Game night rolls around. You've only got two players. That's not enough for a quorum, but you can still face the challenges of the dungeon if the PCs bring along a few minions / cohorts / NPC allies. Questions:
-- Do these kinds of characters exist in your game?
-- Are they strong enough to serve this purpose with catching a case of oops-I'm-dead?
-- Is it a good policy to invent these sorts of characters? If not, how else do you go about saving game night when you're short on players?
Game night is also a social thing. I'd prefer not to go with less than 4 people (GM + 3 players generally) on the whole.
yeah, we play with 6 players, when 3+ can't make it, we play a different game.
When I was running Kingmaker, I had four players and we started off meeting every week.
And we just called it off any time 25%, or more, of the team was going to be gone... no other team shows up to play at 75% (or worse) capacity. Consider it a vacation from your weekly nerd-game "obligation". Lol.
They could have grabbed Kesten Garess, who was a Lantern Lighter-Wild Stalker Ranger gestalt with Viking Fighter. They could have grabbed Jhod, who was a Bolt Ace Gunslinger gestalt with Crusader Cleric. They had access to my GMPC, Hbob, any time they wanted him to join the party... Hbob was a Kobold Scaled Fist UnMonk gestalt with Mystery Cultist Cleric (or whatever that Charisma-based Cleric is that evaporates people with its Channel Void thingy).
They also had a friendly Two-Handed Fighter Centaur (Xamanthe Silverfire), and a Sandman Bard/Arcane Trickster (Quintessa Maray), and they had befriended Satinder Morne, who was a Divine Scourge Cleric gestalt with Sylan Trickster UnRogue.
Point is, they had plenty of fully built, ready to rock NPC's they could have either had me GMPC for the night, or any one of them could have taken its character sheet to run for the night... but they chose not to do that. It's just not the same without everyone present.
It is very much a social thing as much as it is an ongoing story or a game.
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We play a different game if someone can't show up.
Usually I have a one-shot prepped, which means our usual GM doesn't have to plan a backup game. The other players often have something to run in the off-games as well, so we all get our turn to GM.
Lately I've been running a slightly longer module whenever players can't show, so in that module we have a rotating cast depending on who's absent. Since it's not a serious long-term game I usually explain it by going: "Valeros is knocked off the battlements and lost to view, you must continue without him". Then the next session when that 0layer comes back it's a simple: "He didn't fall ... INCONCEIVABLE!", then Valeros catches up with the party and another PC mysteriously leaves for the day and we move on.
Tales will be told of Valeros, the Unkillable!
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Why do they should need to bring additional Player NPCs with them? You are the DM, simply change the dungeon/adventure so it fits two players.
I had this in the past multiple times with my Shadowrun group. Normally we were four players and one DM. If we were in the midst of a dungeon/adventure we would postpone the session if players couldn't show up or simply asked them it's ok if we play on and their character simply steps back to a Player/DM controlled "support role".
If the group ended the last session on a "rest point" I think there is no problem running a smaller group sidequest. Just make sure that it can be done in one session and that the players roughly stay in line with the other chars power level (e.g. don't hand out XP for this session, but instead give them some character story awards).
I don't see a reason for cohorts, GMPCs, or characters getting played by other players. This isn't a video game where the challenges are set in stone, the GM can simply lower the absolute difficulty to restore the relative difficulty.
I'm currently GMing for a group of four. When one of the players couldn't participate for some time due to real life reasons, I had the party go on as a trio. I haver had any problems building encounters with suitable difficulty for the smaller party - indeed, it got easier. I had to adjust the first session's combat encounters on the fly, but between reducing the number of enemies, slapping on a young template, or even picking a different enemy in Combat Manager, adjustments are quick and easy for any GM who understands the game.
I actually think what you wrote in the comment to the comic, "But when you change things up and roll with an unusual party composition, you’re more likely to get unconventional tactics.", is a good statement about an althogether different topic: Namely that of party composition. I already dipped into it a bit in this thread of yours.
I know the gospel is that you should have a "balanced party" (although no one will ever actually give you a proper definition of what that even is), and that you should carefully select your character to patch up any holes your party might have. Worse yet, a large portion of the players still cling to the gigantonormous stinking steaming pile of s#~+ that's "traditional party roles", where players get shoehorned into playing something they don't want to by people who haven't changed their party building principles since the 80's, and will force their believes that you need a tank, skillmonkey, arcane caster, and divine caster upon everyone else (except "tank" actually means "melee", "arcane caster" actually means "Wizard", and "divine caster" actually means "Cleric", but they won't tell you that beforehand, only criticizing you when you show up with the 'wrong' divine caster or such).
Sure, having your party compsition provide the perfect answer to every possible situation the party might face is the easiest way. Do we play to have the easiest way? Do we play to never struggle? Do we play to never have to overcome (in-game) hardships? Not only is the perfect party composition, or having a dedicated healer, or whatever, not needed, it actually makes the game worse. Overcoming challenges is what the game is all about, and needing to come up with creative solutions is a lot of fun; more fun than always having the perfect class feature to trivialize every difficulty you encounter. Parties should have holes in them.
