What to do when a player walks away from a table, comes back to another?

[rknop]

Suppose, at a Con, a player walked away from a table (quietly, without saying he was going, but not coming back) 1 hour into the run of the game. Then, two hours later, he started another scenario with the same character at another table, but the table he'd started at is still running its game (having continued without him).

What should the GMs of the two games do in this situation? What should the con organizer do?

The actual situation at hand is actually a PbP game. A PbP started, and the player disappeared from it. This kind of thing happens in PbP games, alas; anybody who's run more than a few knows that. This is why you really want to start a PbP game with 6, because you're far more likely to end the game with a legal table that way. (Sometimes everybody makes it all the way through, but more often it's 5; sometimes it's 4 or 3, and if your luck is really rotten and you started a game with a bunch of new PbPers not knowing what they were getting into, you discover yourself in trouble 1/3 to 2/3 of the way through.) But, the player who disappeared has now mustered for another game on the same site, even though the game he dropped is still going and is just right now in its final encounter.

He dropped for RL reasons (whatever they are), and these things happen. We should be forgiving of these things. But he did come back and quietly muster for another game while the game he started was still running, which does seem a little underhanded (at worst) or, more charitably, unaware.

What should we do? Should we just pretend that the character never started the first game? Should I pass him a 0xp chronicle sheet for the game he dropped and register him as getting 0xp when I report that game? Something else? I'm honestly not sure what the right approach is. The nature of PbP gaming makes things happen that would not likely happen in a realtime game (which is why I opened this message with a realtime analogy).

[Jeffrey Fox]

He gets a chronicle sheet filled out with what he earned while playing at the first table. Which depends on the amount of the scenario he completed.

That's what should happen if it happened at a face to face table. I don't think the rules change for pbp.

[Apocryphile]

I suppose you could just credit him for the second game, and give him nada for the first?

I'm trying to think what would happen if this happened at a physical tabletop. As the GM of the first table, I probably wouldn't give him a chronicle sheet at all.

[Chris Sharpe]

I think it's important to split the mechanical section 'This is what you should do with the chronicles' with the social section 'This is how you deal with the player.

As for how to handle the chronicles, Jeffrey Fox described perfectly what you should do. For the player itself, we all know that RL things come up, both at the table and online. This can range from an emergency, to really jarring with the players at the table.

It's always undervalued the importance of speaking to the player and finding out why they made the switch, and working through it with both parties. As a once off I wouldn't be too offended, but if it becomes a pattern then again speaking to the player and identifying why the games are routinely dropped.

I hope you're able to work it all out.

(Apoc I'm surprised you're still only 1-star, get onto it!)