when a player skips a session

[King of Nowhere]

I'm opening this as I'm curious about a thrend I noticed in other topics, most recently

"you're welcome to come and play but we -will- play whether you can show up or not. Your character will simply wink in and out of existence in response to your presence and absence."

This is not the first time I see such a statement. The DM handbook itself suggests something similar, with the missing player's character "doing nothing", and I see a lot of posts hinting the same policy.

I'm opening a thread because it is very, very strange to me. Having a character vanish from the story for a while without explanation breaks immersion pretty bad. and what if we were relying on his specific spells or skills to face a certain challenge?

At my tables it's always been that when someone is missing, the character get used by someone else - possibly a committee, especially as it's common at my table to discuss strategy as in "I do X, you do Y and then the cleric does Z". I can see some potential issues if the character get killed, but if you can't trust the rest of the table that far, it's a pretty big trust issue; I believe most tables aren't so bad.
Now, of course the character won't pursue any personal agenda or do anything particular in the downtime that would actually require consent from the player, but as far as using his combat abilities or skill checks, he's always there.

So, I'm just asking how many people here pursue the policy of "character winks out of existence", and how many have the policy of "character get used by someone else", and if there are special reasons for the choice.

[Faily]

I've rarely done the "wink out of existence"-thing, at least in D&D/PF, and the PC without a player is usually put on auto-pilot/run by another player. The substitute player don't actually roleplay the PC, but might interject on things that they know the character care about (like a Good character protesting some mean stuff, that kind of stuff).

In some games, we find a logical reason to explain why a PC is not present (which works well in games like Ars Magica where they could be doing something else).

But most of the time, the PC is still present. As a GM, I usually don't like to play without a full group though, as I prefer for everyone to have the experience together and not miss out on being able to do things.

[Rynjin]

I tend to have said PCs wander off.

Nobody likes having to miss a session and then hear their character died due to the decisions of another player controlling them. Just breeds bad blood.

[Sir Chuckles]

I usually say that they either went off on a side adventure, resulting in them slaughtering things so far below their ECL they get no experience, or they did odd jobs if in a situation where a full adventure is not needed.

If it's a major boss battle, I'll usually have them plink with their favorite simple ranged attack at max distance.

[Seto]

My group does the "wink out of existence" thing. It takes off the cognitive load of running several characters at once, avoids having a character do things without their player's input, and of course avoids the unfortunate issue of characters dying with their player absent. Plus, that character becomes a rp resource to take care of out-of-focus stuff. "You need to send a messenger to the mage while you investigate? Sure, X's character will do it." One time, after a grueling boss fight, one party member was absent, one was dead, all others were in negatives and unconscious. The boss was dead, but his Quasit familiar remained in hiding. I was like: "Well, the Quasit cackles with glee at the idea of killing you off one after the other while you're unconscious... but as it gets ready for a coup de grâce, the Inquisitor busts down the door and exclaims 'Begone, Demon!'". That was a cool use for an absent character. So basically, the character is implicitly there (or off on a mission somewhere), but we all act as if they don't exist, and we don't play them mechanically.
One exception to this is if a player leaves the session early, like in the middle of a fight. Then sometimes we take over their character and play in through to the end.

Our gaming group has different time constraints and its members tend to travel a lot. Players being absent is so frequent that we're used to ignoring it and playing normally. If it's a session where a specific PC is necessary (like, the climax of their personal sidequest, or a significant plot event involving them), we wait for the player to be there to do it. Otherwise, we just play as long as we have a minimum of 3 players ; the whole party is 5 or 6 people, but actually having everyone around the table happens like once every 15 sessions.

[NichG]

Definitely of the 'disappear' style. My games focus on making decisions more than on overcoming challenges, so a player by obtaining certain abilities or resources can also obtain final say over how those things are permitted to be used. Because what maintains meaning is that the player have responsibility for any consequences of their past and present decisions. If they acquire a weapon that has a 5% chance of killing any bystanders wherever it's fired but cuts through any opposition, that's their decision to take custody over and not the group's.

