What to do when players can't play?

[Tough_Tonka]

I have a bit of a problem, my roomates and I started a DnD game but there was only four of us and we wanted to have a crew of 4 players. So one of my roomates invited a friends that goes to another college a little over half an hour away. He nice and all but we've had to cancel a lot of games because he's too busy to come over here. I think things would run better without him but I don't want to be a jerk, do any of you folks have any experience about it.

[Kylarra]

Try to plan games with his schedule in mind and if he cancels, just run him as an NPC for that session.

[Kallisti]

Try to plan games with his schedule in mind and if he cancels, just run him as an NPC for that session.

This. Definitely this. Telling him you feel it's unfair to ask the other players to wait on him isn't being a jerk, it's being a conscientious DM.

[jokey665]

Try to plan games with his schedule in mind and if he cancels, just run him as an NPC for that session.

Yup, this is the way to go. Alternately, instead of actually running him as an NPC just have him in the background and kind of non-existent. We've been doing this in my current campaign and it's working great because the players have a boat and we just say "so-and-so stayed on the boat to work on X," which also works because there are a total of 8 players and we rarely have all 8 there at the same time. Usually 5-7.

[Dienekes]

Generally, me and my group made an agreement that if we ever had everything set up and 1 person couldn't make it we run anyway, no complaining.

It's worked out fairly well, for the most part.

[Tyndmyr]

One of my current games involves round robin DMing. Thus, there is always a needed reason for one or more of the characters to not be with.

I don't think we've repeated reasons yet, and they've ranged from mourning a fallen teammate to ceaselessly copying spells after looting spellbooks to doing upkeep on our house.

GM should keep in mind that one less player can alter power level, and to adjust encounters accordingly to avoid likely wipage, but there's always a chance that a player won't be able to make a game...things happen. Best to have a way to deal with it.

[Grumman]

One thing's for sure, what you don't do is run them as an extremely OOC NPC, whose sudden burst of incompetence and cowardice leaves her and another PC up **** creek without a paddle.

[infinitypanda]

One thing's for sure, what you don't do is run them as an extremely OOC NPC, whose sudden burst of incompetence and cowardice leaves her and another PC up **** creek without a paddle.

I sense a story behind this.

[Mystic Muse]

when my players can't play I cry myself to sleep.no I am not serious.


When my players can't play we just don't play.

[Grumman]

I sense a story behind this.

Some kid we were escorting to the capital got captured by slaver pirates, so the two evil characters in the party (a human tank and a drow wizard) decided to do a bit of sequence breaking on another pointless sidequest: we 'port in, we grab the kid, we 'port out.

We 'port in, and we finish for the night.

Next week we had to play at another location out in the boondocks, and the drow player couldn't show up. The DM decided this meant that she more or less started gibbering in the corner instead of 'porting us out as we had already stated was the plan in the DM's presence the previous week, and as a result we got captured.

Since my druid hadn't done anything during the fight that would suggest he wasn't just a barbarian, I decided to slip out of the manacles and hide as a snake until I had an opportunity to escape. The DM then decided that despite not knowing he was a druid and me rolling ~30 on my hide check at level 6 in a cluttered, enclosed space that could not be cleared without returning to port, the slavers found me anyway. That was when I quit the game.

[Blacky the Blackball]

My group has a GM and five players. Our general rule is:

If one player can't make it we still play (unless it's the GM!)

If more than one player can't make it we play boardgames instead.

In terms of the character, one or more of the other players play the missing player's character - with the others in the group acting as a "don't be silly, they wouldn't do that" sanity check.

And yes, we have ended up with characters dying in sessions that their players missed once or twice. We're all mature enough that when the player was told the circumstances of their character's death it didn't cause any argument or sulking.

[karnokoto]

If its just the one guy that cant make it, his character just kind of...mysteriously disappears. Just temporarily forget the fact that he was ever playing. You can make up fun stories after the fact to further immerse your players.
Like he decided to hang back to cover up your tracks, fell down a ravine and broke his ankle. Nightfall came and he found himself surrounded with a pack of dire wolves...only to be saved at the last second by a band of hunting eladrin. They look him to their beautiful and eloquent town, where they enjoyed the most sinful of hedonistic pleasures with devastatingly beautiful and exotic young women for the rest of the night, and the day after...sadly, he bid them farewell and has been tailing the party the entire time, only now just catching up.

Of course this could all be utter crap, but hey, even DnD characters make up fish stories ;)

[Tyndmyr]

If all else fails, fall back on "hey, WTF is so-and-so? I coulda sworn he was just here a minute ago."

[Autopsibiofeeder]

My group has a GM and five players. Our general rule is:

If one player can't make it we still play (unless it's the GM!)

If more than one player can't make it we play boardgames instead.

Aye, this is what we do as well, except we usually end up drinking beer somewhere.

