Ideas for a Player who will often be absent?

[heavyfuel]

In our D&D group, one of the players - and close friend of ours - won't be able to attend most sessions. He's moved away and is busy with a medical residency, but we still want him to participate via VTT whenever he's able to.

The game will be somewhat "episodic", with PCs having decent amounts of downtime in between adventures, as such, I was thinking about making his PC kind of a recurring character. Whenever he can't join us, it's no problem, his character is busy doing his own thing. When he can join us, great, he gets to participate in the adventure as normal.

Has anyone tried this? Or tried something else that allows a busy player to participate in the game? I honestly don't mind the extra work from adjusting encounters to account for an extra PC whenever he joins.

Thanks!

[Darth Credence]

I have had a similar issue in the past, and have done a couple of different things to deal with it - I like my current method, but that is more about having a bunch of people who may or may not be available at any given time.

First method, when it was just one person. We happened to have a skiff at that point that they could fly around on. It was pure luck that he was the only one of the players that could actually fly it. So he was the chauffeur, flying them around and being ready for quick retrieval. When he was actually present, it was suddenly "an important or deadly mission", and they'd find somewhere to tie off the ship and he'd join them. If they were still there when he couldn't make it, then his character was running for the skiff to get it and pick them up for a nick of time escape. While those are all specifics, it came down to, "Have an important job that they have to do in the background during most events".

Current method - designed the campaign around not having a specific number of people, and missions changing based on it. This is effectively a West Marches game, if I understand those correctly. We have about 20 people invited. Of those, 2 can be there every time. Some haven't made it yet. It's a Spelljammer campaign, and the ship is packed with characters - everyone has several at different levels. They go to different planets with level ranges. Whoever shows up, they decide where to go, and pick appropriate characters. If the group for one mission goes over a session and not all the same people can make it, we cut to the main ship having approached a different planet for different characters to go on. We swing back to the first one when everyone is there. Still a cohesive story moving forward, but a lot of flexibility in who has to be around at any given time.

[Vahnavoi]

I go much further than this: I plainly don't assume players will be the same between any two sessions and hence don't build game continuity on that. Instead, game continuity is based on notes players leave to each other. There are two main models:

1) Both players and characters change: those who show up are the people who get to do things and characters belonging to absent players are benched. This ought to be easy for an episodic game.

2) Players change, characters stay the same: characters are drawn from a common pool. Players who show up pick which characters they want to play this time - next time, those characters may be passed to other players entirely. Leftover character are benched.

A variation of the second model has benched characters fall under game master control, should it happen that the presence of a character is required despite no suitable player being present.

For really long term freeform games, there's also:

3) for long absences, a player nominates another player to take control of their character(s), either temporarily or permanently.

[Slipjig]

If each play session is expected to be a distinct episode, that's no issue at all. He's off doing something else whenever the player can't make it. Give him a life outside of adventuring, and escalate the absurdity of the reason he is gone every time.

Alternately, make him a character who has a very specific skillset that doesn't always come up (archeologist, infiltration specialist, etc), and the other PCs only call him when they need that. Or give him an enemy faction that he is on a personal crusade against (e.g. Red Wizards, Slaver's League, etc), and he only shows up for missions where the party expects to fight them.

Make sure the other players are tracking this when they make their characters, so the absent player isn't the only one with a key skillset.

[Unoriginal]

In our D&D group, one of the players - and close friend of ours - won't be able to attend most sessions. He's moved away and is busy with a medical residency, but we still want him to participate via VTT whenever he's able to.

The game will be somewhat "episodic", with PCs having decent amounts of downtime in between adventures, as such, I was thinking about making his PC kind of a recurring character. Whenever he can't join us, it's no problem, his character is busy doing his own thing. When he can join us, great, he gets to participate in the adventure as normal.

Has anyone tried this? Or tried something else that allows a busy player to participate in the game? I honestly don't mind the extra work from adjusting encounters to account for an extra PC whenever he joins.

Thanks!

The DM could let this player handle a recurring boss/midboss. Or play various bad guys or NPCs as needed whenever he can play.

[Sapphire Guard]

The character is in service to a powerful entity, who can whisk them away to perform other errands at any time and at a moment's notice. That way, you have a justification even if they vanish in the middle of a big combat. They made a deal with a devil/angel/god/etc and are bound to its terms no matter what else is happening.