If there's an 'all hands on deck' moment, I'll delay until everyone can be there by running (non-chronological) side adventures for those who do show up. But those are relatively rare (maybe 1 in 6 sessions).

[Lvl45DM!]

I DM and play in a few different groups so my answer is "It depends."
With one group we handed characters over to other players, until I(through no fault of my own) got a friends character killed. The barbarian charged, rolled a 1, got hit with AoO's and then critted by the ettin. Too low level to raise dead. The player didn't blame me, but he did feel it was thoroughly unsatisfying that he didnt get to witness or be involved in his characters death. After that we had them be 'called away' by our mercenary company. We didn't really do much in the way of dungeons so it worked out ok.

Another group we started off with the vanish and that was fine, since we were in a trippy extradimensional castle.

In a group I DM, we hand the characters over to another player, who plays them exceptionally well, he's really a master at playing multiple characters.

[False God]

I once made an entire campaign for an open table to justify this: everyone in the lands were afflicted by a "vanishing" curse, where they could, at completely random moments (ie: random for NPCs, but "random" as in when players dont show) vanish into thin air. "Thin air" in this case being a side-dimension so the missing party member can tag along but not participate.

My players had to audacity to show up regularly!

I always get players consent on what their character does when they are out, does someone specific run them? Does the DM run them? Do they wander off and catch up with the party later? Do they "poof out"?

I don't care what their answer is, I just don't want to have to guess.

Typically they "poof out" as in: they're off doing something else.

[Composer99]

I have a bunch of new players who don't want to fill in for people. Characters vanish when their players are absent. Well and good.

Suffice to say I don't feel much concern about immersion in this campaign.

[Zhorn]

When a player is away, I aim to have their character have a reason to be sidelined at the next most convenient location. Until then one of the other players will run them in combat, favouring keeping that PC out of the immediate fray (because having your character die when you're away sucks worse than regular PC death). If the party is needing to move on from a town or what not while the player is away, either they can elect another player to run their character as a proxy, or some reason is concocted for them to be travelling at the speed of plot behind the party "I'll catch up once I've finished teaching this orphan to read", etc.

[Thinker]

Any characters without their player are winked out of existence. It's a game not a story.

[Lemmy]

Unless it weakens the party toouch for that session's challenges, I'm all for winking character out of existence.

It makes things easier for the GM and avoids having a character make big decisions or suffer serious harm that their player would resent. It's super frustrating to not be able to show up for a game and then find out next session that your character died the weekend you couldn't play because you had to work late.

[HappyDaze]

I don't have character's disappear when the player is absent. I consider that silly and damaging to suspension of disbelief. It's the player's responsibility to designate someone to control their character in their absence. Sometimes we find reasonable in-game reasons to have such a character hang back from the action, but most often they are there doing what the rest of the group does. If they die, they die, whether the player that usually runs them is present or not. A player that can't handle that should probably find a way to make it to the game or they can look for another game.

[BWR]

Any characters without their player are winked out of existence. It's a game not a story.

I have to disagree. A board game or card game is just a game. RPGs I play are stories with game elements. There is an investment in setting and characters, and continuity and coherence are important. If we can find a good in universe reason for an absentee player's character to not be around, fine, but no PC is going to be wandering around doing their own thing in the middle of Max's Dastardly Murder Dungeon while the rest of the PCs are barely scraping by. And to go all game-y, loss of action economy and the abilities of the absent PC can make encounters harder to overcome. Yes, the APCs don't do alot of interacting beyond the bare minimum, but it breaks the game worse in every way to have them be entirely absent.

Sure, on a few occasions APCs have been killed, and that sucks, but we try to avoid it by not doing stupid **** with other people's characters.

[Porcupinata]

When someone can't make it to the game, another player takes over their character for the session - with occasional "Bob would probably..." or "I don't think Bob would do that" suggestions from the others at the table.

It's become something of a tradition that when the player returns for the next session everyone jokes about how much more competent than normal the character was during the session in which the player couldn't make it.

