When PCs Die When the Player's Not There

[ThirdWizard]

Putting a group together has never been easy wherever I've lived. It took me years to put together my current group. I guess if you can just pack up and leave to find another group it's one thing, but in my experiences I've never gotten to see that. Just walking out without discussing it? I guess since I only play with friends, it skews things a bit more. It also hurts the game as a whole. If every few months a player is leaving because of an obvious playstyle difference going on and noone will tell the DM... well... that's sad to me.

I've seen groups die and in most cases, the problems could have been solved very easily. Once, years ago, one of my games almost died because of the night it was set up. It conflicted with several schedules but noone said anything. So when people often couldn't show up, people started getting discouraged and were going to drop. Changed the night and problem solved. But, I had to practically interrogate my players to find out why they weren't showing repeatedly. I couldn't understand it then, and I still don't understand it today.

EDIT: I agree it was mostly the DM's fault, though. Sorry, man, but how you handle absentee players is like the #1 thing to work out with the group. I'm surprised it hadn't come up yet!

 

[ARandomGod]

The problem is that the 'fix' is 'sorry buddy, you're dead, and gonna lose a level coming back, sucks to be you.' The reply seems to have been 'well, it's your game, have fun playing without me.' Or in other words another player cost the character a level, but the character's player is the one who gets the shaft. In the player's shoes I might do the same thing. The 'fix' is not a fix.

Had he been there and done those same actions and died then his death would be fully justified. He did not, and the situation was comlpetely unfair.

The Auld Grump

I totally agree. However if you read what the original poster stated, after consideration (and consultation) he'd decided that the fix would include things like the character NOT losing a level and getting ressurected without penalty. Even without those, there are other ways of being able to make it up to the player that his character died through no fault of his own.

The guy whose character died isn't faultless, though. He pretended everything was okay when it appears that it wasn't. Had he stated that he didn't like how it went when he first learned of it, they could have compromised. He didn't agree to let his character be run while he wasn't present, and if that upset him enough to eventually leave the game, he really should have said something instead of pretending to be okay with it then come up with an excuse to leave the game. I really think the whole trombone thing is an excuse.

Everybody messes up, they don't talk about it openly, and the game suffers.

Advice to players: if you think the DM made a bad decision, talk to them about it. People would be surprised how often things can be fixed like that.

Yea, the player needed to communicate. Now, if he'd tried to do so and been told "bugger off, you're dead. Roll up a new character", that would have been a different story (and apparently it's what some people posting here would tell the player).

Not everyone is confrontational in nature (though goodness knows that I am, I have to work on toning it down sometimes). For them the easiest solution is to leave.

It's true. And posting on a board to people you don't *really* know is easier too. Hence my recommendation in one post that he use this opportunity to see if he can learn new/better ways to communicate, to be particularly concerned when he feels that there might be an issue and the person brushes it off with "no problem, man". There still could be a problem, not everyone communicates on the same level. In any communication problem, it's not just one person who isn't communicating properly, both (or all) parties are failing to communicate.