Split the party! Trials and triumphs of a full-time nerd in a part-time world
Without a GM to run the tabletop RPG, whether it’s Dungeons & Dragons or whatever game your group is playing, the party’s continuing adventures will be put on hold. But what if one or more of the players can’t make it to your next session? Or perhaps your group attendance changes all the time, with a different configuration of your core group showing up intermittently to go on quests. The demands of daily life don’t have to deter the rest of the group from meeting for a gaming session. In fact, you can use these situations to your advantage to instill varying degrees of drama and play styles for your campaign.
Classic D&D adventuring style
The simplest method for running your game with an irregular party makeup takes a page from the earliest days of D&D’s playbook. Shifting the focus away from a grand narrative, the characters instead are adventurers for adventure’s sake. While it is no doubt engaging for characters to have vested interests in the reasons and outcomes for their quests, there’s something to be said for starting a session with the characters at the dungeon entrance and the question put forth from the GM: “What do you do?”
Early D&D modules like “In Search of the Unknown” gave DM’s brief backgrounds on whatever dungeon was contained therein, and the PCs motivations for being there, which were nearly always the same – there’s treasure inside! The notion of connected quests that carried parties from 1st to 20th level wasn’t an assumed part of the game. Instead, the DM created dungeons (or used published modules), players showed up with their characters and delved into the depths. Certainly it behooved a group to include a balanced mix of characters to tackle all the various tricks, traps, puzzles and monsters, but if three players showed up all with fighter characters to test their mettle, then that’s how the session went.
Even playing this way, over time players and DMs developed character arcs and longer plots in their imaginations, and elements in later adventures hearkened back to earlier exploits. The difference with this style is that the party is not necessarily considered the stars of an epic tale. Players certainly became attached to their characters, but it wasn’t going to derail a long narrative if (when) those characters died. The characters existed for the sole purpose of surviving dungeons.
If your group is just starting up, consider taking your game in this direction. Take a dungeon, set the characters at the entrance and go from there. While Wizards of the Coast has strayed away from the model of publishing adventures in this manner, there’s nothing wrong with using their long campaign adventures, cutting out all the narrative elements and just using the dungeons. For example, the Oozing Temple in Out of the Abyss can easily make for a one-shot adventure. Handwaving the lost in the Underdark set-up, simply tell your players they were exploring some underground tunnels, a cave-in cuts off the passage they were in but opens up a new tunnel.
The upcoming release of Tales from the Yawning Portal, as I understand it, looks to capture the spirit of this sort of adventure with a series of independent dungeons. My guess is they’ll be presented in a progressively more difficult order, so a campaign of sorts takes place as adventurers tackle each dungeon in succession.
Similarly, there is a great product from Kobold Press called “The Book of Lairs” filled with small dungeons featuring signature monsters that can be run the same way. I’ve used several of them with my own group, which is run in sandbox style, and with some personalization they’ve been extremely useful.
Take a note from TV
Episodic series with ensemble casts are terrific examples of how to run RPGs with an intermittent group of core characters. In this approach, the players who show up for a session are basically the stars of that adventure. I’m far from the first person to cite the fantastic “Firefly” program as an example of this style of play. (A particularly great example, too, considering my group is playing in the Spelljammer setting.) Essentially, take any program with a larger cast and think about how different episodes focus on different configurations of the characters. Even primetime sitcoms fluctuate which characters are featured in each episode.
The absent PCs simply aren’t part of the session when the players aren’t there. Perhaps they are off taking care of personal business or on another adventure of their own. Even in a campaign with a long narrative, this doesn’t need to negatively affect the plot. On the contrary, it can serve to strengthen it by giving the PCs who are present a more powerful connection to that session’s particular circumstances. The GM can weave elements specific to the present characters into the adventure, making the scenario more meaningful for them and giving players the sense their characters are important parts of the story. Conversely, adding details pertinent to the absent players can strengthen the bonds between both party members, who can add their own dramatic elements to the narrative by becoming a part of their companions’ personal tales even when they weren’t present themselves.