Which brings us back to the thread's topic, and my above response - if your party's "healer" is missing, and you still want to continue the campaign that session, you don't need to have the char played by another player, nor do you need a replacement. That might turn conditions from "let's take a 15min break while the Cleric prepares Remove X in an empty spellslot" to "we need to get to a town with an NPC spellcaster ASAP" - but that's not a bug, that's a feature! The GM might even make a whole quest to find a cure out of it. Maybe some players discover an overlooked ability or some forgotten piece of equipment, that they've never needed because they always had the training wheels that prepared full casters provide.
Never mind the gap.
I think it's rude to play the movie when someone has to go to the bathroom.
The story CAN pause, then resume when everyone is present to experience it. Nobody likes to feel left out of the fun. Maybe the person gone was really looking forward to the fight with the Mites. They may not have expressed that to everyone, but it is something that might bring them particular joy. But they have to save a fire from a baby that Thursday, and can't make it to the session. It's just Mites, so the party goes on ahead and finishes that little part of the story while the person is missing.
Next session, that person is bummed out, disappointed they didn't get to experience the battle with the Mites. Sure, could have done a one off side quest. But the party wanted to progress. So, naturally, we followed the story they were already part of. And now a player has missed a funny/sad/good/bad part of that experience... when we could have just hit "pause".
Ironically though, since its so social, when we DO all get together we spend the first hour of a session BSing. This is something that kind of frustrates me about my gamers: they can't/won't ever commit to getting together for beers, or a dinner, or meeting up for a movie or chilling at each others' houses for other social events, only gaming, but when we DO game, most of what they want to do is chit chat and socialize.
I feel that, same happens at my table everytime lol.
As for playing when players are absent. It really depends on the reason and frequency. If someone has legitimate reasons to be absent, I’ll call off the game. Although, if that happens too frequently, I’ll play as long as I have at least 2/3 of my player base.
Characters of absent players get taken by either me, or other players, and are played to the best of their abilities. As DM I’ll avoid killing character when their player are absent.
I'll run a game with two players and myself as the GM. I have way too many prebuilt characters to not have a huge pool of NPCs to draw from if the players want to tackle a dungeon with more than just two characters. My players tend to love my 'hirelings' and always try to keep them around.
Not sure I an add anything new, but as we're 5 players (plus me, the current DM) in our 40s and 50s we are pretty organized about blocking the same night weekly for game time and reporting to the group weeks in advance if a conflict has come up or is likely to come up. When that happens we collectively look at the calendar and either pick a new night that week when everyone is available, cancel (if 2 or more can't make it), or we press on with the remaining folks (or the DM) running the character(s) of the missing player.
Other times we'll hold what we call an "administrative session" to catch up on selling items or other things we've put off that don't require the full group, or work with setting up some complex effects in FantasyGrounds that have been giving us problems in combat.
It is extremely rare that a player just doesn't show up without some form of notice, and pretty rare that we have a last minute "I can no longer make it" from anyone. When that has happened, we've usually known in advance that it was an iffy game, due to trying to play on a national holiday (or similar) for example.
We are almost always in the middle of something which all PCs started on. PCs who are already established as being present are there in the game, they do not suddenly disappear and possibly get left behind.
- "The PC isn't feeling well, and trots behind at a safe distance." The GM could also have the character be kidnapped or somethign like that. If the character suddenly talking in a different voice and probably behaving differently doesn't break your willing suspension of disbelieve, neither will the above.
If the PC is vital to the session's progress, you shouldn't play the campaign with the player absent. Playing another player's character is not only clunky and weird (with one player doing twice as much and all), you also either have to give it plot armor (which destroys a core principle of the game), or risk the player coming back to their character being dead because of another player's actions (a major dick move).
I know the gospel is that you should have a "balanced party" (although no one will ever actually give you a proper definition of what that even is), and that you should carefully select your character to patch up any holes your party might have, but etc. etc.
Same page on my part. It's good to have a setup that requires thinking and problem solving rather than falling back on abilities. And when you have a "perfect party" you wind up doing the latter too often for my taste. Sometimes it's nice to have "I cast [cure x condition spell]" and solve the problem, but that's not much of a story. You wind up with more interesting moments when you have to play around a curse or blindness or whatever for a session or two rather than settling on the kind of pre-packaged solution that perfectly balanced parties provide.
That said, I do think that switching up NPC hangers on can shift those solutions in a productive way. You have access to a new suite of tools when you have a new set of abilities tagging along in the party. That creates different teamwork opportunities, which creates a novel play experience.
I'd also point out that it's less of a burden on a GM to add a single NPC party member to a short-staffed session than it is to adjust every other NPC stat block. Sure you can just do a quick and dirty "all monsters are at -10 hp and -1 to hit and damage," but I find that having a few pre-set dudes on staff is a low-stress alternative to on-the-fly stat adjustments.
Just last session for example, my megadungeon crew wound up with 2 players when the third guy cancelled last minute. I pulled the trigger on a couple of in-town events that a small party could handle. And when it came time for a combat encounter, they wound up "unlocking" the NPC fighter that had asked for their help in clearing some monsters from his home. He became a new "you can take 'em along on future short-staffed sessions" option, making this sort of tagalong character a new type of treasure.