Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence
In the last issue of Roleplaying Tips (Issue #522) Johnn passed on a request for advice from an RPT reader and new GM:
Hi Johnn,
I am new to being a GM and have only been running a D&D campaign for about 6 weeks now (one day a week). I’m a high schooler and have convinced some friends who have never played before to play.
We have had a bit of fun and adventure. However, due to schoolwork and activities it is hard to get everyone to come all together, which makes it difficult to keep a story going.
What should I do to get a story or campaign to stay consistent? And how do I manage PCs when they are gone?
Thank you for your time,
Tristan.
I immediately set about writing an answer; I not only knew several “stock” answers to the question, but also experienced a moment of inspiration yielding a solution that had never occurred to me before, and that I had never seen written up. When the answer topped 500 words in only a few minutes of typing while barely scratching the surface, though, I knew that it would exceed the parameters of a Roleplaying Tips “quick reply” and retasked it into a Campaign Mastery post. Which is how you came to be reading these words…
Solution Zero: ‘Baby, I don’t care’
The circumstances described mandate a heavier emphasis on episodic campaign planning and decreased level of continuity. Being able to end each session of game play on a cliffhanger won’t work when the characters present going into the cliffhanger may not be the same as those present to get themselves out of it.
Each day’s play should end with the PCs somewhere safe and secure, where other party members can catch up with the group and those who aren’t there can safely leave. Since such in-game situations will be a common feature of a number of these solutions, let’s give them a name: “Exchange Points”. This is more a matter of trying to work around the problem than an actual solution, but it is good general advice when in this situation.
I also employ a ‘threshold of attendance’ in which players who can’t attend are required to provide advance notice of their absence, and a minimum number of players is required before the game can go ahead. Players who are absent without having provided notice are penalized in some fashion unless they have good reason, but I tend to not be very hard-line about accepting those reasons. The only one that I have ever refused to accept was “I was too tired from partying all night the night before” – that to me is absence by choice, the player made a judgement about what they wanted to do and it would be unreasonable to permit them to compromise everyone else’s entertainment for their own pleasure without some disciplinary action. Others might not agree, but the player in question thought it was a fair enough call.
Pros:
This solves the immediate problem – at least somewhat. It has little else to commend it.
Cons:
At the same time, it comes with three big shortcomings:
- Games can be disrupted by non-attendance;
- Players can resent punishment after being AWOL for what they consider ‘good reason’ but the GM doesn’t; and,
- It can be difficult ending each day’s play at an exchange point.
The last item deserves a little expansion. In order to end at an exchange point, the GM has to be certain that any combat will be complete before the end of the day’s play. The implication of that statement is that there will be non-combat action filling out the day’s play – which, no matter how interesting, doesn’t carry the adrenalin boost that combat does. What’s more, the amount of this non-combat play will be variable and somewhat unpredictable – some days there will be lots of time to fill, and other days everything will be a mad scramble to the finishing line. Worse still, simply being in non-combat mode doesn’t automatically produce an exchange point – any sort of drama is just as bad under these circumstances as blood sport. No, you need the days’ action to wrap up with everyone safe in their beds – either in an inn, a hostel, a campsite, or whatever.
All of which wreaks havoc on pacing and timing. Even worse, the result is a formatting straightjacket that will soon become dull and predictable.
Recommendation:
This is the sort of solution that you use when you can’t think of anything better. All subsequent solutions will – one way or another – be enhancements of this approach – which means that any of them would be preferable. And, as that shopping list of drawbacks shows, it can do with some enhancement!
Solution 1: ‘Dave’s Not Here, Man…’
This solution whisks characters whose players aren’t present off on a “Side Mission” which earns them no XP but which keeps them off the firing line. A refinement of Solution Zero, this is essentially a way of making any scene or location an exchange point (no matter how improbable) and using a blanket excuse to cover the cracks.
The solution can be further improved by requiring each player to provide a list of reasons for their character to wander off in the middle of an adventure and come back later, for the GM to choose between. These could include:
- Mundane, e.g. “going shopping for a gift for a relative” (works best with a large family in the character’s background) or “being locked up in the town cells for being drunk and disorderly”; or
- Personally significant, e.g. “Investigating a possible clue to the identity of my brother’s murderer” or “Trying to buy a grimoire containing ‘Bixby’s Unnatural Blandishment’ ” (or some other made-up spell that will never actually be found) or “Called to a reading of my Grandfather’s Will”; or
- Campaign insignificant, e.g. “Went to scout out the defenses of Darkmuir Manor but was almost caught and spent a couple of days in hiding”; or some other plausible explanation of where the character went, deriving from events within the campaign, but of no great significance to the campaign in the long-term; or,
- Campaign Significant, e.g. “Infiltrated a meeting of a death-cult dedicating to reviving the God Of Whimsical Destruction” or “Attended a secret peace conference between the Mondahz Confederation and the Elves Of The Ninth Circle”. These are events that the GM wants to have happen in the background, so he has to provide these. But they have the side-benefit of using the player as a vehicle for blocks of narrative text about events in the game without making them narration.
