50 gold and a good weekend

[GorogIrongut]

So... I'm in the middle of a hilarious adventure... and one of my players had to miss two weeks without advance notice. The other players had hilarious hijinx without him... but before his character disappeared for those two sessions... he borrowed 50 gp off of one of the other characters (DM decision due to his not being there).

Now that the player is back, he is intensely curious about what happened to him during that weekend. I personally had nothing played so I need some help figuring out a hilarious weekend for the player.

Here's what I know:
-The player is highly annoying. She has no tact, is very loud and in your face. She tends to approach immense danger by chipperly introducing herself loud enough for the deaf to hear. She hates bullies and is a WElf Moon Druid.
-She currently is suffering amnesia (while I figure out what actually did happen). She has no clue what happened... but she knows that the 50 gp are gone and she has a feeling of being supremely satisfied.
-I hinted that if she could remember what happened she would know what to pull out from her bag of holding. I'm possibly thinking of something shiny or funny.

They are currently on a highly magical island... a redoubt inside a massive archipelago dominated by pirates. And only able to maintain it's sovereignty by liberal and liveral us of magic... and libertarian principles.

So... What kind of hijinx should have happened to her?

[Lolzyking]

Someone with no time to explain yells out her name and passes her something that looks expensive as he dips back around with people chasing him.

Continue with more interludes with people she has no memory of helping but all act indebted or trusting towardsher

[Safety Sword]

The standard way of reintroducing missing characters in our group is that they step out of the nearest available closet like nothing happened and being in a closet is a totally normal thing that everyone does. They then deny all knowledge of being missing despite any evidence to the contrary and then we get on with the session.

Sometimes I do what Lolzyking suggested and allude to important things having happened during the absence, but I never make it the main focus because I want the actual sessions that were played to be there.

The running joke at the table is that whenever someone returns after missing a session a character suddenly feels the need to "change my cloak". This leads to the closet and discovery of the missing PC.

It breaks the immersion a little, I'll admit, but when you have a gaming group that is 15 years old the in-jokes are the best way to handle real life getting in the way sometimes.

For your particular case... you have to decide how to handle it. Comedy might be appropriate or not depending on the tone of your campaign.

On another note:

Did you mean that the player is highly annoying, or the character?

[GlenSmash!]

I always like to involve my group in tings like this rather than just narrate what happened. What I would do is ask each of the other players to describe a lighthearted scenario that the absent player's character encountered (keep it simple, so limit it to one sentence) Examples might be a card game, drinking contest, buying into a timeshare etc.

Then let the Player describe how the character approached the scenario. Then I'd think if their approach succeeded or failed, and if necessary call for some type of check.

[Briton]

Take a page from the TV show "Gravity Falls" and the player was kidnapped by some mad man obsessed with erasing memories of people who saw him. But make it that at some point all the other players saw him but had their minds erased, while the player who was gone was being hunted down by the mad man. In the end, she had her mind erased as well.

Heres a link to a scene from the show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cIMet55cY8

[Armored Walrus]

I have a slightly rated R idea, but that kind of thing doesn't go over at every table.


Anyhow...


Suffice to say it involves a kennel owner and the fact the character is a moon druid.

Edit: Oh, another idea is to have her constantly bump into people who comment on how much fun they had, or how intriguing her lecture on thermodynamic principles was, or how inspired they were by her protests against the tax on thatch-roofed houses, etc. The more out of character these events are the better. Just keep them coming periodically over the course of the next session until it becomes obvious that so many people remember her in so many places she couldn't possibly have been at all of them during her downtime.

[Kane0]

A table of minds will always beat one at random shananigans, just ask the group what happened to this character while they were gone and run with it.

[ZorroGames]

Does the absence result in a claim of pregnancy for the PC or NPC? Even more fun if false.

[Specter]

Ale and... manwhores can't do the trick?

[Kane0]

Oh, and on top of whatever your party thinks of add in a Sending to her sometime through the day, some random mage dude/dudette that says "Jolly good show, best I've seen in years!"

[Honest Tiefling]

Take a page from the Völsunga: She met a very nice prince who was all set to marry her, but someone in the family didn't really like the idea of that. So of course, they used witchcraft to make her forget.

Which makes it quite hilarious if said prince (Or princess! Let's not be biased here) regains their memory and the party has to figure out why not one but two royals really want to kidnap that druid...

[GorogIrongut]

On another note:

Did you mean that the player is highly annoying, or the character?

The player is great. One of the better roleplayers I've encountered and have known him decades. He's 6'3" and in his spare time he does films. When he plays his female character he does it all in character w/ appropriate voices. When he got infected/possessed by a child revenant, he reliably changed not just character but also voice. He's a blast. And his character is so annoyingly bad that it's good. To the point, where one of the other players named one of their chickens after his character... because the chicken never stops squawking.

1. I've already been joking that she might just be pregnant... Which means she probably isn't.

2. His character is currently a bit miffed. She went through a period of carousing... I mean socializing. And once, when blind drunk, she lost a very important gem (it's a heretofore unknown entry/exit point to the prison plane of the Abyss, the Wells of Darkness that they wrest from some minions of Orcus). She'd been hiding it in her undies. Cue jokes about the Portal to Hell being in her pants.

What she didn't know is that it fell out and one of her party mates took hold of it for safe keeping... and just never told her or gave it back (the power of texting your secret actions). She just knows that it disappeared.

Well in this last session, the cat was let out of the bag and the Draconic Sorceror is currently the focus of her wrath. She's been complaining about not being able to trust the Sorceror. How the party are all turning against her. And when things get hairy... or fiddly... she won't be able to rely on them. So part of me wants her weekend away to have some kind of tangential link to the Sorceror... to further add an ironic tie between the two. (We play dnd a bit like Improv).

3. I love the idea that people keep bumping into her and seem to know/have partied with/or adventured with her.
I also love the idea about the mad man erasing memories of people who've seen him... and that youtube clip is awesome
I also enjoy the idea of her falling in love with a nobleman and his family turning against her and ambushing her. Perhaps it could be a forbidden romance with a Dragonborn... loosely related to the Sorceror. Which the Sorceror would be the only one in the family who knows nothing about it because he never writes home...

Still looking for any quirky ideas as I like these timeouts to be fun.

The last time out we had involved a Tiefling Paladock rescuing a mentally traumatized unicorn... who chose to be his companion (because they're living in particularly pivotal Times). The Paladock worships St Cuthbert and is essentially a murderhobo prone to making stupid jokes. The unicorn, after recovery, became his perfect complement and now they wisecrack their way through adventures disturbingly similar to Beavis and Butthead.