What I Do When a Player Misses a Session

Play with who turns up.

What? Yeah, seriously, just play with whoever turns up and find a way to make it work. 

In most gaming groups there will be times when you all just can’t make it on the same Wednesday or whatever. This is just a fact of modern life. Something will come up for someone at some point which means they just can’t play. 

I saw a thread on Reddit recently where there was must handwringing on this subject but it’s all a bit nonsense. If one player can’t make it or two players or something please don’t cancel your game. Just play.

Having time for play is a rare thing, allowing that time to be subverted to something else because of scheduling is a shame. Sometimes it can’t be helped but the game should continue regardless. That way great campaigns are built and I think that is what we’re after. If you consistently run your game week in, week out with the players that are available then the game will inevitably grow. If that game is cancelled frequently then it will probably end up in the great campaign graveyard; Hiatus. 

It helps if you have baked into the setting reasons to be flexible about attendance but it’s not necessary. The famous OG West Marches campaign always started and finished in town to allow for its rotating cast of players to always have the same start point. My Grim North campaign exists mostly within one huge city to allow for people wandering off mid adventure to go shopping on their own and rejoin the others later (like next week.) 

Or alternatively Time in the Grim North is mutable. So this past weekend I had two players available out of five. One of whom has just returned from a two week holiday is out of in game continuity. Currently the PCs are involved in exploring an abandoned mansion and dealing with various squatters. I gave them the option of continuing this without the others or taking an alternate branch of the timestream to do something else for the evening, try and resolve it in one session and then pick up the mansion exploration when more people were available. This is a very meta thing to put to the players but it was game time and I wanted to play. They took the alternate timeline option and the two of them became embroiled in a heist to steal the last owlbear egg in the Grim North. 

The campaign continues and that’s the main thing