What do you do with a character when a player bails forever?

[1QD]

I am curious what creative ways you have to deal with players who suddenly stop attending your games, for a variety of reasons.
I had one player rage quit because she tried to destroy a construct, but ended up breaking her hand. The construct was invulnerable, and it was actually designed so that another character was to first climb inside the construct and remove the rune that granted the construct its invulnerability. Convinced I was picking on her character, she raged quit.

As it turns out we were in hell, and it was a really bad time to quit. So despite a weeks worth of attempts to reach out and explain the encounter to her, she refused any contact. So next gaming session we got to the portal home, that of course was guarded by a 100th Lvl demon. With combat not really an option, the demon made us a deal. We could leave via the portal, and return home, but 1 of us had to stay.

Well it isn't hard to guess what happened. What creative ways have you used to explain the absence of a player?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have some quibbles with the way that encounter designed, but absent other information, that seems a lot to rage quit over.

As for the actual question, though, in one case, I had a character (a tricksy gnome cleric who was committed to establishing peace with a nearby kobold tribe), I had the character go undercover in the kobold warren and when the rest of the group eventually foiled the evil plot of one faction of the warren, I had the missing PC's character be responsible, off-stage, for helping the rest of the kobolds move back to their prior homeland. The character is presumably there today.

 

[zarionofarabel]

If it's a permanent thing, honestly, it doesn't really matter what happens to the PC as they will never return. Perhaps they found a magic ring and fell into the volcano whilst destroying said ring.

A temporary absence is a different beast, as it depends mostly on what is happening in the narrative and the overall setup of the game. If the game is centered around a PC home base where the action tends to stay in the local area, then it's easy as the PC is merely occupied with other activities at the base. If it's more travel oriented, or the party is exploring an expansive hostile locale then it gets more complicated as it's harder to justify "off screen" activities.

If nothing else you could always go with the Viva La Dirt League skit where the one dude just stands slightly off to the side for most of the adventure as he is AFK!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Since we've had a habit of keeping character sheets and running characters for people when missing, I'd just do that until an opportunity for them to leave arrived, and then not make a big deal about the reasons unless it seemed a very unlikely development.

 

[aco175]

Generally the PCs just goes away if this happens. It would not be worth wasting time on making something up if a player did this to me. A better thing might be to make the PC a NPC or second character of a player. If you are petty, you make the PC, now NPC the fool that wanders into traps and chooses the wrong skills and weapons. But the player will never know that you made his PC into a joke.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That wouldn't exactly land well with me were I one of the remaining players, and it doesn't matter what the exiting player did.

 

[TerraDave]

A long standing response, originally from one of my players?



Mauled by owlbears.

 

[dragoner]

The character goes away, like picks up and leaves, does something else.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Generally the PCs just goes away if this happens. It would not be worth wasting time on making something up if a player did this to me. A better thing might be to make the PC a NPC or second character of a player. If you are petty, you make the PC, now NPC the fool that wanders into traps and chooses the wrong skills and weapons. But the player will never know that you made his PC into a joke.

 

[aramis erak]

Well it isn't hard to guess what happened. What creative ways have you used to explain the absence of a player?

I've done a variety of things...
Pop! Cease to exist!
Every enemy targets them.
They wander off.
Give to another player to run as a follower.
Give to a new player, back when I had a wait list,
Turn into an NPC party member until the next safe spot.
Turn them into a mind-controlled meat-puppet so the party ends them.
Eaten by the next level draining monster.
Transformed by a polymorph into a wee beastie until other players can convince the player to come back...