What's a DM to do?

[big teej]

you've spent all weekend crafting an adventure for your group. You've learned that the party paladin can't make it and so fine tune it for the other 5players. however, on the day of the session, you learn that half of your group can't make it, on the remaining half is liable to not survive what you have planned!!


what's a DM to do?


share your 'what am I supposed to do?' moments, solutions, and what you've done differently since then.


as of right now, I have no solution, but my backup plan is a game of risk

[AslanCross]

This happened to me in my RHOD campaign. Since all of my players are good friends, the two who did arrive were willing to handle one other character each. It was a bit awkward, but we managed. When they realized how fun and awesome it was, they persuaded the others to come next session. :P

[Tvtyrant]

as of right now, I have no solution, but my backup plan is a game of risk

Or you have them all role up lightning warriors

[Nohwl]

cut the number of monsters you were going to throw at the group in half?

i've never had that problem, i don't make encounters until i'm creating the the combat map for the players in the game.

i'm a fan of running dungeon crawls, so i don't care too much for a timed quest. i base the number of things they fight/how hard the encounter is on their tactics for the day, how often they are resting, how many people are there, and what their classes are.

for example, if they are going to rest after every encounter, that's fine. i just throw encounters at them that are about 2 cr higher than what they should be facing. my logic is that i might as well give them a reason to rest after every fight if that is what they are going to do. if they are going to keep looking through rooms after i throw something at them, i'm going to use weaker encounters, and more of them. it's not perfect, but it works.

[Urpriest]

cut the number of monsters you were going to throw at the group in half?

i've never had that problem, i don't make encounters until i'm creating the the combat map for the players in the game.

i'm a fan of running dungeon crawls, so i don't care too much for a timed quest. i base the number of things they fight/how hard the encounter is on their tactics for the day, how often they are resting, how many people are there, and what their classes are.

for example, if they are going to rest after every encounter, that's fine. i just throw encounters at them that are about 2 cr higher than what they should be facing. my logic is that i might as well give them a reason to rest after every fight if that is what they are going to do. if they are going to keep looking through rooms after i throw something at them, i'm going to use weaker encounters, and more of them. it's not perfect, but it works.

One difficulty you might run into with this strategy: what if they scout ahead?

[Dr.Epic]

Downgrade the combat, and rely more on roleplaying until everyone can make it.

[pres_man]

Generally, this is why I prefer multiple opponents instead of a single powerful opponent. With multiple opponents in an encounter, all you have to do is reduce the number of opponents as the players' numbers reduce.

If you have access to modules, you can always run a one shot of a lower level.

[Katana_Geldar]

Complete seat of the pabts, the DM did that for one week when only two of us turned up. I threw out a few fun thigns we could so, and he used one of them: fighting pirates!

[WarKitty]

Personally I like to create little side-quests for them to play with.

Alternately, we have a simplified "baby D&D" system we use for quick one-shots.

[true_shinken]

My spider-sense says it's either:
a) sidequest time;
b) Xbox time;
c) beer time;
d) sandbox time;
e) ...oh, forget it, it's beer time!

[Kylarra]

Eh, if half the group can't make it, we usually do something other than the game.

[gurban]

sidequest
in game gambling/feats of strength
heavy RP sessions.

[The Shadowmind]

Order a pizza and break out a game of munchkin?

[Nohwl]

One difficulty you might run into with this strategy: what if they scout ahead?

then the number of monsters/what the monsters are gets made up based on the party they had at the time of scouting. if the number of players changes, and if they decide to rest before that room or if there is a plausible reason for the number of monsters to change (maybe something attacked the monsters in that room), i'll change it to be based off what the current group is. if they don't stop i tell them it's getting scaled down from what it was before. they still get the benefit of knowing what they are fighting, but there will be 1 or 2 fewer creatures for them to fight. i usually end sessions with them resting, and people leaving part of the way through a game doesn't happen often enough for it to make too much of a difference.

[true_shinken]

Can't believe I was the only one to mention beer.

[Kylarra]

Can't believe I was the only one to mention beer.

Maybe the rest of us prefer higher quality alcohol.

[Squally!]

Can't believe I was the only one to mention beer.

i thought beer just came standard w/ dnd...

[true_shinken]

Maybe the rest of us prefer higher quality alcohol.

Madness. Nothing is better than a bottle or two of Paulaner Weiss.
...well, maybe good tequile. Definetely good tequila.

[Dienekes]

When this happens to me, I just run flashback scenarios to help flesh out a characters backstory.

It helps that I generally always have 4 or so random events that I weave into a campaign instead of stating out a core adventure though. I tend to just take one of the planned events and change it around to fit the flashback.

[Shade Kerrin]

Happened just last Friday, actually.
Fortunately, I had a backup scenario prepared involving the ghost of a former party member who had been buried on tainted ground.

Double fortunately, D&D ghosts allow me to repeat the whole thing if this happens again.

[Tyndmyr]

Drinking or D&D, not both. Both at once, while amusing, and a possibility for great drinking games, tend to be off track in my experience. At least, if everyone's drinking*. Also, it results in "good ideas" like me wondering what it'd be like to face a society of advanced bees.

*a single beer or what have you do not count as drinking. That's merely a refreshment. Except in the case of three-beer rogue.

I leave the encounters exactly unchanged. However, they are now both more challenging and will result in more xp per player. Its a reasonable trade-off, but the players in small numbers are both more cautious and usually more clever. So, it generally works out, though they frequently make less progress than they otherwise might have.

Also, sometimes players are comfortable having other players run their chars. That is left entirely up to them, though.

[Amphetryon]

This scenario happens with my group every week, since I DM at the library. I have 6 +2d6 players who show up on any particular week, plus or minus 3. I usually try to plan for encounters against trios of bad guys, each roughly 2 levels below the party's average ECL. That fits for 6 - 8 players, generally. I can peel away some of them if fewer show up, or add more as needed.

[Logalmier]

Fire, in-game and out, solves all of a DM's problems.

[Tyndmyr]

Fire, in-game and out, solves all of aNYONE'S DM's problems.

Fixed that for you.

[WarKitty]

Can't believe I was the only one to mention beer.

Not all of us play with overage groups.

[kyoryu]

My spider-sense says it's either:
a) sidequest time;
b) Xbox time;
c) beer time;
d) sandbox time;
e) ...oh, forget it, it's beer time!

It's beer time + one of the above.

Beer time is to be assumed. Beer time is *always* to be assumed.

[WarKitty]

For younger groups, some combination of caffeine and sugar may be substituted for beer.

[holywhippet]

Either:

a) Have the players who attend control the other characters.

b) Bring in some other people to control the other characters.

c) Have the players/stand-ins make some characters just for the session

d) Do something else and run the session as planned when you have enough players.

[kyoryu]

On a more serious note, this is kinda why old-school games would have people have multiple characters, and potentially multiple campaigns at one time. It's also why you've got things like Undermountain.

Given that people will be flaky, and your group membership may shift, the ability to throw together a relatively random game is a huge bonus.

(Yes, I've been jonesing for an old-school... scratch that, almost *paleolithic* game)

[Fuzzie Fuzz]

For us, we have the missing players become sort of communal-NPCs, whose actions are controlled by the rest of the party. If enough people can't make it though, it's Last Night on Earth time.