this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
29 points (93.9% liked)

Dungeons and Dragons

10990 readers
1 users here now

A community for discussion of all things Dungeons and Dragons! This is the catch all community for anything relating to Dungeons and Dragons, though we encourage you to see out our Networked Communities listed below!

/c/DnD Network Communities

Other DnD and related Communities to follow*

DnD/RPG Podcasts

*Please Follow the rules of these individual communities, not all of them are strictly DnD related, but may be of interest to DnD Fans

Rules (Subject to Change)

Format: [Source Name] Article Title

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Starting a campaign with my wife, and some friends. My wife being the most of the fence and mentioned maybe missing a session or two. So I just want to have some creative ways in my pocket to handle missing players and what ways to make it entertaining!

Thanks

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Durugai 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After 15 years of playing I came to the very easy conclusion that, at the start of the game we talk about how we as a group would like to handle a missing player. What the group wants is often the best way.

My personal preferred method I always suggest along side that is "If a player is not there, their character is not there and we don't try to explain it in game, we just play." - it is in my experience by far the best way, not "But Pyke should still come with us and help us!" hour long discussions. No "Well sorry Dave, last session when you weren't there, Gimmerleaf died." garbage. No one is going to spend that PCs resources or make a judgement call on "what that character would do" or how they would react to things.

It keeps the agency squarely on that players court while letting the rest of you just keep playing without having a bunch of in game worries about an IRL issue that is not under your control.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah trying to have the missing players' PC still be "there" inevitably causes the party to want the DM to do the work of RPing that character.