It's very rare that a character will die when the player is absent - there's a subconscious bias on the DM's part not to target them too heavily - but when it has happened we've always got them raised before the end of the session so the missing player doesn't have to come back to a dead character.

[Zhorn]

It's become something of a tradition that when the player returns for the next session everyone jokes about how much more competent than normal the character was during the session in which the player couldn't make it.

Our version was the paladin being dice cursed (real bad, couldn't make an attack roll with a dice value over 9).
Druid player takes over a few times they needed to leave early. Becomes the most effective combatant for the rest of those sessions. Player returns, paladin proceeds to miss on ever single attack roll.

[Knaight]

It depends. I tend to like having multiple games where you have a primary game and then fallbacks for certain combinations of missing players (which might just be one shots), but I have intentionally built games which are more resistant to players missing sessions than others. Part of it is timing when you end sessions so that conditions can shift, but it also helps to have something else going on that characters can plausibly get pulled to. For instance, I'm running a superhero game right now - and while it's been temporarily put on hiatus because I broke my own timing rule in a way that created a key player situation before that player got busy for a while it was able to weather missing players pretty well with the simple conceit that these heroes also have civilian identities that need attending to, and might not be able to drop things immediately to go do hero stuff - especially if the civilian identities tend to take them away from the limited space their superhero activities happen in.

There's also mission structured games, where you keep a pace of one mission a session, where if a PC is missing it's because they're off on a different mission with another team (or recovering from an injury or something). This really emphasizes the breakpoints though, and doesn't necessarily fit with a lot of campaign structures.

[Alhallor]

We may be a bit extrem but most of the time we skip the session.

We are more the storytelling individuals so a lot of things are "it doesn't make any sense if X is not here" "What would X do in that situation? We don't know he's not here." And other players playing the character is also out of the question.

Sometimes a character was sick or did something different but that was definitely the exception.

But I actually like the "blinks out of existence" rule if it would happen to everyone and that would be a totally normal event.

Talking to the baker? He winks out of existence for a day.

Fighting against 10 orcs? Now there are 5.

Seriously in the next Fantasy game I ask my group to incorporate that and make it a normal occurence, see if my group would accept that. (Though that would make being any kind of ruler kinda hard…)

[16bearswutIdo]

My players generally like their character to be there, so I "play" them as the DM. However, they are 100% in the background and don't weigh in, speak, or do anything unless specifically addressed by the party. Any rolls I make for them are in the open, and usually their opinions on anything they're asked about are to the effect of "I'll go with the group consensus, no strong opinion" or the ever-popular "I'm not feeling like myself today."

If its a big, important session, we usually just don't play sans people.

[King of Nowhere]

It's very rare that a character will die when the player is absent - there's a subconscious bias on the DM's part not to target them too heavily -

+1 on that. i won't even call it subconscious, it's a bit expected that a dm won't try to kill an absent character - though of course he won't pull punches in the middle of the fray either.
although we did risk a bit one time when a character rolled poorly string of saving throws and was almost killed by aoe alone

but when it has happened we've always got them raised before the end of the session so the missing player doesn't have to come back to a dead character.

this brings us back to the next related question: to all those who prefers the "disappears" option because of the risk of killing a character, would that change if resurrection was comfortably available?

[Lemmy]

This brings us back to the next related question: to all those who prefers the "disappears" option because of the risk of killing a character, would that change if resurrection was comfortably available?

Perhaps, but not necessarily.

While death is obviously the most dramatic example, it's far from being the only permanent consequence that can be very frustrating to learn happened to your char while you were at work or in a family dinner you couldn't skip.

Losing important gear, agreeing (or diagreeing) with certain important decisions, taking certain courses of action, becoming allies (or enemies) with certain NPCs, etc...

All of that can be frustrating... I've missed sessions and then returned to find out my character had attacked and become enemies with an NPCs that I was allies and enjoyed interacting with. That really annoyed me.

