MIA PCs and the Story

[HMS Invincible]

If you know that for a long period of time that the regular attendance of all the members of your group isn't likely, how do you place your story on hold?

I've done ghostly dreams that end up with them waking up with treasure and xp,
one shot spooky villiages, and of course the occasional side adventure that always wraps up neatly in a single session with no effect on the main story.

I've also made the mistake of trying to proceed with the storyline with a half party. Crucial plot points get lost, location, suspension of disbelief strained, and the story ultimately gets trampled on if you do it too more than once.

[Demons_eye]

If they are in a town have them help it for a while. Let them be bounty hunters .

[Catbeard]

The best solution i could come up with in a fantasy setting was some sort of temporal curse where the non-attending PCs blink out of existence, only to reappear at the next available session in the midst of the highest concentration of similarly cursed individuals (the PCs).... the subplot being the removal of the curse so they could get their lives back into order (either by killing the guy who dropped the curse on them/destroying the cursed artefact/removing the mysterious tattoos/etc). It's contrived, sure, but if you can work it into the storyline then it actually makes a bit of sense.

[shadzar]

If no one is going to be there regularly, then I don't run it or play in it.

That's like some store pick up game than a regular group.

If one person can't make it for a while, then there character likely just retires. They come back with a new character at the proper level and join back in with it, and the old character can be run in a new game or something.

[Another_Poet]

If it's just once in a while, NPC their character and have them take minimal actions and stay at the back of the party. If you really need an IC reason, say that character has the flu and feels too weak to do much.

If it's an ongoing thing, consider running a West Marches style game. The problem will be permanently solved and the gameplay won't suffer, in fact, it'll be awesome.

ap

[Britter]

The Shadowrun game that I am currently running has five players at the moment. We are all working adults with conflicting schedules, careers and activites that often interfere with our ability to game as a group.

So long as there are at least three people availible, I will run the game session. The abscent players are sometimes played as NPCs by the group, if the party was somewhere that makes it impossible to have a character just up and leave. In most cases, however, the characters head off camera to work at their day jobs, do magical research, repair their motorcycle, or handle some other problem. Because each character has some goals that they want to accomplish but which are not really geared towards group involvement, I allow them to make progress towards some of those goals while they are off camera. As an example, one of my players is rather wealthy, and uses his off-camera, unable to attend time to continue working on setting up his fake identities and moving more and more of his money to a variety of off-shore accuonts, so that he has fall back options if his primary identity is compromised.

When the player returns, if they were able to acquire any plot related info during the absence, I let them know and set up a situation that allows them to rejoin the group.

Of course, this works because Shadowrun is a modern setting, and I don't give a hoot if the party is balanced or even facing fair challenges (my players understand and appreicate this fact, and have so far performed admirably in messing my plans up and slaughtering my goons en mass, though I am starting to get dialed in on the correct challenge level for them). In a fantasy setting, it may be harder to deal with absent characters.

Personally, I feel that you shouldn't punish people who can't make it to the session due to work, family, or similar repsonsibilities. After all, while it may be great to drop everything and game for 8 straight hours when you are a kid, that is a lot harder once you have a mortgage, a 40+ hour a week job, and a handful of other responsiblities. Don't punish the players for having a life, ya know? After all, no matter how hrd you try to set up a working schedue that allows everyone to make it each week, you can't always achieve that goal.