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GMs: What do you do when a player doesn't show up?
I think this has to be one of the oldest questions there is in the TTRPG world, but I wanted to see if the general consensus has changed with the rise of virtual tabletops.
When you have a player cancel on you, do you skip the session, or play without them?
What is your reasoning behind your decision?
Personally, I always play without them. This is a change from when I first started DM'ing, as back then I wanted to be 'fair' to my players. As I left University and went into work however, waiting until everyone was able to play became such a rare thing that it would mean hardly ever playing.
I haven't played in a regular weekly campaign since I was in college. Adult life just has too many things that inevitably come up to keep things consistent there, so I just no longer try.
The format that my campaigns these days use is a bit different:
All this is to say, we sort of preempt the "what if people can't show up" question from the very beginning, and design our sessions around that possibility (or even probability) rather than the other way around. Of course unexpected emergencies will still come up sometimes, but when the commitment levels are that small and bounded, it's extremely rare -- like I think it's only happened once in the past year, at which point we just skipped that week and picked up again the next.
That's a really interesting system, I like it! My player base is a bit too small where I live to implement that, but if I ever start doing online games, I'll consider this as a solution for sure.
Do you find the narrative of the game to still be as compelling as in traditional games?
Very much so, yes. The "hunt" arcs are all pieces of a larger story in the world. If you think about it, most traditional campaigns end up following a similar narrative structure -- different goals that each take a handful of sessions to accomplish -- but they just aren't necessarily as deliberate about it, and that deliberateness has the added benefit of helping to keep our sessions a bit tighter and more productive as well. The rotating cast of characters isn't a huge deal either, since we all know each other well enough. Part of that is that we coordinate everything in a shared discord server, and one of the channels there is #in-character-messaging, where we end up doing a bunch of passive rp between sessions as well: that helps keep PC relationships tight even when we might go a few hunts without interacting in session.
We do this as well with two DMs who worldbuild together as they live together.
For people who want some more info on this type of game, Ben Robbins created the West Marches style of game which is very similar to this (single sessions only is the main difference) and he talks about it here
Matt Colville also has a Running The Game episode on it.
Depends on how many don't show up. I currently have a group of five players. If one doesn't show up, someone will just play their character for them. If two don't show up, I like to have a one shot available. Three or more just means I cancel the session.
Having a one shot to hand is a really good idea. I hadn't thought of that as an option. Do you play in person or online if you don't mind me asking?
In person
I DM a VTT mini-campaign that we pick up when our regular DM needs a break or needs a few weeks to set up the next bit of our main campaign. I have one player who is the the process of moving across the country and can't attend every session for the next while, but we've set it up so another player can play both her own character and the character of the absent player if they want. The campaign is also structured in a way that it is entirely plausible for a character to disappear for 1-2 sessions and reappear later without disrupting the canon :D
It helps that our table is usually pretty good about giving advance notice - several hours, if not a day or two ahead of the session - and as long as it's only 1-2 people, we'll play on. I had 3/6 cancel a couple weeks ago and I was feeling under the weather anyways, so that tipped the scales to postpone the session.
Play without them unless there are not enough players remaining to play.
My group are all adults, our time is important, scheduling is hard. It's the sensible thing to do.
As for what to do with their character, I prefer to have the character not available during the session then I'll use something like a love letter to make their return a little big exciting and add something to the narritive.
Our GM does the same, minus the love letter. If one of us can't show up then we play without them. The character is also out of the picture.
Personally I have no problem with it.
And also like you said we are all adults so time is really a problem. We play only ones a month so it woud suck to cancel it.
I've only been out of education for about a year now, my players and I are still coming to terms with the fact that there just isn't the time to play as often anymore.
Turning their absence/ return into an event in of itself is a good idea, thanks for commenting!
My playgroup had one player who was a chronic no-show, or late-show when he did make it. Our group was also 6 players, which was already a bit large to be practical for Exalted. Our solution was that the 6th player's character would just spontaneously not-exist if he wasn't there, and then would resume existing when he was. No plot justification or anything, just "alright you're here and we assume you've always been here".
From what I've read, that seems to be the standard approach to dealing with unreliable players. I do like it, its a good way to include players who aren't able to be there for every session, or there isn't a regular group that plays.
I will have that player go on a “side quest” or need go tend to something at home. Put it in story of why they needed to leave the group.
That's similar to my go-to response when I have a missing player. My campaign has been running for a while so most of my players have their own settlements or bases. I normally use the excuse that they're tied up with home affairs.
We set up our campaigns to be built around the "open table" concept. Players come and go, and as long as we have two players show, it's game on. The key is to not worry about maintaining a purely-linear continuity between every session, and to not feel chained to the idea of picking up next time immediately where the last one dropped off.
I think that's one of my issues as a DM. I worry a lot about continuity and always starting exactly where the last session ended. It's a habit that I'm working on fixing as it does become an issue when I have players who can't make it every week.
I thought it would be a more difficult transition to make myself, but then I had the chance to start a brand new campaign and decided to go open-table with it. The change was basically immediate, all the stress of keeping things consistent went away. I do admit that in my case, it definitely helps that after just about 30 years of gaming, we switched back to the "grand expedition" format of old, and that style of play definitely makes the open table setup a lot easier.