Besides... It's difficult to make sure ressurection is that widely available... In many games and settings it's extremely rare or doesn't even exist at all.

As a GM, I keep the char around as long as the other players are willing to control him, at very least in combat and sincerely invested in keeping him alive, rather than using him as a disposable trapfinder/doorkicker. As a player, that's the very least I expect if my char is sticking around.

[Mastikator]

Story time (short version):

Once upon a time I was in this group, I missed one of the sessions and the DM decided that instead of making my character go away he'd play him (since we had made him together and I played him in a way that makes his personality obvious), there was an altercation with a hostile NPC and the DM decided that "what my character would do" is engaging head on. This eventually lead to my character losing his horse. This in a game where resources are hard to come by and losing a friggin horse is devastating.

The next session when I tried to get on my horse they had to explain to me that I somehow had lost my horse. Let me tell you: it felt personal, somehow for the first time the DM just decides to play my character without my consent and LOSES MY HORSE?

When I put it like that I think they all realized just how uncool what they did was and undid the damages (my horse found me and my wounds were healed). Had they not done that I would have lost all faith in the DM and the group.

I'm still a bit miffed about it, it's been years.

Moral of the story: DO NOT ROLEPLAY OTHER PEOPLE'S CHARACTER WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT OR KNOWLEDGE. This is why this rule exists.

[Seto]

this brings us back to the next related question: to all those who prefers the "disappears" option because of the risk of killing a character, would that change if resurrection was comfortably available?

Not really. The risk of killing a character is only the biggest reason why I prefer to just have them disappear; it's not the only one. As a DM, I just don't want to have to run additional PCs, running the session and the whole world is enough already. As a player, I feel pretty possessive of my characters; they're my avatar, so if I'm not gonna be there to play them, they might as well not exist.
Exceptions can be made when other characters feel the need for it: for example, one time I was absent on vacation I got a phone call to the effect of "look, we're getting slaughtered in a fight, we could really use backup, can we play your character, knowing that he'll be risking death?". I reluctantly said yes because I didn't want to penalize the group. More routinely, if the healer is away and she's the only one capable of removing ability damage, the DM will just say "she'll heal you one time a day".

Reading this thread made me realize something, though. The debate seems to be between "RPG as storytelling" and "RPG as game". If it's storytelling, it's much harder to deal with absences, both because the player needs to be there to play their own character meaningfully, and because "winking out of existence" breaks immersion. On the gamist side, it's much more flexible.
I like both, but my group (the one in which I play as a player) is more gamist, so we don't really have trouble with players skipping sessions. Which is good, because, as noted above, it happens most of the time. As a DM, I do notice that I'm more bothered about missing players when the session is plot-heavy or requires lots of character-defining decisions.

I would conclude: know your group. If it's a group with a lot of turnover, it's easier to have a gamist game where people can easily come and go, and winking out of existence doesn't pose a problem except for specific mechanic abilities. If it's a regular group with a limited number of players and they show up everytime, then it becomes possible to meaningfully emphasize long-running stories and character development. If you want to try a storytelling game with players coming and going... you're gonna have to devise your own solution to the problem (such as "sudden existence failure" becoming a plot point, as suggested above).

A related question: how do you handle the dividing and sharing of loot when players skip sessions?
In my group, we tend to wait until the end of the current adventure or arc, and after the final boss, we divide the whole dungeon's treasure equally between each character who's showed up at least once during the adventure. It's more stable that way, as opposed to dividing it every session between different party members.

[Thinker]

I have to disagree. A board game or card game is just a game. RPGs I play are stories with game elements. There is an investment in setting and characters, and continuity and coherence are important. If we can find a good in universe reason for an absentee player's character to not be around, fine, but no PC is going to be wandering around doing their own thing in the middle of Max's Dastardly Murder Dungeon while the rest of the PCs are barely scraping by. And to go all game-y, loss of action economy and the abilities of the absent PC can make encounters harder to overcome. Yes, the APCs don't do alot of interacting beyond the bare minimum, but it breaks the game worse in every way to have them be entirely absent.