Pros:
This is an answer that solves the immediate problem – somewhat. It can provide a vehicle for background events that keep the campaign background dynamic instead of static, can provide a vehicle for character development.
Cons:
The flexibility evades most of the problems listed under the default “Solution Zero”, but at a price: Plausibility is negatively impacted, though some of the pro’s enhance plausibility in other areas, so overall this is a neutral solution that can appeal.
Recommendation:
This approach is worth considering, especially if the GM doesn’t feel his experience behind-the-screen will enable him to implement one of the better answers offered below. I consider this the minimum acceptable solution.
Solution 2: Second-Hand News
This is a solution that not a lot of people will have heard of, at least not in this exact form. I have seen a number of approaches written up here and there that all boil down to letting another player take care of a character whose regular player is absent, and over the years, have amalgamated the best features of several refinements on this basic proposal into the solution described below.
Each PC has a “Primary owner” and a “Secondary Owner” whose job it is to run the character when the primary owner is not there. The choice of who the Secondary Owner is, and should be, left to the Primary Owner – and should be made at the time of character generation. If both Primary and Secondary Owners are missing, one of the other solutions should be used as a stopgap.
Pros:
This approach certainly solves the problem. It also means that the party are never stuck needing a specialist class because the player that owns that character is away.
Cons:
It’s easily three times as much work running two characters at the same time as it is running one. It can easily ruin the enjoyment of the player trying to do it.
Some players may attempt to take advantage of the situation; while the GM can veto some of this, not all such actions will come to his attention, such as the second character making a ‘loan’ of a prized magic item or sum of wealth to the player’s usual character – and some players resent the GM vetoing ANY PC action. Some players will concoct mendacities to falsely accuse the caretaker of this sort of abuse of trust for his or her own reasons.
This solution also places a high premium on the secondary owner being able to explain his decisions and thinking at the moment of decision to the primary owner. And, even if the Secondary Owner runs the character with the best of intentions, communicates the reasons for his decisions clearly and succinctly to the Primary Owner, that owner can still be left be unhappy at the outcome of choices that he feels the character would not have made.
So it’s not a completely happy answer from the point of view of the players. Unfortunately, it is also not all the sparkling from the GM’s position, either. Implementing this solution may mean that the secondary owner becomes aware of knowledge that the primary owner would prefer to keep private. It may also mean that the secondary owner learns things that the secondary owner’s primary character doesn’t and shouldn’t know. Both of these can disrupt the campaign; it forces the Secondary Owner to actively work at separating player knowledge from character knowledge – something some players are good at, and some are not.
And finally, it is still only a partial solution: what if there are no other players that the primary owner trusts?
Recommendation:
This solution doesn’t work very well for inexperienced players and probably isn’t all that suitable under the circumstances. It’s a recipe for trouble even at the best of times. The Cons far outweigh the Pros, in my book, which is why this is not a solution that I willingly employ – but others may feel differently.
Where it does become somewhat viable is in a situation where a player leaves the campaign on a semi-permanent basis, or wants to retire his old character to start a new one – while the other players want to retain the services of the old character. With the consent of both players involved, a permanent transfer of ownership – either to an existing player or a new recruit – can be a perfect solution, and this is definitely a technique that I employ under those conditions.
Solution 3: The Zombie Solution
That brings us to what many will consider the obvious answer to the problem: The GM runs the missing player’s character as an NPC when they aren’t there. For this to be a reasonable approach, the player must have sufficiently developed the personality of the character that the GM can reasonably justify his decisions concerning the character’s behavior.
Pros:
It solves the problem completely, and dodges most of the pitfalls that the earlier solutions are prey to.
Cons:
That’s the good news. The bad news is that if its three times as much work to run two characters as it is to run one, it’s ten times as much work to run two characters and the game at the same time, and every other aspect of the campaign can suffer as a result.