When we finished the last campaign, one player went like "Gee, uhh...every week is so much, can't quite make it, but I don't want to quit." Seeing how everybody else (we're 1 DM and 5 players) is up to playing once per week, we decided that that player was to roll a character that was not too significant to the party (e.g. not the healer/debuff-remover) and notify the DM about when he will be absent/present in advance.

The DM has time to anticipate on his character being there, when he is absent the party does not miss out on a critical component, but rather has a NPC-ish teammate with somewhat of an off-day.

[DemonSlayer]

This might be crazy talk, but how about you, oh I dunno, wait until he can play?
You knew beforehand that he'd have less time than you (since you're all roommates and he's gotta take a half hour trip to even get there), so you could've expected him to not be able to play as much. Now you gotta cope with it. If you dind't want to adjust to his scedule then you should have decided to do so beforehand.
I mean c'mon, it's a game. The point is to spend time with your friends, not to play some game regardless of the people you play it with.
Something similar happend in my old gaming group. A friend and me also had less time than the other players (we were both in school and worked during the weekends, while the others had more free time). In the end I decided to leave both the game and those friendships behind because of the pressure they were putting on me to play a friggin' game. I recently heard the other friend eventually did the same.
So lighten up. If your friend can't play, then don't play. The point is doing something fun as a group, isn't it? Besides, as far as I know, D&D was never supposed to have a time limit, so what's the rush?

And if all else fails, start a second game for when he's not around. My old gaming group ran a Star Wars d6 game when I couldn't make it, and it worked perfectly. They had a fun game even when I wasn't around, and I didn't have to feel like some second-rate pc who missed out on most of the roleplaying and action.

[FoE]

This is why I place remote-activated exploding collars on all my players.

"What's that, Jimmy? You need to go to your grandmother's funeral? You can't make game night. A pity. I guess that means your family is about to experience two sudden tragedies .."

[pasko77]

Play 2 different games.
One is with him, one without.

[bosssmiley]

Try to plan games with his schedule in mind and if he cancels, just run him as an NPC a trapspringing test dummy for that session.

/posted fixed for lack of meanness

If the character is critical to the intended story that session just curse his name, throw darts at his picture and play a beer-and-pretzels game instead.

[Katana_Geldar]

Have you talked to him about this? One player not turning up is usually NOT enough to cancel the game, unless his character has some important things to do related to the campaign and then you need someone you know you are committed to.

You're the DM, you're the best contact person to make sure the people get to the game and you need to make calls when it is the best time to cancel.

Sounds as if, as you've said you've had to cancel a lot of games, that he's not really committed to this.

BTW, my players have a special fate if they don't turn up and don't tell me. They get left behind at the last place where they were actively in the party and something embarrassing (but not terrible) happens to them that is decided by all the players at the table. Putting them in a clownsuit handcuffed to a toilet without money or a ticket on a train to Vladistock is a great punishment.

[Blacky the Blackball]

[...] my players have a special fate if they don't turn up and don't tell me. [...] Putting them in a clownsuit handcuffed to a toilet without money or a ticket on a train to Vladistock is a great punishment.

Wow that's harsh. I mean I could understand doing that to their characters - but to do it to the players...

[karnokoto]

This might be crazy talk, but how about you, oh I dunno, wait until he can play?
...
I mean c'mon, it's a game. The point is to spend time with your friends, not to play some game regardless of the people you play it with.
...
So lighten up. If your friend can't play, then don't play. The point is doing something fun as a group, isn't it? Besides, as far as I know, D&D was never supposed to have a time limit, so what's the rush?

And if all else fails, start a second game for when he's not around.
...

(Edited the quoted section for length)

So, your group of five friends has been planning to see a hypothetical movie for the past month. Everyone is going to come, except for the one guy who says he might not be able to make it.
Movie day rolls around, and that guy calls to say he can't make it. Everyone feels regret that he couldn't come, but do we HONESTLY expect the other 4 friends to just not go JUST because the one guy isn't going to be there?

There are some differences in this because you dont neeeed that one guy to go to the movie with to be there.
If the guy not able to show up to D&D played a crucial character, it makes things a little difficult for the rest of the group.

I really think its extremely childish to take on a mindset of "IF I CAN'T HAVE FUN THEN NOBODY CAN."
If you can't make it to a session, thats regrettable. Hope we see you next time kinda deal.
But it doesn't mean everyone else has to stop having fun because of it.

I mean if you can pass on the D&D for a night, go ahead, but sometimes D&D is just what people want to do that night.

Or, lets say you start a new game to play when absent guy isn't going to be there. Cool.
What if everyone loses interest in Campaign A which involved absent guy, and doesn't want to play in it anymore? What if, when absent guy finally comes over again, everyone is talking and laughing about the last session of Campaign B? Both of those situations are going to make him feel even more left out than he already was.