After enough sessions, there’s great potential for unexpected arcs to emerge that can culminate in a “season finale” session when all of your players can attend. Along the way, the characters have accumulated hints and details from their individual levels of involvement that can come to light and create excitement for the whole group. Players in one session might have uncovered clues that help solve a mystery other players are still in the dark about, for instance.
Monster hunters extraordinaire
As a GM that loves all the incredible monsters, creatures and critters, a style of game where the players are contract monster hunters is a ton of fun. This is also a great option for groups that tend to have short sessions and that enjoy combat more than exploration or social encounters.
Instead of a narrative reason or even a large dungeon to explore, the characters are all professional monster hunters working for a guild. The most basic way to run a game like this is to choose a monster, explain that the characters have tracked it down, and let them fight it. Whichever players showed up to the session are the hunters who took the contract.
Characters in this sort of game are simpler to create, as well. In a game focused so heavily on combat, the need for more diverse skill sets is reduced. Along these same lines, it gives all of the characters an equal chance to shine, if they’re all created primarily to be combatants.
If you need to make the encounter longer, the character might have to navigate the monster’s territory a bit first. This can provide some opportunities for skill use beyond combat capabilities. They might have to do some tracking, avoid some hazards along the way and plan for a stealthy approach to ambush the monster. Perhaps the GM can allow some skill checks for things like Arcana, History, Nature or Religion to dole out some hints about the subject of their hunt.
Another benefit to this sort of group is that it’s very easy to trade GM duties on a regular basis, or even not have a traditional GM at all! Your group could go round robin, with a different player choosing which monster the group hunts each session, with that player taking point on the encounter set-up and any quirks to the particular hunt. They can handle running the monster, and their character can either be absent from the contract or they can participate as well – assuming everyone agrees and there’s no favoritism towards their character in the fight.
Adventuring from a home base
This aspect of a game group can be applied to any sort of play style to help explain character absences. In a West Marches-style game, for example, characters are based in a singular town that is explicitly safe from outside dangers. There is never any adventure in the town, and the quests take place in ever-expanding regions beyond the town that the characters explore. If a player isn’t present at a session, their character simply stays in town that day.
Likewise, in my Spelljammer game, the party has their own ship that accommodates a fairly large crew of 22. They don’t have a full complement by a damn site, but at this point there are enough PCs and NPC crewpeople to allow lots of variety for “away teams” for their adventures. Depending on the players who show up, the group decides who they’ll take with them when they leave the ship, and the rest of the character remain on board. One of my players whose character is an artificer gunsmith has only been to a single session, and yet his character has grown into a vital crew member, acting as the ship’s engineer. Whenever the ship takes damage – a frequent occurrence – he works on repairs or assists whoever the party hires to patch it up. An NPC wizard ally is the default helmsman. Their first official hire (the impound lot attendant who helped them basically steal their ship back) has evolved into a reliable brawler and cargo manager. Another player who comes to most sessions has become the ship’s navigator, so it makes sense that he stays on board sometimes to make sure the beloved ship continues to run smoothly.
Perhaps the characters are all part of a special task force for a noble or secretive group, and specific strike teams are assembled for whatever the session’s mission might be. This is an excellent way to explain missing PCs as well – their skills weren’t needed for the quest. If they show up the next session, mid-adventure, they could have been dispatched by the party’s employer or patron to help ensure the group’s success.
But what about … ?
A group with intermittent attendance can lead to some issues, but these don’t need to throw a monkey wrench into your sessions.
The most obvious situation is a disparity in PC level. If you’ve got players who show up every time, players who show up most of the time and players who barely ever show up, there’s a good chance the characters will all be different levels. The simplest way to address this situation is “so what?” There’s no reason different level characters can’t adventure together. The Dungeon Master’s Guide has a wealth of information on tailoring content based on mathematically determining the optimal encounters for any party makeup, if you like to get down and dirty with technical details like that. Or you can just allow the lower-level characters to accompany their higher-level allies into what for them is more dangerous situations. Sure, they’ll have to play it a bit safer, but (especially with D&D 5E’s bounded accuracy) lower-level PCs can certainly contribute to the party’s success.
