Campaign with Fluctuating Party Roster

[Catullus64]

For the past few months I’ve been running a game for four friends of mine, all of whom are brand new to D&D. While they very much enjoy the game and seem to be very adept role-players, all five of us are in school and have very busy schedules, so time slots that work for all five of us to play are extremely rare, bordering on nonexistent some weeks. We’ve had a number of sessions with one person or the other absent, and me controlling his/her character, and consequently it has been difficult to get some characters properly invested in the developments of the story.

After this campaign wraps up, I’d like to try crafting a game for this same group wherein the player characters can be absent for a session or two without significantly hampering their involvement in the game; if the player is absent, then there exists some in-game reason why his/her character is absent. I usually try to adhere to a fairly traditional three-act structure while writing my games’ stories, but I imagine that would not be workable with this model. Has anyone else invented or discovered useful devices for adapting the story to fit the IRL absence of players?

[Drackolus]

In my group, we not only have this going on, but also a large number of players, and many of us (I'm looking at you, me) like making new characters too much. Our characters are all part of an adventuring guild and we find excuses for them to not want to join a particular adventure. If someone drops out partway through an arc, their character just gets lost or something.

[Tanarii]

The key to running a campaign with rotating party roster (and multiple parties) is that each session needs to be a complete 'adventure'. If a party goes on a multi-session mission, you have to lock the Pcs into it, and yeah sometimes you have to hand-wave when someone doesn't show for the follow up session. And until that follow up session happens for that mission, the players with characters locked can either play different characters or henchmen in other sessions for other adventure missions.

[Stan]

One option is members of a group who are sent out on missions. It could be a government agencies, a hero team, a big company or guild, a religious organization, or whatever. The players present are who the leaders picked to go on a mission. Players who didn't show up had their characters sent to do something else. This works best if you can keep the missions down to a single session so characters don't disappear in the middle of a session. I had one campaign where a somewhat corrupt city state gave certain criminals a chance to clear their name by successfully completing three shady and dangerous missions. This also gave the expectation that characters as well as players would come and go.

Another possibility is a dream world or other plane where reality shifts in ways inhabitants cannot control or predict. Perhaps it's a dream world and, when someone wakes up, their dream version winks out of existence until they go back to sleep.

[Tanarii]

You don't need government control or whatever for missions. Players can make their own missions. What you do is set up so that any party that doesn't get back to safety (ie town) by the end session mission are effectively lost. They might be alive, but it's going to take an adventure mission to recover them. Or their bodies.

That's the entire purpose of dungeons originally. Go in, and either get out by the end of the session or you're lost. Wilderness adventures have a little more leeway on this, which is why you might have multisession missions (that could potentially lock out PCs for extended game time). It's important to keep track of time in that case.

Or as gygax put it, "YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." (caps were his.) Of course, the definition of campaign has moved to mean only one party, always sticking together, and possible ending when it completes and adventure path. But under the old definition of campaign, which had multiple parties and rotating party rosters, his statement is entirely accurate.

Edit: to be clear, this puts a lot of limits on the 'flavor' or style of game you can run. Because the game no longer follows the PCs, so to speak.

[Stan]

You don't need government control or whatever for missions. Players can make their own missions.

Of course you don't need it. Being part of a larger group is a way of giving a game focus while also accounting for changing rosters.

[Tanarii]

Of course you don't need it. Being part of a larger group is a way of giving a game focus while also accounting for changing rosters.
Fair enough. I've done 'military squad' one party D&D campaigns a lot of times myself. It's actually far more easy on the players than 'you meet in the adventurers guild hall, now what do you do?' That tends to lead to option paralysis. :smallwink:

[RumoCrytuf]

For the past few months I’ve been running a game for four friends of mine, all of whom are brand new to D&D. While they very much enjoy the game and seem to be very adept role-players, all five of us are in school and have very busy schedules, so time slots that work for all five of us to play are extremely rare, bordering on nonexistent some weeks. We’ve had a number of sessions with one person or the other absent, and me controlling his/her character, and consequently it has been difficult to get some characters properly invested in the developments of the story.

After this campaign wraps up, I’d like to try crafting a game for this same group wherein the player characters can be absent for a session or two without significantly hampering their involvement in the game; if the player is absent, then there exists some in-game reason why his/her character is absent. I usually try to adhere to a fairly traditional three-act structure while writing my games’ stories, but I imagine that would not be workable with this model. Has anyone else invented or discovered useful devices for adapting the story to fit the IRL absence of players?

What I like to do when a player can't make it, I summon forth a giant, golden, magical hammer with the word "BAN" engraved in it. It hits said missing player, making them ethereal, untouchable, and invisible to anyone that isn't the players. All NPCs have forgotten about their existence until they return. They float a set distance above and behind the players.

Cheap, I know. It doesn't make much sense in game either, but it works.