Sure, on a few occasions APCs have been killed, and that sucks, but we try to avoid it by not doing stupid **** with other people's characters.

An RPG is not a story. An RPG is a wonderful mix of gameplay, imagination, and narrative elements. RPG's have multiple people actively participating in the events of the game, pushing their own agendas and points of view. RPG's have rules and structure. They have victory conditions. You can tell a story about an RPG adventure or even a single session, but an RPG by itself is not a story. Stories adhere to story-structure. They have a storyteller and an audience. They're a recounting of events, even fictional events. The recounting part is important.

You can be invested in the setting, characters, and continuity. That is fantastic. That is not a trait of an RPG, but a trait of the experience you are sharing with your group. I can and have played in RPG's with no investment in any of the characters, setting, or continuity. It was fun to see whether we could overcome challenges, but character death was frequent. The setting was largely irrelevant - generic fantasy world. Even continuity was not very important outside of the maps of the dungeons. We played that one weekly for almost a year.

If you want to find a reason for the PC to disappear from the party in the middle of Max's Dastardly Murder Dungeon, by all means feel free to do so. There's nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't fit my group's expectation and we get by just fine. It does make the challenges more difficult, but not all challenges require combat. As a matter of fact, most challenges are not combat based and the action economy isn't very important. And, if it is a major combat session, encounters can often be toned down on the fly. Instead of fighting six goblins, maybe you only fight five.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Seeing as it was my statement that kicked this off, I suppose I should comment.

It's an option of last resort for allowing someone who you know is going to have spotty attendance to play in spite of that issue. Yeah, it's terrible for immersion unless you make up some "plausible" explanation but if you're doing this then its because you've already decided that it's an acceptable loss for being able to include that player.

Personally, I'm more likely to give you the boot before I get to the point of realistically considering this option but if I was making allowances for something like a player falling ill, becoming pregnant, or going through some trauma like a nasty divorce or the recent loss of a loved one, I'd do it in a heartbeat, immersion be damned.

In the case of the thread that line was quoted from, I was simply presenting the option on the thought that a lot of people are a bit less hard-ass than I am on this sort of thing. If 5 of us can handle the scheduling regurlarly and the 6th guy can't be bothered, I'm not gonna fret over telling him he can't play but others may feel differently so I mentioned it as an option for compromise, even if it's one I likely wouldn't choose myself.

[Delta]

In general, I tend to go with something similar, but within reason.

If you're not here, your character in general won't do anything. We'll assume he's there in some way, but if at all possible it won't be relevant. If there's a fight, he either stepped away right before or he's assumed to be fighting his own NPC somewhere just off picture for just as long as everyone else fights, and so on.

There can be exceptions, though, in certain situations ignoring the character completely would just break suspension of disbelief too much. If there are some really basic services your character regularly provides to the party, I won't deny them that. If the wizard's player is away, for example, I'll still allow the party to say "Hey, we found this thing, can <wizard> cast identify on this?" if there's absolutely no good reason why the character wouldn't do that and there's absolutely no challenge involved or anything like that.

In extreme examples, if there's a very relevant plot point where a certain ability would be essential, I've allowed players when possible to message or even call the player and ask if it's okay to use their character in a specific manner which has led to some very amusing situations over the years.

In general, I feel like the best guideline is the one you should always follow as a GM: Ask yourself "Is this fun?" In general, watching the GM roll combat for an absentee character against an NPC isn't fun. But having to carry a magic item halfway through the continent to get it identified even though you have a wizard who could do that with no problem whatsoever isn't fun either.

[King of Nowhere]

Moral of the story: DO NOT ROLEPLAY OTHER PEOPLE'S CHARACTER WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT OR KNOWLEDGE. This is why this rule exists.

well, of course you need the player's consent for that. but in my groups there never was the slightest doubt about it. then again, both my groups were pretty big on trust, with many players being long-time friends or relatives. it's easier to trust each other to use one's character then.