The emphasis on communication with the absent player remains, but shifts to focus on the GM. The problem of separating character knowledge and player knowledge also remains, and is ten times worse because the GM has access to so much knowledge about the campaign. The GM, however, is more practiced at both tasks than most players, and has the option of slowing play down to a pace with which he or she can cope. Finally, the GM normally accepts responsibility for the long-term satisfaction of the players and well-being of their characters anyway, and always has to keep in mind what an NPC does and doesn’t know, so this is in perfect keeping with his normal purview. If it doesn’t happen regularly.
My players are all pretty reliable, and I make it clear from the outset that joining one of my campaigns means that the player is making a commitment to attend and participate, so this is the solution that I usually adopt, together with the threshold rule mentioned earlier.
I also employ a ‘critical character’ rule – if one particular character is the focal point of a day’s play, I’m quite prepared to skip a game session if that character’s player is not available. That means that I only take charge of a character when the events aren’t especially significant to that character, and hence the decisions to be made are generally relatively minor – what battle tactic to employ is a minor question, deciding whether or not to accept a bribe from another player’s arch-enemy is quite another!
Recommendation:
This solution doesn’t work very well for inexperienced GMs and probably isn’t all that suitable under the circumstances, despite the fact that it’s the solution I most routinely employ in my games. It took me several years of GMing every weekend, week-in and week-out, for up 30 hours a week, before I was comfortable and confident enough in my own abilities to make this my default position.
Solution 4: The PC Collective
A less-commonly espoused solution that works hand-in-hand with a heavily-episodic style is what I describe as “The PC Collective”. This is a “Mission: Impossible” approach (the original TV show, not the movies) in which all the characters – and several more – are in a pool of talent owned collectively by the party. Each time that the game reaches an exchange point, any player can choose to send the character that he has been playing back to the pool and draw out a different member of the pool; adventures become operations by teams of specialists, hand-picked by the players in order to achieve their immediate goals.
At the start of a day’s play, players retain the same character that they had at the end of the previous session, at least until the next exchange point is reached. That may leave a group of characters whose players from last session are not present this time, and it may leave a group of players without characters because they weren’t present last time. Such players have to first choose from the characters already present without a player; only once all these are taken can the rest choose from the available pool of ‘talent’ and wait for the GM to reach an “exchange point”, until then, they can only kibitz from the sidelines.
The only thing that the GM needs to have up his sleeve is some means of settling disputes – even if that’s as simple as “high roll gets to choose first” in the case of two players wanting the same character. Some sort of attendance ranking – number of sessions attended over the last three months, for example – would be my recommendation.
Pros:
As solutions go, this one has a lot to commend it. It solves the problem, and that solution is a group one. Players forego the one-to-one relationship that they normally have with their characters, but they gain a flexibility that can compensate – and the use of an attendance ranking system to prioritize players choosing characters means that the campaign will quickly come to consist of a core group of regular players and a number of intermittent attendees. That core group will soon settle on a core group of favorite characters, with only the occasional variation.
The result is exactly what happens in Mission Impossible: you have a core team of characters and a set – a suite, even – of specialists called in on a mission-by-mission basis. In effect, a central cast and a roster of recurring guest stars.
If there are too many characters and not enough players, the GM can implement the “Zombie Solution” until an exchange point is reached.
A final benefit is that the solution rewards regular attendance without unduly penalizing those who can’t participate regularly. A forward-thinking party will even ensure that specialists who are potentially-vital to future “missions” will get a reasonable amount of “screen time”, i.e. garner enough experience to be able to cope with the needs of those future missions.
Cons:
The biggest drawbacks to this approach are twofold:
- The players have to willingly and voluntarily buy-in to the proposed solution. If they can see the benefits and advantages, that shouldn’t be a problem most of the time; but if they don’t, they may not warm to the solution.
- The longer a campaign has been running, the more resistance that will be encountered, because players will have invested in their characters. The ideal time to implement this solution is from the very first session of a campaign, with characters that have been specifically designed for this approach.
Recommendation:
While this solves the problem in principle, and is an approach that I would happily try with a new campaign where attendance was expected to be a problem, it doesn’t hold up as a solution to Tristan’s specific problem where his campaign is already underway.
It would also be important to hand out story-based xp awards (the subject of next week’s post!) at each exchange point, so that characters who only participate in one portion of the adventure get their fair share of the rewards.
Ideally, the GM would also tailor the campaign design, especially the motivation and circumstances that brings the PCs together to adventure, accordingly.
Solution 5: The Short Story Solution
At the top of this post I promised an original solution to the problem; here it is:
Interweave Episodic mini-adventures alongside a Primary Campaign with stronger continuity.
