What if a Player is Not There for a Session?

You have several options as a Game Master, and each option has advantages and drawbacks.   Most gamers have to go to work or school. Some have to juggle both. Most gamers have family obligations of some sort. Also, random stuff happens. Houses have things break, illnesses strike, life happens.  

The Three Basic Strategies, plus a crazy fourth strategy

 

1) If a player is missing, the session doesn't happen. Period.

  Pro: This way you have perfect continuity within the story universe. There are no unusual absences or holes in this story   Con: This can lead to very long gaps between gaming sessions if multiple sessions are canncelled or postponed in a row. When you get a point where the players forgot what happened last session or even what the campaign was about, the overall enthusiasm for the campaign can shrivel to nothing.   Extenuating Circumstances: It is really damaging to campaign if all the players aren't present for Session 1. If a session is the major climax of the story, it is extra important to have all the players be present.   If a session covers a side plot, it's generally less important for all the players to be there. Unless the side plot revolves around a specific character's backstory in which case that character's player better be there.   I have a general rule of thumb that one missing player is not usually worth cancelling a session but two missing players is an almost automatic cancel. And of course, a missing person is more noticeable in a group of three players than a group of six players.  

The Purple Cow of Death swallows characters whose players are missing

  If a player is absent, the The Purple Cow of Death flies in and swallows their character whole. If the player shows up later, the Purple Cow flies in and regurgitates the character.   The Purple Cow of Death's true super power is that no one remembers its visits or questions the presence of absence of characters it affects.   Pros: This is very simple to use. It's mildly funny. It gives players a clear incentive to show up or miss out.   Cons: It breaks story immersion because it requires players and the Game Master to overlook glaringly obvious plto holes and iconsistencies.   If a party is balanced around a particularly combination of skills, the group's effectiveness can suffer if the party suddenly loses their Tank, or their Face, or their Healer or whatever the role of the missing person is.   Extenuating Circumstances: There are many different ways to run a tabletop RPG but I beileve that nearly all of these different ways fall under two broad categories. One, the Game Master wants to present for the player characters to overcome, be it combat, puzzles, social scenarios, or mysteries. Two, the Game Master wants to tell a collaberative story with the players.   If the game relies heavily on solving challenges, then the Purple Cow is not a huge problem. The players need to solve the Problem of the Week with the resources at hand. "Resources at hand" include the people at hand and this can go up or down.   In a storytelling focused RPG campaign, Purple Cowing characters can be very damaging to story creation. The fact that it breaks immersion is obvious. But less obviously, it interupts character arcs and mroe subtler story progression.  

2) The character stays even when the player is absent

  Usually this mean one of the players will play two characters, their own and the missing player's character. Sometimes this means the Game Master plays the missing player's PC, effectively making it a friendly NPC.   Pros: The party balanced is maintained and the story doesn't have to face gaping plot holes.   Cons: There is a small but very real risk that a character can die when played by someone else. Or they can suffer some permanent injury or lose their favorite magical item. Maybe their reputation is damaged by something the other player did.   One a lesser extant, it can be a little jarring if a PC with a substitute player acts severely out of character. "My character wouldn't do that!" Narratively, this is not a huge problem because real people and fictional characters alike have moments where they act outside their own version of "normal" but these can lead to hurt feelings between players.   Extenuating Circumstances: If the group of players has known each other a long time, or at least has gamed together a long time, there is going to be a greater level of trust for players playing someone else's character. Conversely, this can become more problematic if the players involved don't know each other very well.   The longer a game is running, the more established character and party roles are, so the easier it is to play someone else's character.   Not every game session has super high stakes, be they social stakes or physical stakes. If a game session is going to involve shopping and relaxing, the risks of one player playing another player's character is a lot lower than if the PCs are fighting for their lives against a hated nemesis.  