[DemonSlayer]

So, your group of five friends has been planning to see a hypothetical movie for the past month. Everyone is going to come, except for the one guy who says he might not be able to make it.
[...]

There are some differences in this because you dont neeeed that one guy to go to the movie with to be there.

That's a bit of an understatement, even though, yeah, I'd try very hard to postphone going to the movie as long as possible so that we can all go. But even then, he could always rent the movie later or something.
The point is, however, that missing a movie does not have consequences for the next time you go out. So one person misses a movie, so what? It's probably not even going to come up next time. (The fact that a movie only runs for a certain amount of time also counts...)

Missing a gaming session, on the other hand, does have consequences (we wouldn't have a thread about it if it didn't have consequences). It has consequences for your character (who misses out on XP, treasure, role-playing and, most importantly, working with the others as a team), and it has consequences for the player (who feels left out, misses important plot-points, and altogether misses much of the ongoing story he's participating in).

I really think its extremely childish to take on a mindset of "IF I CAN'T HAVE FUN THEN NOBODY CAN."

Is it less childish than a mindset of "I WANNA PLAY AND ***** ANYONE WHO HAS OTHER OBLIGATIONS"? And, seriously, the point is to get together with friends and do something fun (which may or may not be D&D), not to play D&D and get whomever is available to play along.

What if everyone loses interest in Campaign A which involved absent guy, and doesn't want to play in it anymore?

Well, what would you normally do when people lose interest in a campaign? Simply drop it, maybe one or more sessions to finish the whole. Then either start a new campaign, or invite the often-absent player (OAP) to campaign B and start a campaign C for when he can't make it. It's really quite easy once you realize "gaming is a fun thing to do when I'm with my friends", rather than "people can add fun to the game I wanna play".

I mean if you can pass on the D&D for a night, go ahead, but sometimes D&D is just what people want to do that night.

Yes, and any adult should be able to overcome that urge. And if you can't, either start a new campaign or play a short module or something.

[Asheram]

Well... If someone can't show up for a session there's five things to do.

1. Don't play.
2. Play while the absent persons character is gone away on another mission for the time being.
3. "Mark" him, The Gamers way. (Make him just follow you around and noone'll pay any attention to him, not even enemies)
4. Make him your Heal/Tank/Trapchecking bot
5. Have someone else that the characters owner trust play his character over the evening.

[jamminjelly]

Personally, I would make an absent policy for the game and just let one of the present players roll for an absent character. This way you don't have to worry about xp weirdness or modifying fights.

Also, be sure to give any Warforged in you game lots of magical items. This will help too, I assure you.

[valadil]

Most groups I've played in will run if there's only one player ditching but cancel if there's more. Whether you NPC or ignore the absent PC is up to you. Both methods work.

[The J Pizzel]

One of my players (the most eager, mind you) lives in New Orleans while we all live on the other side of the state (near Texas). He comes down about twice a month to visit friends and family and we "try" to play. Oddly enough, sometimes it's one of us that can't play that particular weekend. So sometimes (like right now) we'll go a month before playing again because we're waiting for him to come back down. I promise you though, if my other players were having fits of withdrawel, Mr. New Orleans wouldn't mind if we played. To me, that's just politeness on his part, just as it's politeness on our part to "try" and wait for him to come down. It's just like any other relationship, compromise.

So I don't think there's anything wrong with ya'll playing without your other guy. As long as, out of respect for him, ya'll make a valiant effort to try and wait for him. But if you group is pushing a 3-4 weeks without playing, I'm sure your friend won't mind if ya'll get together for a little death and destruction.

jP

[Kol Korran]

my group is comprised out of 5 players and a DM. but we're all busy people and os osmetime some can't show up. our rule is that if but one player is missing, we NPC him/her, and the same player can't be missing for two consecutive meetings.

but, due to people's schedules, we can't meet frequently, so the DM, another player and myself have formed a smaller experimental group (with the other player DMing), at something a bit more light hearted. the bigger group's shcedule takes precedence, but the little group fills in gaps of meetings.

Kol.

[Guinea Anubis]

another vote for run him as NPC

[DemonSlayer]

To me, that's just politeness on his part, just as it's politeness on our part to "try" and wait for him to come down.

You try? So sometimes you fail and accidentaly role-play and roll dice ?

Besides, its a lot more difficult to make time in a busy scedule (sometimes its impossible) than it is to not play. I just wanna know; what's pressurising people into playing the game? Because if there was no pressure, then you could wait a few months if need be.
I'd have no problems with waiting a long time before continuing the game, at any rate. I just don't see what the big deal is .

[Kylarra]

Having to cancel a lot of games says either they have a normal game date and he just can't make it on those days or they plan on meetings and it turns out he can't make it at the last minute multiple times.

Either way, by planning with his schedule in mind you establish a time that he should be able to attend. If he can't attend for multiple sessions in a row after you've tried to accommodate him, clearly he's not all that interested in playing.