky, surounds the PC, picks the PC up, and whiskes him or her away for the duration of the session. When the player comes back, the Blue Orb comes down and deposits the PC next to the others. When a PC comes back, they have no memory what happened when they were in the Blue Orb, but they know how long they were gone. Also, all the other PCs now have a strange desire to explain exactly what happened while they were gone and never speak of the Blue Orb it self.

I used to have these great, complicated, and in-game reasons for a PC not being there, but my players made fun of me because and kept making plot device jokes. So, I gave-up and gave them the most obvious plot-device I could think of. They are now a standard feature of my D&D games.

I don't use Blue Orbs in Paranoia XP, for reasons I think are obvious.

 

[frankthedm]

I don't mind playing with 2 PCs but the usually the players say, "Not in franks game, without the rest of the party, we'll be slaughtered."

 

[Timeboxer]

In general, when one or more players goes missing, a Blue Orb comes down from the sky, surounds the PC, picks the PC up, and whiskes him or her away for the duration of the session.

...the scary part is, that's almost exactly what happens, I seem to remember, if you get caught in a Summoning spell and pulled onto another plane to serve someone...

 

[fanboy2000]

...the scary part is, that's almost exactly what happens, I seem to remember, if you get caught in a Summoning spell and pulled onto another plane to serve someone...

Really? Wow. I'll have to use that now.

 

[Timeboxer]

Really? Wow. I'll have to use that now.

From the Great Modron March adventure Camp Followers, in which the PCs are caught in a rogue summoning spell on accident and are pulled to the Abyss to serve a powerful wizard until the spell duration wears off:

"It's an ordinary day until something slams into your backs with the force of an angry proxy, leaving you stunned and breathless. When you open your eyes, you find yourselves surrounded by walls of crystal, through which many-faceted confines you see a blur of planar scenes rushing by you. You've been snared by a spell crystal!"

Of course, since it's a summoning spell, that means that if you go negative, you are instantly revived and return to the place you were summoned from...

 

[Jdvn1]

...the scary part is, that's almost exactly what happens, I seem to remember, if you get caught in a Summoning spell and pulled onto another plane to serve someone...

... Then again, that's a color thing and can vary by caster.

 

[thundershot]

Our group is VERY character-centric, and if we don't have everyone there, we generally do something else (like play Settlers of Catan). The problem is explaining why the character is suddenly missing. Right now they're doing the BONEGARDEN, and if someone's missing, it could mean the death of them all.

What I did when they were lower level... one of the players (who is the little brother, now 18, but he was only 13 then) had football and school and stuff. I gave his character a cursed ring. It would randomly (i.e. whenever he couldn't make it) cause him to swap places with a female sahuagin. Everytime it happened, the party had to subdue her. Meanwhile, Lance (the cavalier) was happily enjoying the luxurious demi-plane of the ring. When they'd switch back, the "fish lady" would be in the ring. Eventually, he was able to show up every week, so I turned the ring into a story arc. He and the fish lady got fused together into one being and they had to undo the curse...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Board games and card games have become my friend as the role playing friends get flakier and flakier. "Gee dude, I thought I told you I wasn't coming!"

Lovee Monsters Menace America, and the Z-Man B-movie card games. Cheez Geek is great too. One day I need to get the Munkchin bit going.