Another way to address level disparity is through milestone leveling instead of the standard experience point thresholds, which is my preferred method. Going this route means you can easily adjust the challenges faced by the party without a lot of mechanical trouble. If they encounter a monster that turns out to be much more difficult than you anticipated (looking at you, gibbering mouther) the GM can reduce the creature’s power without worrying about breaking any experience point standards. After a few sessions, or when the GM feels it is appropriate, the characters can all gain a level. I like to hold off on leveling until I notice my players have explored whatever new options they received from the last time they leveled up. That way, they can get a good feel for how the character works and make more thoughtful choices when new options are presented. Plus, it makes it more exciting since they never really know when they’ll gain a level.
If your group has built trust between the GM and players, and amongst the players themselves, absent PCs can be played by one of the other players, or the GM can control them sort of like an NPC ally. In my group, I have a decent grasp on what the characters are like, their personalities and how they approach situations, and absent players trust me to run their characters appropriately when they can’t make it to a session. Granted, those characters tend to fade into the background a bit since I want the present players to feel like they have more control of their circumstances, but it’s a fun exercise to get to know the characters better by having them act in ways I think their players would.
Likewise, present players can run characters for absentees. This requires a level of trust as well, perhaps to a greater degree, so absent players don’t feel like their characters will become cannon fodder, human shields or guinea pigs for the rest of the party. Absent players can give some notes to whomever is going to run their character that help guide their actions. For example, our party cleric tends to rely on debuff spells primarily, with emergency healing when needed. He is not a front-line combatant and strongly believes discretion is the better part of valor. Those few simple notes give everyone a good idea how the character would act and react in any given situation.
If your last session ended mid-adventure, and your next session picks up with different players in attendance, there are ways around that, too. The most convenient way is hand-waving the situation and picking up where you left off with the character either there or not. Granted, it breaks immersion, but that feeling fades quickly enough once you start playing.
If the player was absent last time, but present now, the party could discover their character as a prisoner of whatever foe they’re facing, joining the party after a rescue. Or their absence last time could be explained as a personal task that resulted in crossing paths with the party now. In a fantasy or science fiction setting, there’s any number of extraordinary ways for people to arrive or disappear anywhere: teleportation mishaps, weird radiation pulses, wormholes, planar rifts and so on.
For players who were present last time but missing now, basically the same options apply but in reverse. Hand-waving them away is again the blunt-force option. The character could have been taken prisoner, perhaps during a rest when they were the only one on watch. Or you can employ strange circumstances that cause them to disappear, potentially leading the story in unusual directions no one had conceived.
Another option for groups is to take a break from the core campaign and try something else. Maybe one of the other players has an idea for a campaign they’d like to start, with new characters. The group could try out a one-shot adventure with different characters, or even an entirely new game. Use the opportunity to play test homebrew content and see how it works. If the group doesn’t want the absent player to miss out on the narrative, explore a side story to your campaign’s main arc instead.
At the end of the day, dealing with changing player groups is far from an insurmountable task. In many ways, having an intermittently changing group of players provides opportunities for new styles of play, new stories to tell, new directions for characters to explore or possibly whole new games to enjoy. Instead of canceling a session completely because one or more players can’t make it, get together whenever you can and see what happens. You might discover there’s more to your gaming table than you imagined.
Next week, we’ll take a break from the usual column focus and instead I’ll delve into a terrific project I’m involved with along with other Nerdarchy writers – a collaborative adventure we’re creating together to present for free in honor of International Tabletop Day 2017. The experience so far has been terrific, and we’re all super excited about not only giving people a great adventure to play but also running it at our own tables. Keep your eyes out for continued information about the adventure, stop back here in two weeks for more tips on keeping your gaming habit alive and, of course, stay nerdy!
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