Advice for New DM please

[Adeen]

So I'm new to DMing, but loving it so far. Running 5th ed the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. The good thing is that most of my players are veterans who have also DMed themselves. The problem is that one of my players was on Vacation for two weeks and missed two sessions. Right before he missed we finished a boss battle where two characters had died (not his character). So for the two sessions he missed he ended up missing the addition of the new characters to the party, as well as he missed the exposition of starting the next mission in the campaign. And when he gets back his character is suddenly at the beginning of a new dungeon with new people. I didn't want to spend too much time obviously since the rest of the players already knew what was going on, but I spent a few minutes trying to summarize what happened while he was gone so he knew what was going on, but he still seemed bored and uninterested while playing yesterday. He spent most of his time on his phone and asked other players to roll D20s for him a lot of the time. What can I do to get him and his character interested and invested in the current situation of the campaign? Thank you.

[Ruslan]

First of all, you can ask him directly what is it that makes him uninterested. I doubt it's just the loss of exposition that made him lose interest this way. Perhaps it's a collision of DMing and playing styles, perhaps he has other stuff going on in his life and doesn't want to be part of the game (but is too shy to say outright), perhaps he was just having an off night, perhaps he feels his character doesn't get to do enough, there could be many reasons.

You won't know until you engage him in open conversation. Depending on how the conversation turns out, you'll have better idea how to proceed - perhaps give that player more of <something>, perhaps change the way you're running the game, perhaps (only in the most extreme of cases), a DM-player divorce is in order.

[Maglubiyet]

The guy just came back from a two-week vacation -- that sweet, sweet freedom is still fresh in his head. All of life's mundane pleasures taste like ash in his mouth compared with the ambrosia he has been drinking. Give him time to get beaten back down by everyday life. Then RPG's will again resume their role of being the highlight of his dreary existence.

But seriously, one night is not a trend. If this continues then maybe it's something to address. As it is, you have no way of knowing why he was distracted, whether it's going to be an ongoing thing or if it was just that one session.

[Trekkin]

My guess is he's still getting everything back in order from his vacation and is just too exhausted to pay attention - particularly given he's got to essentially re-learn the campaign. If it's been less than a day or two between the return trip and the session, he might also be jet-lagged or similarly in the grip of changing sleep cycles.

Were it in one of my games, I'd probably wait and see. If he's back to normal next session, great; if not, a good first step is just to gently ask if everything's all right.