[ciopo]

My experience on the matter is that it's better to avoid in character justifications, and just gloss over the absence. Character A isn't in the scenes because player A isn't at the session.

Setting up in character stuff can have unintendend conseguences, and the two negative(in my opinion) ones that are most likely to happen are : the previously absent player will have to "sit out" playing at a session he's attending, because his character wasn't present in the current scene that started but didn't finish last session, and so he's at the table but not interacting.

The other common one is : table time is spent on scenes where only the absent player is present, kinda "flashback" of what's he's been up to while the character was absent. Per se nothing wrong with that, it's roleplaying, right? But in this particular case my dislike of it is twofold: it's a scene that wouldn't have happened at all if the player/character wasn't previously absent, and off-screen scenes can be done at any time other than table time

[Reversefigure4]

Don't spend a lot of time on a plausible explanation. Sooner or later it'll look thin when circumstances arrive where the character won't be there when he should, or suddenly vanishes between sessions.

Players will understand and be fine with it. Some thin veneer of explanation is fine. The character is cursed to disappear at random. Their god / a trickster wizard pulls them to another plane at random. A teleporter accident periodically phases them out of reality. Introduce it, make no plot out of it, and just treat it largely as a metagame element.

We have the 'NPC virus', where absent player characters become listless and easily directable, trail along behind the main party and don't talk, and don't do much in combat, but become remarkably unnoticable and enemies ignore them. It's an entirely meta explanation, but holds up well when nobody pokes it.

[Slipjig]

We do a variant on that, too: the character either has food poisoning or is extremely hungover. They follow the party around, but don't contribure.

[Jay R]

I once told a group, "If you can't show up, you have two options.
1. You choose another player to run your character. You have a full share in experience points and all the party risks apply to your characer.
2. You decide that your PC takes no risks. He will be ignored, and earns no experience points, but will be with the party when you return. I will not bother to explain why he wasn't part of that adventure."

But this was original D&D, in which, for the first ten or so levels, the XPs needed to level up doubled each level, so even if you missed half the adventures, you'd still only be one level down.

[glass]

I once told a group, "If you can't show up, you have two options.
1. You choose another player to run your character. You have a full share in experience points and all the party risks apply to your characer.
2. You decide that your PC takes no risks. He will be ignored, and earns no experience points, but will be with the party when you return. I will not bother to explain why he wasn't part of that adventure."

With my Thursday night group, we exclusively do that former (except the missing player doesn't choose who controls their PC - it is done by whoever volunteers on the night).

In our case, it is not one particular player, but rather a number who have occasional family commitments, work commitments, and the like. Plus of course, anyone can be ill. Nobody's attendance is that poor individually, but it all added up to an unacceptable number of cancellations before we instituted the above "table rule". Now we only cancel if two players are going to be missing, which happens a lot less often. Unless the one missing player is the GM, of course.

---

I agree with those who said getting rid of the PC every time the Player is absent, and bringing them back every time the player reappears, is not something you are going to be able to explain away with any kind of sensible narrative. With the possible exception of if all the sessions are self-contained, like PFS scenarios or something.

[Mr Blobby]

I think the OP has already nailed it. They're developing their chronicle using the hallowed 'Wagon Train' format [ie standalone episodes] which means as long as the GM is prepared in advance [ie having multi 'episodes' plotted out depending on how many of the cast they have on-hand] they can run a story - to the point they could even do a single-PC session [which means you can handle other absences too]. Let each player decide for themselves the reason their PC was absent before; the most boring one being 'PC was on assignment for their 'real job''. I don't really see the need to have other players/GM running said character in their absence using this method.

The main issue here is in the divvying up of XP; that unless you dole it out equally over time [or find some other solution] the 'occasional' PC will start to seriously lag in capabilities after a 'season' or two.

Like Vahnavoi suggests, perhaps the occasionally present player can play various one-shot PCs instead? This might work if the player is simply wanting to 'play' and isn't bothered with stuff like character development but is familar enough with D&D that they can with little prep play all sorts of different char types. A variant of this is if those one-shot PCs are NPCs you have on-hand to pad out the roster if the team is missing a critical skill or two.

I also suggest you set up some form of online chat/document saving system so you can sort things out etc inbetween sessions.

[glass]

I think the OP has already nailed it. They're developing their chronicle using the hallowed 'Wagon Train' format [ie standalone episodes] which means as long as the GM is prepared in advance [ie having multi 'episodes' plotted out depending on how many of the cast they have on-hand] they can run a story - to the point they could even do a single-PC session [which means you can handle other absences too]. Let each player decide for themselves the reason their PC was absent before; the most boring one being 'PC was on assignment for their 'real job''.

