Running DnD with No-Shows & Absent Players

I want to run amazing games for my players every week, even if they can't always commit to being there. Here are some techniques: from the dramatic, to the more practical which can rescue your game session, and make even an evening with players missing, something to remember.

🌐 Demiverse on DriveThruRPG:

📖 Mike Shea aka Sly Flourish aka The Lazy Dungeon Master
For anyone who doesn't know, I wasn't just taking random digs at some dungeon master for being lazy. All of Mike's resources for DnD and other TTRPG's are brilliant - he's one of my all time favourite TTRPG people and I've got a shelf full of his books!

Here's that intro monologue text. Feel free to use it at your tables - I'd love to hear how it goes for you!

"There's a moment... just an instant of magical light: a fluorescent greenish yellow-purple around the you as some of your party appear and others vanish, yet a second later you're all certain that's how things have always been. For those of you who remain; from that instant, it's as if those others never were - maybe you dreamed of them? Can everyone make me a Arcana check?"
(or similar roll depending on your game system)

[jamestaylor]

Never stop playing. Incorporate sidekicks and accessory NPCs from the party's orbit to pick up slack.

[kingmasterlord]

i like the idea of having a runaway wizard cart interrupt the session recap that drops a Wand of Magic Missile, the missing player's character picks up the wand, finds it fully charged, and spends the rest of the session plinking from the sidelines.

"Gods _blast_ it, Mortimer!" the wild haired and white and blue robed wizard shouts to his nervous young assistant, grabbing him by his vermilion tunic. "y-y-You dropped my Wand of m-uU-Magic Missle! i was gonna use that to deal with these Tooth Fairies, Mortimer! now we're going to have to..." as the swarmed cart rushes past.

[rogerwilco]

We all have jobs and families, and we have a rule that we continue as long as there is at most one player missing.
We have one of the other players play the character and they just "tag along" in the background, but still take a turn in combat.

[DoubleCritFail]

I enjoyed this! I agree that making the players' absence a plot hook can work well. I once ran a short campaign for 3 players, where one player missed a session. Rather than cancelling, I got the player's permission beforehand for their player to be kidnapped by minions of the BBEG. It was up to the two present characters to rescue her, which they did successfully.

The following week, when that player returned, we started the session with a flashback to the kidnapping itself (so the returning player could roleplay that scene.) Then when that scene finished, we jumped forward to where we left off last week, with the remaining players having rescued the third. It actually ended up being really fun.

[OMGSAMCOPSEY]

The fairies got them is fun for me. You'll find their character later, probably in the next session somewhere ridiculous. Like when you switch characters in GTA and trevors randomly passed out in a dress. Theyve been pulled through a portal, or underground or a cart picked them up, or theyre just getting wasted at the local tavern. The idea is theyre having some kind of implied adventure while the rest of the party carries on with the campaign and theyll be back.
If your worried the campaign you built might murderize the smaller party, either nerf the baddies a little (a few less hp, maybe they dont cast 6th level spells etc) or hand a player an npc jotted on an index card. Nothing fancier than a typical summon or animal companion but enough to get some attacks in and maybe have fun roleplaying.

[kurtoogle]

When a player can't make a game my group often decides why the character is absent or "backgrounded" unless there is a plot-hook immediately available. A character is often preoccupied with their background trade or contacts - that way the DM can hand off some extra info or minor benefits that help advance the story.

[Frederic_S]

My suggestion: I GM an episodic game with an overarching story - when 2 players want to play, we play. I GMed 6 sessions in February and 4 in January. Everybody seems to be pretty happy with it.

[sweatyeti]

Great ideas! Thanks for the reading material recommendation and entertaining presentation!

[kwith]

In our group we just have a Portable Hole of Absence. If you can't make it, you get tossed into the PHoA and we carry on. Its not jarring for us, its just normal. The ONLY thing that can go into the PHoA is absent players, otherwise it cannot be used at all.

[vikingshark]

My group is 500-some miles away. Sounds crazy but this group was the group that played together for nearly a decade when we all lived in the same town. Now we've all moved away and the core of the group is six-some hours away so we only get to play maybe four or five times a year. But when we do is scheduled weeks in advance and we play for about three days straight during long holidays. If a player is a no-show up, we don't really have a decent option, we just have to carry on without them and hope they feel like catching up on several hours of play three months from now.

[readwatchlisten]

None of these are bad suggestions. However, this is the reason why I exclusively run location-based campaigns. With location-based campaigns, I never had to worry if all my players were going to be there. I had four players, each player had two characters, one primary, and one backup. If a player, or even two are going to miss a session then the players who could make the session can bring in their characters and their backups to fill out the party. The advantage of the location-based campaign is that the party always started in the home base, traveled to the location they picked in the last session, and then made it back to base once the mission was completed. In the last leg of the campaign that my players just completed, it ran seven sessions, we would meet every other week, and in only the first session were all players present. I don't think we would ever finish if it wasn't a location-based campaign.

[theuncalledfor]

If my character dies while I'm absent for a session, the DM gets permanently blocked and probably so do the other players. I am in general not really okay with character death unless the affected player explicitly consents, and if I was running a game I would make sure the players can't realistically die until they get resurrection options. Dying in absentia however is completely and utterly inexcusable.

Note: A death that can be reversed with a resurrection spell (or any other reasonably available means) doesn't count, and if a player, including myself, takes a properly telegraphed risk and then dies because of it, that's fine.

ALSO! If I was DM'ing a game and a player had to be absent for a session, I would only run their character in a limited capacity. No dialogue, no character development, only the bare minimum participation so the group isn't suddenly outnumbered in combat. I would outright fudge death saves if necessary. I would expect the same from a DM if I was playing in a campaign and absent from it for a session. (In the video, you call this backgrounding.)

[wingedhussar]

We end up playing a different game entirely.

[brandonlaneva]

I couldn't make it to the 2nd session of a high level 2 shot. I told the players to just cast force cage or disintegrate. And when they came across the big bad, Santa Clause himself, they had my character cast disintegrate and Santa reflected it back at my character and well they didnt need to control my character after that. When I found out what happened I couldn't help but laugh.😂

[hawkname]

STRONGLY advise against canceling the session, if you ever want to play again.

[age-of-adventure]

Yes this. Scheduling isn’t the killer, it’s player Absence after agreeing to the scheduled game!!! We mainly played it as ‘if the player wasn’t there, the character wasn’t there’s (typically coming up with some semi-plausible in-game reason ). When I used to run campaigns it really bummed me out when players couldn’t make it at the last minute because as the host and GM I would do a lot of preparation and setup. Sometimes we had more players absent than present! We even tried video/conference calling some players in but that sucked for all sorts of reasons (eg technology, immersion, attention). Maybe I expected too much commitment. My mate once said to me ‘don’t have Expectations of people, and you’ll never be Disappointed’ 😊

[PlayinRPGs]

Dont run the game and enjoy your evening.