One of the most important tricks for us was establishing from the start that no sessions would end on cliffhangers, and if anything immediate was unresolved at the end of the session, the GM (usually me) would narrate the conclusion at the beginning of the next session. So for example, if the session ended right before combat might begin, I might wrap it up by saying the PCs quickly escaped and made their way back a few rooms to regroup, or even all the way back to their main camp. Ultimately it all depended on who made the subsequent session, and sometimes the roster was close enough that picking up where we left off was the sensible decision.
Not having things end on a cliff-hanger sounds like a good way of avoiding this problem all together to be honest!
How do you find a natural end to your sessions without relying on cliffhangers?
It's kind of like taking a director's chair approach. Guiding play to a point where it feels like a good stopping point has been reached, it can take some time to get used to. I guess it's more of an "always be reading the room" thing. I'll have to think more about it and maybe I can offer something more concrete.
For my group we had one chronic no show (who was eventually kicked from the game but for other reasons) that I was putting up with for the rest of the group. I ended up implementing the rule that not showing up meant no experience so you’ll be under leveled compared to every one else. However while the player is not there I would take control of them for combat purposes and would ensure they would be the last one left before I targeted them. If I didn’t try to play with a trouble player I probably would drop the miss out on experience part as I don’t want to punish players for living their lives as needed.
Have you ever ran into instances where you controlled a PC in a way that the player didn't agree with once they had returned?
I've had that happen as a DM and we just chalked it up to learning experience and tried to do it more accurately next time.
I’ve never had that happen but I believe that’s more so because I use them solely in combat and don’t take items that I use away from them.
One small suggestion, if you have a consistent no show, is to try different systems other than the one you're playing! I have a DnD group and sometimes we'll just play a small oneshottable system.
I highly suggest Goblin Quest! https://rowanrookanddecard.com/product/goblin-quest/
Probably the funniest session I've ever been a part of. Since my group is biweekly, were also thinking of trying Avatar Legends on off weeks, with lower commitment than our main campaign.
That's a good idea! I have been giving some thought to other game systems, I'll look into having one as a reserve. Thank you for the advice.
I have a whole list of pdfs that I keep buying for ttrpgs and no time to play them, which I feel like is a pretty common first world problem haha. It's nice to not be super confined to 5E so I've been subtly trying to nudge my group away from it haha. Pathfinder is a good obvious choice as well, and the other biggest one is Call of Cthulhu which we've tried and I think is pretty one shottable!
I feel that, I way have way too many rule sets considering I exclusively play Swords and Wizardry at the moment.
I did try running Call of Cthulhu a while ago; I might dust off my rule book and give it a second chance at some point.
I'm not a GM. But we were discussing a new campaign and the potential setting and everything. We have one player who is inconsistent when it comes to turning up. We were trying to figure out how to work around that.
So we joked around and came up with an idea where we would be a party or maybe an organisation and that inconsistent player will be our boss.
Basically we'll go about and continue with the story, but whenever the player can make it for the session, we'll have to be like "Oh no the boss is coming! Hide your nonsense." or "Maybe they can fix our mess!"
My weekly group always tends to make it and we tend to be pretty good at keeping everyone in line with holidays, time off etc. But if there is some form of emergency or forgotten holiday we just run a one-shot or mini-arc for a different setting, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, Laudunum Drinkers, Delta Green, Vampire etc. until the player comes back, normally the week after but possibly two weeks. Like I said, it's very rare though and has only happened maybe twice in 3 years.
The other group I play with, we just meet up as and when we can, generally once a fortnight or once every three weeks but we're currently going through an extended break because two of the players (who are married) have just had a child so we're giving them the time they need to get into a rhythm. If I haven't heard from them in 6 weeks or so I'll ask when they think they'll be ready to play again but I imagine they'll come back to me themselves. We've been playing as a group since 2018 and me and my wife have been friends with the two of them for nearly 20 years now.
I'm not currently the GM (we rotate among players who have ideas for campaigns they want to run), but I play in a group of adults who do normal adult stuff.
The nature of our group is such that the game isn't really the important part. We're all friends hanging out; the game is just a convenient regular activity to structure it around. We only play if everyone's there. If someone cancels but enough of the rest of us still want to hang out, we just have a video game or movie night instead, depending on who remains (e.g. many of the others are into visual novels, but I am not, so if I cancel, they'll often do a group playthrough of one).
I'd say I'm in the same boat to some extent, a large portion of my group are old-school friends, so I think we could easily do something else if we have no-shows.
This is what we do as well (also not the GM, but married to the GM haha). We are a group of 4 who sometimes meet once a week and do the campaign, to meeting once a month just because adults have lots of things going on in their lives sometimes. If someone last-minute can't or doesn't make it, we just hang out with the other player who did show up. Sometimes we will play a board game (even if all 4 of us are there, we will do a board game since my spouse will sometimes get GM burnout and playing a completely different game that they don't have to prepare for helps). It's been working well in the year+ we've been doing our (long!) campaign. :)
Adventure's League rules make it pretty braindead to just omit them and maintain continuity. If they don't want to or can't play, they're gonna miss out. They can get refreshed and it's as if they missed nothing RP wise. If they miss a milestone, it's up to you if you level them.
Combat scaling is the only slightly annoying thing.