Reading this thread made me realize something, though. The debate seems to be between "RPG as storytelling" and "RPG as game". If it's storytelling, it's much harder to deal with absences, both because the player needs to be there to play their own character meaningfully, and because "winking out of existence" breaks immersion. On the gamist side, it's much more flexible.
I like both, but my group (the one in which I play as a player) is more gamist, so we don't really have trouble with players skipping sessions. Which is good, because, as noted above, it happens most of the time. As a DM, I do notice that I'm more bothered about missing players when the session is plot-heavy or requires lots of character-defining decisions.

On the other hand, from the gamist perspective, doesn't lose one guy make the game much harder without the unique skills their character was bringing? I mean, assume that the diplomancer is out, and then nobody can handle a diplomacy check. or maybe the wizard is gone, and everyone was relying on him to fly. or perhaps without the fighter to mop up the end of the fights the casters are forced to spend many more spells to finish disabled enemies. a well-established adventuring party works as a team like a well-oiled machine, if you take a member out you reduce their effectiveness a lot.

It made me realize another tangential fact, though, that I also took mostly for granted when it's not: in my group we always discuss tactics. The fight starts, and we never go "I charge, you're next" unless the fight looks easy. instead we discuss. "when it's my turn i tumble past the minions and go disable that wizard, the fighter goes against the big guy, you mop the minions with some area spells. Mattia, you should wait to act after jacopo, so you won't get caught in the fireball. Or perhaps jacopo smokes the enemy wizard with a disintegrate, I tank the big guy and you mop up the minions with cleave?"
We always decide together how to fight, and that means that we're already allowing the rest of the party a lot of control over our actions. if we decide that I should go block a side door from where more minions are coming, I go there even if I would have preferred to engage the enemy wizard, and that goes for the others too.
With that premise, allowing the others to control your character in combat while you're gone is really a short step.

On the down side, if we don't reach a consensus it may take a while to sort things out...

[False God]

this brings us back to the next related question: to all those who prefers the "disappears" option because of the risk of killing a character, would that change if resurrection was comfortably available?

Couple notes:
First and foremost, I think this would make things worse rather than better, because it would incline "other people" to be careless with a character who isn't theirs because if they die then it's no skin off their back. Resurrection being available just makes them more justified.

Secondly: I'm not a really big fan of readily available resurrection, when DMing I will typically remove all but the top stuff, or add elements to it to make it more difficult. I also try not to kill any of my players to begin with, as IMO deaths should happen at meaningful moments rather than by random chance of the dice.

Thirdly: I often run secret information on my characters, both secret from players and secret from characters. If Billy just "takes over" my character, suddenly all that info isnt secret anymore and that can really undermine my role-play experience.

[Quertus]

It's mostly all been said, but I'll give my 2¢ anyway.

I've played in lots of groups, and done it all 3 ways (player absent -> [PC absent, PC present, no game]). I've seen all 3 be done well, and all 3 be done poorly.

I agree that the distinction between "playing piece" / mechanics focus and "character" / narrative/decisions focus is one of the largest contributors to determining which method is optimal, followed closely (or probably preceded by) the presence or absence of narrative elements germaine to the particular PC.

Personally, I am not a fan of PCs just winking out of existence, nor am I a fan of others running my PC's when I am absent (even mechanically, my PC's are often… daunting). But, sometimes, those are the correct answer.

[Jay R]

I have occasionally made the assumption of a continuing illness.

You aren't there? Your character is ill. He or she has enough strength to travel with the party, but cannot fight, cast magic, or otherwise affect the game.

-------

In one game I gave the players a choice. They could choose to let another player play their character, and they would get all experience points, and take on all risks, that the party faced.

Or they could choose to say that their character would not be hurt when they weren't there. But they would also not share in experience points, either.

You can share in all the rewards and the risks. Or you can protect your PC from the risks -- and not gain the rewards. But you cannot share in the rewards without the risks.

[I did not mention treasure. It's up to the party how to divide that, not the DM.]