Storytelling for part-time players
Role-playing games need players to play them… It’s pretty hard to game all by yourself. Getting a handful of people together on anything like a regular basis can be even harder, though. Scheduling kills more RPG campaigns than any personal conflicts, rules or party wipes.
And we’ve had plenty of trouble this year. For a long time, I’ve gamed primarily with a group that has pretty stable weekday schedules and nothing more demanding to do on the weekends than get together and play pretend. But now, Erica and I have three RPGs going at the same time, all with different player groups. Three games, three groups… and about a dozen schedules to match up!
I’ve posted before about moving Mariah to her own game when scheduling made it too difficult for her to attend my Vampire game. Her character was a sewer-dwelling Nosferatu, and it was pretty easy to place her underground, busily making her new haven and skulking through the tunnels… emerging only when the stars — and Mariah’s schedule — align.
But now another Vampire player, Shane, hit some health and scheduling snags. While we all hope that her issues aren’t ongoing and she can return to regular gaming, we weren’t sure and I needed a plan.
The plan
In this campaign, the Giovanni — vampire necromancers with mafia ties — have come into Camarilla territory with promises of financial help for the failing city. The Giovanni are playing nice with everyone and making grand gestures, but the player characters are pretty sure they have an evil ulterior motive.
Good.
But since the Giovanni are playing nice, I thought that Shane’s character, Laura, could cozy up to them off-screen and serve as a spy. If Shane can’t make it to a game session, then Laura can be out pretending to be chummy with the enemy. If Shane can make game, then I can bring her back in to do stuff with the PC group. There should even be some great tension while she balances helping the party and maintaining her Giovanni-friendly cover! And then she can go back undercover until Shane is free to play with us again.
The advice
You know what else I can do? I can have Laura return from her undercover mission with valuable information! I can use Laura for exposition and plot development, and Shane gets to return with something to show for her time away.
I haven’t had to deal with many part-time players before, so this has proved a really useful experience that I’ll be able to use again in future campaigns.
There will always be players who can’t make it to game. Life happens, and I don’t want to punish them for that. I want my players excited to jump back into the campaign, and making sure that their character can not only come back but return with a bang is a great way to do that.
In just about any story, you can come up with some kind of reason that an absent PC needs to go on a side mission by themselves. But don’t just stick them in a tavern or hospital, suspended until they’re needed again. When that player comes back, they’re just going to struggle to get up to speed and will understandably feel like they’re holding the party back.
With a little planning, they can be so much more! They’re an opportunity to advance the plot by returning to the story with much-needed information. Or maybe they’ve been sent to find help, and can charge back onto the scene at the head of a friendly army to save the day at some story-critical turning point. Perhaps you can have your returning PC step out of the shadows with a knife in hand and save one of their friends from the thieves stalking them. It’s fun for the player who is coming back after a hiatus, and for the player group who has been missing them.
Now, we need to stay flexible — that’s the whole reason this issue came up in the first place. If the session that my absent player can finally attend doesn’t coincide with a good time to drop some crucial story intel, then I might need to look at one of my other dramatic return options. Maybe they appear with a new weapon to help the cause, or with the money to get that upgrade the group’s been saving for.
It doesn’t have to be game-changing — unless the timing works out well, in which case, go for it — but having a missing character return with something of a bang (maybe even a dramatic entrance) gives the part-time player something to look forward to, and ensures a warm welcome by the rest of the group.
