GM911 How Do You Keep the Game Going When You Have a Player Missing. -Nerdarchy

This is something that happens every now and again. I have seen and heard a few different ways that this might be handled. In my own games (playing with my children who were 4 and 6 at the time) the youngest would get bored and want to go off and do something else for a bit, we just had his character suffer from narcolepsy and pass out right there in combat. Something else that I have heard (I don't recall where) was that another player held a magic globe that the missing player would enter when they weren't actually there. I also think this was a player that would be late often and this was a way of getting the game going without them. Another popular idea is to have the DM/GM or another player act out the missing character. This I would assume works the best if it will not be too many sessions. Getting on with it.

My very first thought just looking at the title was to have a separate mission for that player. This might work best if you can do separate sessions with them, either in person or online, or even just make it roll along if you can't keep their character playing at all. This might have been my first thought because I had just finished watching The Provokers: Campaign One (spoiler alert) not too long ago and one of the players has to leave for a bit, it was written into the story that he would have to stay behind, at the behest of his deity's will, and do some work in that town.

It might also make things interesting to have the other PC go to a place that the missing PC cannot. The example that stands out to me here is The Winds of Sur Salin one of the characters jumps into a portal that takes him to the Fey Wild. This is particularly useful here because time in these two places happens much differently. Time in the Fey Wild in this setting (I'm not versed enough yet to comment otherwise) happens much faster than it does in the material world. So for one second of time in the material two weeks passes in the Fey Wild. This would be a great way I think to have the party split and not make too much progress on their own.

A final random thought, you could always put the current game on hold and run a few one shots with other characters. There are many, many ways that this situation could be handled, it really all depends on what campaign you are running and how the rest of your players feel about it.

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