- Each player should generate a Primary and a Secondary character. In an existing campaign, the existing characters can be considered the Primaries.
- The GM builds exchange points into the primary campaign where PCs can come and go, as described previously.
- At each exchange point, if the players whose characters are currently engaged in the primary campaign are not present, the players who are in attendance get out their secondary characters and the GM runs a miniadventure for them.
- If there are any primary characters who aren’t currently tied up in the main adventure because they departed at the last exchange point, they can participate in the side adventure, but if they do so, they can’t rejoin the main adventure until the next exchange point is reached.
This is a way to have your campaign cake and eat it, too.
With experience, you might be able to set things up so that the end of each day’s play usually occurs at an exchange point – in which case, you will no longer need to worry about miniadventures, and are back to Solution Zero. But this can seem artificial and can be tricky, and the other problems with Solution Zero remain – so I would make it a point to always have a couple of miniadventures up your sleeve.
An experienced GM can probably create and run a miniadventure on the spot, based on nothing but a plot seed (such as those contained in Eureka) but until you are comfortable doing so, a GM will probably need to invest a little prep time in having a miniadventure ready to go.
Pros:
Quite simply, this solves the core problem and bypasses every complication introduced by the other solutions. And, if you reach the point where the players don’t care whether its the main campaign or the side campaign, then you’re definitely a winner. This solution can be implemented at any point in an existing campaign.
You can even use the miniadventures to resolve side issues and fill in backstory for the main campaign – think of them as sidebars to that campaign!
Cons:
Alas, it is not the perfect solution. It presupposes that everyone will be able to attend the game, at least half the time. Progress in the main campaign slows because screen time is being split, and the side campaign can become more important than the story that’s supposed to occupy centre stage.
Recommendation:
Ultimately, it may prove easier to split the resulting campaigns into alternating games. This reduces the commitment required of those players who can’t be there all the time, which in itself may be enough to solve 90% of the problem 90% of the time, and may make one of the other solutions viable.
General Advice:
Whatever the approach that you adopt, be sure that your players all know about it and what it entails. If they don’t accept the solution, it won’t work. Be very careful not to single anyone out as being “to blame” when you discuss the problem. Pointing all the players to this article might be a good starting point for the discussion!
I hope this helps, Tristan!
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July 8th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
[…] Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence […]
July 10th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
I have been considering just this in my new campaign, as i have been warned up front not everyone will be able to make every session. I am lucky in that it is a city based campaign which I am hoping can mean people can drop in and out fairly easily without disrupting the flow of the story. The issue will come when, as you say, i leave things on a cliffhanger or more importantly when they are in some sort of dungeon – i.e. a location based adventure (clear out the thieve’s guild for example) which takes more than one session. I don’t personally want to follow your advice (a first for me!) but instead will most likely rule that whichever player isn’t there in this instance, their character remains in the background or heads back out where possible. I want my players to get attached to their characters and your solution wouldn’t help with that, in my humble opinion. I guess the main thing is to make such a good game that they don’t dare miss any sessions – but as we get older that becomes less possible (but somehow i always manage to make it – maybe i just have a less interesting real life?).
Truly sorry to hear about Graham – if he was responsible in getting this blog going as you say then he has had a hand in a profound improvement on both my playing and my enjoyment. D20 will be rolled.
July 10th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
By all means, choose the solution that fits your campaign best, James. I did my best to off an unbiased opinion on each, and to present all the alternatives, for that very reason – and it is worth noting that the Short Story solution is not something that I have implemented in any of my campaigns, and don’t intend to. Both my players and I are used to the Zombie Solution and are comfortable with it despite its drawbacks.
Thanks for the d20 in remembrance of Graham. He was definitely one of the major dominos that led to the existance of this blog, and will be sorely – and frequently – missed. I’m sure his family will also appreciate it.
July 10th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
I like the idea of exchange points. Not something that I have actively considered. But I’d like to suggest an alternative to the ‘mini-episodic’, or side adventure option. Instead of running a back story or possibly unrelated mini-adventure why not use it as a flashback moment? Pre-plan some flashback adventures that can be run whenever in a campaign to give the players who attend regualarly either combat related bonuses, or story rewards. That way players do not have too juggle multiple characters, and can remain focused on developing their character and the overall story.
TheRandomDM recently posted..TST: Graveyard.tab (Part 3)
July 10th, 2011 at 5:39 pm
A good suggestion, RandomGM, but one that is not without its own problems. Either you need to require players to archive their characters at each level, or you conduct these flashbacks with the characters at their current level even though they were not AT that level in the past, when the events of the flashback transpire. This can also raise continuity problems, when players earn abilities or items that would have altered their choices in dealing with subsequent in-campaign events that are still within their historical record. Still, it’s a notion that didn’t occur to me, and hence is worth noting.
