Dealing with Missing Players

[RPGPundit]

So, in a diceless game (be it Amber, Lords of Olympus or, I presume LoGaS) it is somewhat trickier to deal with having a missing player for one session, for a number of reasons, but mainly because the typical campaign involves a web of connections and intricacies, plots, and other such things that all the different players are entangled in different ways with, and having one absent player means there's potentially a vast number of areas where suddenly things can't move forward.

So how do you like to deal with that in your games? Do you just explain it away and try your best to carry on? Do plotlines involving the absent player's character get put on hold by some deus ex machina, or do you have some other solution?

RPGPundit

[Panjumanju]

I always try to work the player's absence into the character's plot. The base assumption of a missed session is that the character sneaked off into shadow. When the player returns, I ask them what their character was doing in shadow at such a sensitive time like this (which it always is) and we have a short solo-mini-session to work out what they've been up to alone.

Sometimes they bring something back with them, like a bit of information, and sometimes when they return all eyes of suspicion are upon them for being absent.

It works well.

//Panjumanju

[Artifacts of Amber]

Much like having trump calls ready if the party gets to lax with trump (as it suggest in the drpg) i have reasons for a call away or something  like that. If the personis integral to the plot then i think of a way to work it in. The onlyplayer eho has a crappy schedule and can not always let me know ahead plays thechaosian so i have lots of things tocall him away. I usually i trytokeep a reasonhandy for everyone.

[RPGPundit]

I generally try to keep the PC indisposed in some way, but I don't allow their absence to grant them plot immunity; nor do I let them make it actively beneficial (it might, of course, be passively beneficial, as crises could be resolved in the PCs favour by others during his absence, etc).

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