That works if and only if the episodes are all exactly one session. As soon as an episode spills over into a second session, it falls down.

[Mr Blobby]

True. Which is partly why I suggest setting up a comms system for between sessions and for the GM to pre-prepare materials [NPCs, scenes, sketch out the quest etc] so you can squeeze in as much 'story' in the session as realistically possible. I won't deny that it is more difficult because the GM is 'up against it' to bring their episode in at the correct length.

[Ionathus]

Two come to mind, on opposite ends of the "metagaming" scale.

The first was for a player whose schedule was genuinely unknowable. We just had their PC be super flighty: so flighty that it was feasible for them to run off in the middle of a fight, or suddenly appear in a courtroom when the last time we'd seen them was 200 miles away.

The other (and I was really impressed with this solution) was for husband and wife players with several kids and a new baby. Usually only one player could join at a time, and there was no way to know when they'd have to swap out. So they played separate PCs who had been cursed by a necklace to "share" one body. The necklace's curse would go off without any warning, swapping them out. The newcomer had to figure out what had happened since the last time they'd played, using whatever clues the now-missing player had left in their shared journal. It was really fun and led to some great misunderstandings. Not sure how much they enjoyed it, but the rest of the party had fun!

[Vahnavoi]

That works if and only if the episodes are all exactly one session. As soon as an episode spills over into a second session, it falls down.

It is borderline trivial to ensure each episode is confined to a single session, and the main reason it might tip over to non-trivial is if the real time length of sessions isn't constant. But, for example, if you have consistent two hour slots, it is easy to benchmark prepared content to fill 1 to 1½ hours so that each session has some margin for spill, something you'd want to have anyway to fit in feedback, smalltalk, etc.. The only way for it to fall apart if you specifically forget your own episode formula partway through a session.

But even in case of an accidental lapse, an occasional two-parter probably can be worked around or fitted to a schedule, without ruining the entire campaign. Episodic formats rarely have single points of failure, you don't ruin everything by screwing up once.

---

Like Vahnavoi suggests, perhaps the occasionally present player can play various one-shot PCs instead? This might work if the player is simply wanting to 'play' and isn't bothered with stuff like character development but is familar enough with D&D that they can with little prep play all sorts of different char types. A variant of this is if those one-shot PCs are NPCs you have on-hand to pad out the roster if the team is missing a critical skill or two.

Not exactly what I suggested, but yeah, you can do that in either of my models.

The main issue here is in the divvying up of XP; that unless you dole it out equally over time [or find some other solution] the 'occasional' PC will start to seriously lag in capabilities after a 'season' or two.

Or, hear me out.... just let the occasional character lag behind.

Though I'll note that in most of my games, character advancement via experience points and such is extremely slow. This is not entirely on purpose, but it still stands that a character getting from level 1 to level 2 typically takes multiple sessions. The difference between characters is further mitigated if I have some kind of henchmen rules in play: if the occasional character is someone's henchman, that character is getting their share of treasure and experience points from their boss in any case and will stay at a steady distance from their boss, provided the boss is played regularly.

This is also where choice of system matters. If playing old school D&D or the like where experience points per level curves are exponential, especially at the early end, it's very hard for a character to fall many levels behind. The problems with character disparity are more severe in systems where progression curves are linear (often due to over-rewarding attendance) and power curves are more-than-linear, meaning small differences snowball into larger differences quickly.

I also suggest you set up some form of online chat/document saving system so you can sort things out etc inbetween sessions.

You and your fancy hi-tech solutions. My players have to write down their notes on grid paper, with a pencil. The most I do to share them is to photograph their written notes and post them as poor quality images on Instagram.

[glass]

The other (and I was really impressed with this solution) was for husband and wife players with several kids and a new baby. Usually only one player could join at a time, and there was no way to know when they'd have to swap out. So they played separate PCs who had been cursed by a necklace to "share" one body. The necklace's curse would go off without any warning, swapping them out. The newcomer had to figure out what had happened since the last time they'd played, using whatever clues the now-missing player had left in their shared journal. It was really fun and led to some great misunderstandings. Not sure how much they enjoyed it, but the rest of the party had fun!