Mike recently posted..Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence
July 12th, 2011 at 7:48 am
I do like your Short Story solution, closest to my preferred option, which is to go spotlight/deeper into the characters I have
Had a very small attendence at my game a while back (a few players called off because of good genuine domestic circumstances), so I was thinking about the benefits/drawbacks of running a session for only two of them…
My campaign hase lots of politics/diplomacy/warfare: Not a lot of fighting, in terms of rolling-dice, but lots of negotiations, counter-espionage and campaigning.
Benefits of small attendence:
*More roleplaying with NPCs, more immersion in setting, more attention can be paid to these character’s preferences, interests etc.
*When combat does occur, it’s quicker (one way or the other!)
*Less pre-game chatter (while this is fun, it can waste a lot of time, especially when players arrive over time)
Drawbacks of small attendence:
*”Pre-canned” story arcs/sequences may have to be dropped entirely or severly cannibalised if “their character” is missing
*In a short campaign, player end up missing a significant proportion of the story, and miss out of important and relatively unrepeatable sequences which teach campaign/cultural truths
*Some story types (investigation/planning especially) need maximum input/insight to work
Donogh recently posted..The Falcon’s Hood
July 14th, 2011 at 12:55 am
[…] Mastery has a good article covering the many ways you can continue a campaign with an absent PC. I also recommend their piece on encounter and scene planning — here’s my favorite tip […]
July 15th, 2011 at 8:05 pm
I’m sorry for your loss Mike. I’m set to roll a d20 for him on Wednesday.
Johnn recently posted..Writing the Effective Villain
July 16th, 2011 at 1:30 am
On behalf of his family and friends, Thanks, Johnn.
July 15th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Another alternative: the party works for an organization that has teleporting like capabilities. Most fun is to make it a non-good organization, such as a neutral (or worse) guild or a mages organizaiton. This provides a way to have ‘short story’ adventures with just a few characters. As well, if one player is missing from the next session, simple enough to explain him being whisked away for some task (thereby leaving his fellows in the lurch – more crunchy story there). This can be augmented by sending the missing player some amusing story in e-mail on what they did on their ‘sojurn’ to convey to the other players upon their return. “You are not going to believe what I had to do!”
July 16th, 2011 at 1:29 am
Not a bad idea at all, Pete. It only works while the PCs don’t have any means of quick communication back to base, and while control of the Teleportation is out of their hands, but that’s not unmanageable.
July 22nd, 2011 at 12:36 pm
[…] Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence (campaignmastery.com) […]
July 22nd, 2014 at 12:48 am
[…] Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence […]
April 14th, 2015 at 6:10 pm
There are other solutions, too.
One approach is to employ a magical trap or temporary narcolepsy, leaving the Party with a Body which must either be attended to, or protected, or somehow schlepped. Or abandoned, if the party are Those Sort of people.
Another approach is that the character simply wandered off to find a place to pee or poo. If nobody takes stock of the characters before heading out again, that character was left behind and must be caught up during a solo adventure or was clubbed over the head by something and appears in a cage where the Party arrives next.
Then again, if the character’s absence is noticed (and they care to make a search), the entire session becomes a case of tracking, attempting to find what happened to them and in what order. If secrets and short-cuts are in short supply, they find the character in a cage or a pit somewhere, and then are forced to do something with the Body until it wakes up.
April 14th, 2015 at 9:30 pm
I love it when someone comments on an older post, James – it tells me that the article was worth the effort of writing. Your suggestions are great, and hopefully will present anyone facing this situation with a few more options. Thanks for contributing :)
September 11th, 2015 at 1:31 am
[…] looked at a range of such solutions in Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence in response to a question sent to Roleplaying Tips and which appeared in issue 522. A whole bunch […]
October 16th, 2015 at 5:51 pm
I’m pleased to announce that this article has been translated into French by those wonderful people at “Places To Go, People To Be” for anyone for whom that is their first language :)
http://ptgptb.fr/porte-disparu
Mike Bourke recently posted..The Conundrum Of Coincidence
August 18th, 2016 at 12:45 am
This is a life saver!!! I’m afraid I won’t be able to suggest any solution as I am new to GMing. But thanks for this post! I’ll make sure to come by when I could contribute. Cheers!
August 18th, 2016 at 11:37 am
Glad I could help, Robin :)