3) The Game Master and players can write the character out of the story temporarily

  This is a cousin of the Purple Cow. Rather than have the character magically disappear and reappear, the Game Master and/or players come up with a plausible reason for a character to enter or exit the party.   This is sort of a cousin of "let someone else play the character" but the goal is to safely stow them away "off-camera" as soon as possible.   Pros: It is relatively realistic and keeps the story flow going   Cons: You still have to deal with the issues regarding altered party balance.   You still have to deal with plot holes even though the plot holes become smaller. You have to deal with the same issues of one player playing another though the risks are smaller.   Extenuating Circumstances: It's easier to realistically phase characters in and out during breaks between stories than it is to phase characters in and out of a story mid-action. In a perfect world, the Game Master (and players) will strive to make sure each session at a reasonable stopping point with a little bit of downtime but this is easier said than done.   It's not always possible, but Game Masters and players should strive to end game sessions at logical stopping points. This is narratively satisfying, and worth pursuing even if the players have 100% attendance but it one side benefit of logical stopping points is that it makes easier to write characters out (or back in).   Scarterra does not have teleportation spells or any other exotic means of covering large distances very quickly. If the PCs separate from each other geographically, it may be difficult to quickly get the group back together.   Sometimes the reasons to push a character off camera are fairly implausible and contrived, not a whole lot better than the Purple Cow. "Oh yeah, the character sat out because he got sick from some bad roast chicken. Well yes, one of the PCs has magic that can easily remove most illnesses, this was a magic roast chicken."  

Noncanon Fights

  You do not have to have a missing player to have a non-canon fight. In a non-canon fight, the PCs don't suffer any permanent losses (including death). They don't get treasure either, but they should still get some experience points.   Noncanon fights can let character crazy things with Purple Cow. Did you always want to see the PCs fight a dragon or a grootslang or a horde of Void demons and couldn't work it into the story?   Since the characters cannot really die, you can have the characters bite off much more challenging and dangerous things than normal. You can even teh PCs fight each other.   Pros: This is a good way to try new things.   Since the "death" isn't permanent, it's not a big deal to have a player play another person's character.   Cons: It is a little disheartening to roleplay adventures that "don't really count". Non-canon sessions don't really work for non-combat scenarios.   Extenuating Circumstances: In my opinion and experience, non-canon fights should not be common. But it might not hurt to have an "In case of Glass, send in crazy monster fight" non-canon fight to throw in if you have an unexpected absence occur so fast that the other players do not have time to adapt their schedules.   This is useful to me personally because I am still designing and refining Scarterra-d10 system, but this is good for those fond of testing house rules or homebrew creations in any game system. I am passionate about storytelling but sometimes I want to play test the game mechanics for a weird monster and I cannot realistically shoehorn said monster into my ongoing campaign.  

Strategizing around Missing Players

  Game Masters should keep the extenuating circumstances in mind at all times to adapt which of the four missing player strategies to use in every individual instance.   I believe option 3 is the best strategy for dealing with missing players. There is a few things you can set up in Session Zero and beyond to make this easier.   I believe social merits are a good idea for many reasons, but if a PC is a member one or more organizations or groups outside of the PC's adventuring party, this can make it easier to cycle characters in and out. A character may have to attend a guild meeting, or a religous ceremony, or their sister's birthday or some other obligation they can't get out of.   It is a good idea to figure out to make sure each character has something to do during downtime. Even if the player's aren't missing sessions, a campaign might hit a point where the alchemist MUST concoct something for their next adventure so the other PCs have to keep busy.   A character can craft things, brew things, research things, compose poetry and songs, work on an amazing piece of art, or go courting. It is not very plausible that a heroic character passes up rescuing kidnapped children from bandits because he has to work on his illuminated manuscript but it is sometimes plausible that a character cannot go on an adventure because he is legimately busy.   If you know during session zero that one of the players is going to have more limited availability to hang out than the rest of the players, you need to put extra care to make sure that player's character has a plausible reason why they would not be present for 100% of all adventures.   If the characters have a figurative or literal homebase, missing player's characters can tend the homefront while the other characters are out, and the missing character is easy to find and pick up again. Homebase doesn't have to be an actually base or castle. I could just be a village or town where the PCs have mutual friends and allies. This is especially easy if the PCs are sailing around on a ship. Miissing character can always "guard the ship". While traveling on land, they can "watch the horses" or "guard base camp" though you probably need an NPC sidekick that can watch the horses just in case all the players are present.