When I write as a GM, I incorporate all of my players into the story and evolve the narrative around their characters’ backgrounds, actions, etc. So, when a player doesn’t show up regularly, it has a tendency to disrupt or even halt the game’s progress. The smaller the group, the more serious this issue becomes. I’ve had gaming groups implode over this.
So what sorts of rules or understandings does your group have in place to offset the void left when a player doesn’t show up to the game? Does the absent player become an NPC under the GM’s control? Do you just ignore the fact that the PC carrying the magical Orb of Whatsit is off on holiday when the king demands the Orb to save the kingdom?
Obviously, we all have real-life stuff that crops up from time to time that can prevent us from playing, but if I can commit to writing and running the game each week (barring life’s little emergencies), I don’t feel I’m being unfair to expect the same from my players.
So, GMs…what are your thoughts?
These days we have been going by the rule:
The people I play with are far too inconsistent and we have to take what we can get. Complicating things too much is just another barrier that we don’t need. We do have a decent sized group with a couple of reliable players, so this is probably easier to do with this group than with a smaller one.
Note: We are all pushing 50 and are pretty busy with work and family, which is a big contribution to the flakiness.
We use a similar rule at our table. We play whenever there is no more than one player missing.
The metaphor I use to describe it is like from a TV show: sometimes, a character is inexplicably absent from an episode and it’s often because the actor has other obligations.
So the character is simply not on-screen. It is not talked about, no reason is brought up and the character isn’t being played by anyone.