Oh yeah, we have a couple with a newish baby, and after he was born they requested a character between them - no magic necklace shenanigans, just one character (with an androgynous name) and whoever is available plays them.

I did not think of it before, because they are also only playing in one of our three Thursday night campaigns, and it is not the one we are playing tonight nor the one we are rotating to next week.

[Mr Blobby]

Or, hear me out.... just let the occasional character lag behind.

Though I'll note that in most of my games, character advancement via experience points and such is extremely slow. This is not entirely on purpose, but it still stands that a character getting from level 1 to level 2 typically takes multiple sessions. The difference between characters is further mitigated if I have some kind of henchmen rules in play: if the occasional character is someone's henchman, that character is getting their share of treasure and experience points from their boss in any case and will stay at a steady distance from their boss, provided the boss is played regularly.

This is also where choice of system matters. If playing old school D&D or the like where experience points per level curves are exponential, especially at the early end, it's very hard for a character to fall many levels behind. The problems with character disparity are more severe in systems where progression curves are linear (often due to over-rewarding attendance) and power curves are more-than-linear, meaning small differences snowball into larger differences quickly.

Well, the accent is on 'after a season or two' - as in the point where the skill/kit/ability level disparity is becoming rather obvious. In combat [for example] they could rapidly become less 'an asset' and more 'the load' - something even worse if said lower PC is a non-combat specialist [who are often fairly squishy in the first place].

[Draconi Redfir]

We've got someone like that in our party too, he was here for the first few sessions, but his work schedule changed and he hasn't been able to make it to a session in months.

What we did is basically say his character is staying at our home base and managing things for us, keeping our people in line, crafting up new resources, and translating anything that needs translating with his various skills. Basically our "Guy in the chair". So he's still with the party, he's just not coming out on adventures with us, and is instead keeping things tidy at home.

[Vahnavoi]

Well, the accent is on 'after a season or two' - as in the point where the skill/kit/ability level disparity is becoming rather obvious. In combat [for example] they could rapidly become less 'an asset' and more 'the load' - something even worse if said lower PC is a non-combat specialist [who are often fairly squishy in the first place].

How many episodes do you assume for season and how many of those do you think the player will miss?

F.ex. if it takes 2 episodes to go from level 1 to 2, 4 episodes to go from level 2 to 3, 8 episodes to go from 3 to 4 etc... the player has to miss 12 episodes in a row to fall three levels behind compared to perfect attendance.

[Mr Blobby]

Well it does partly depend on how much XP/Goodies the GM is throwing out too [and what game they're playing, because this is a generic problem]. Being behind 'by a level or two' might in itself not be that much of an issue, but it might be if the PC is also behind on their bling kit-wise. If for an infrequent/short/deadly campaign this won't be much of an issue, but a planned 'long-runner' it will be as the issue will become progressively more serious.

But again, this can be fixed; one option is that when the GM notes the PC has lagged too far behind they set up a 'Sariel's Week Off' solo/bottle episode them, with [if willing/able] the other players in the roles of some one-shot PCs. Or perhaps even another player as the 'guest GM' [as their PC won't be present]. But in short; where there's a will, there's a way. About a dozen in fact in this case.

[Duff]

If each play session is expected to be a distinct episode, that's no issue at all. He's off doing something else whenever the player can't make it. Give him a life outside of adventuring, and escalate the absurdity of the reason he is gone every time.

"So, I dealt with that Genie problem for you, what happened while I was gone?"
Me after missing a session mid-dungeon where there were no genies present

But the principle can apply.

Another option is to make the PC a "summonable ally" How often can they be summoned? As often as the player can make it.
Either allow the PCs to come up with any chicanery they can with their summonable friend* to make sessions where the occasional player can make it feel special
Or make sure the players are aware this an artefact so you can include your friend and chicanery is not welcome

* eg Friend turns up in a castle where they had to leave their gear outside. Friend is conjured with gear "Yayyyy!!!"

[Telonius]

Critical Role did something similar to that in their first campaign. One of the main players (Ashley Johnson) was gone for a whole bunch of sessions because of her filming schedule. So they had her character off doing things apart from the main group. When she could make it, she was "astral projecting" to join them, until the schedule let up and she could be a regular part of the group again. I thought it was a pretty clever way to handle it - it gave an explanation of why she was gone, plus an excuse for when she could be there.

Personally I do milestone leveling, so "missing out on XP" really isn't a thing. Missing a session is punishment in itself; I don't think there needs to be anything else on top of that.