Austrian Pineapples
Another game begins with great hopes only to be dashed by the dreaded Austrian Pineapple.
My ideal group size is six. A round of combat is a bit longer, but not so bad that people can run for beer while waiting for their next turn. It used to be that I’d run with groups of nine, ten, a dozen, and sometimes even more. I’m not as young or as hungry as I once was, so I try to keep the numbers small as any rational person might.
This is fantasy, to be honest. If I could count on the same six people week in and week out all would be sunshine and rainbows. But I can’t. Most folks in my gaming groups have crested the mid-thirties and are married, with jobs, with children, with girlfriends, with their own dramas. If I capped the game at six, I might get six one week and three the next. This is why the full roster on Sundays sits somewhere around nine.
(The pineapple? What began as a puerile joke about missing characters pulling a Hitler in Hell [see below], has rooted itself in our lexicon. Add to this the excuse from an absent player who one day up and decided to go to Austria for a week without letting anyone know and now you’re in on the joke. I suppose it might lose something in the retelling.)
Nine is a lot. I know. We’ve crept even higher when someone drops into watch. See, the problem I have is that we play four hours or so every two weeks on the Sunday night game, so rarely do we end a session when a combat ends. Often times we leave the game in the middle of a fight, requiring me, and all involved, to remember what was happening so we can pick it up next time. So in this situation, you can imagine how frustrating it is when one week I have a full group of nine players and an appropriately scaled-up fight and then come back the next session with three players.
The Killer Within whispers I should just slaughter the diminished group, slip the players some PCP and send them after the folks who couldn’t make it. That of course would never happen. Circumstances interfere with good, old roleplaying games. I understand. It’s not a commitment issue these days. I fully believe (and hope) that my players make it a priority to throw dice because they have a good time, are invested in the story, and dig their characters. The problem is that real life has begun to intrude. One week, the dwarf fighter might miss because his crazy mother is in failing health. The next, the eladrin ranger is gone because he has job training in Baltimore.
So I don’t complain much. We just roll along with the punches. We don’t bother to explain why the party’s wizard has become like Yeti, with sightings so rare and dubious no one even believes he exists. If he shows, we’re delighted and grateful he could squeeze us in. If he doesn’t show, well, we understand and bring out the old pineapple jokes once more.
Understanding, though, fixes nothing. Why just last night, our friend Chris, who’s become quite addicted to 4e showed up with his dusk elf ranger, ready to play. We were short three players and were thus down to four. The party was getting ready to walk into a room packed with ambush drakes. I intended it to be a tough fight, a nasty fight to test their resources. For five, it would have been hard. For four with no leader and no defender, well, you can imagine what happened. Barbarian dropped on round 1. Chris’s ranger dropped on round 2. Three failed death saves later, he was gone.
Luckily Chris brought a second character. “Crag,” a goliath warden, was present for the first adventure and then retired in favor of the ill-fated ranger. I was heartened. Two strikers, a controller, and now a defender. No problem. The party explores a bit further and hear a woman crying for help from a side chamber. The wizard was all about lending aid. The neutral evil (and yes, we still use old school alignments) half-orc barbarian decided the best course was to charge into the room and murder her. He was right. She was bad. And she was a level 7 elite to his level 4. She jumps up and eviscerates him on round 1. While he’s bleeding out and praying for a 20, three fire bats swoop down to unleash hell on the other characters. The sorcerer and the wizard rightly fled, leaving the goliath alone to meet his doom. He dropped to negatives soon after and three failed death saves later, he joined the ranger in the wastebasket of dead characters.
Sorry about the “my elves wears red capes” moment there (I’ll explain that one some other time), but it underscores the problems a missing player or two can create. I did scale the fights back of course, but it simply wasn’t enough and poor Chris paid the price.
Since circumstances aren’t likely to change now until we hit our golden years. I imagine us sitting around the rest home throwing dice. Until then, I need to figure out a way to fill the gaps.
The first idea was to simply add padding by inviting more players who promise to show up. This is not a good direction as the Sunday game knows too well. More players mean too many players when everyone happens to show on the same night.
So what about just keeping their characters on hand? I could easily store them in Character Builder. If Tom vanishes for a pineapple convention in Austria to be joined by Matt and, let’s say Troy, I could just print off the character sheets and circulate them to the players who did show, at least until the combat ends. But that sucks too. What if Kayle bites it? How do we explain that to his player the next week? Also, there’s the problem of tracking all the spent resources. I’m not about to keep a record of everything they use in each fight.
Now one time I did recreate the characters as companion characters using the rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2. This seemed to work okay, but with several companions at the table, certain class features overlap in an unsatisfying way when representing, say two controllers or three strikers. Plus, this doesn’t address the tracked resource problem.
So, I’m at a loss. This was never really a problem before. Missing one or two didn’t impact gameplay in the same way that three to four can. So I’m open to suggestions. How would you handle this situation?
Sounds like you’re in a similar bind as my group. We ended up inflating up to 10 (now 9) and I hate running with more than 6, especially in 4e. I ended up splitting my group roughly into two and running almost every week instead of bi-weekly, with players swapping between each group as their scheduling allows.The most unfortunate part of this setup is having to tell players who are available “you can’t play this week” but I try to be as fair as possible.
The narrative issue is there too- I tend to keep my games very episodic so everything is self-contained, which makes that less of an issue (though at the same time, also makes it harder to stretch their resources, especially healing surges.) This will also be a problem when they arrive at the Temple of Elemental Evil at the end of paragon, as it’s harder to explain jumping in and out in a mega-dungeon.
I guess in short, I have no good answer, other than trying to frame adventures a bit differently.
This really depends on how your group likes to play, but certainly they aren’t going to enjoy “being punished” because other players weren’t able to show up for whatever reason. But, when I’ve run into this in the past with my group, I’ve had to wing it when things started going badly and it was clear the players were overmatched.
Some might say, “Screw it. This is the encounter. If they can’t handle it, tough,” but that doesn’t stay fun for long. I’ve fudged all sorts of things to make the fight easier for players, but I think the easiest thing to do — and also leads to more story, is to change the definition of the death save so it’s more appropriately called a “defeat save.”
So, you’re knocked out, fail your saves and die — but what really happens is your character is captured by the bad guys and then you, as GM, have to work their defeat into the story. The defeated PCs wake up in prison, tied to an altar, naked on an island in the middle of a flaming lake, tied up in a cart, whatever. Maybe the bad guys need them for something, maybe they need to be moved somewhere — but it gives the defeated PCs and their friends (who are likely following or looking for them) a way to free themselves or be freed.
Again, some groups don’t like that “death” no longer means DEATH, but it can lead to more interesting games if it’s used well. And it’s certainly a hell of a lot less frustrating.
You need eight players, two in each role, and encourage the builds to diversify rather than specialize (Splash Controller with Leader, Defender with Striker, etc.). Spread the character roles out to get the best chances of having each “base” covered. If they’re all diverse, nobody is too shiny when the whole group gets together and nobody sucks too many eggs when they’re the only one in that role. If you can, give the “reliable” players the “reliable roles” to further minimize impacts.
As for your mid-encounter foibles, Just run the missing characters at a very basic level (default to aid another or somesuch) and lower/raise the overall monster hp by a percentage in lieu of adding or removing monsters. When you scale down and have to scale back up, it’s perfectly okay for a monster to “hulk out” (suddenly display characteristics of a solo or an elite) – especially when bloodied. The only one that ever need know of your fudgery is you.
On the non-mechanical side, encourage your players to be honest. Get a facebook group, make calendar items, and ask people to RSVP. As a courtesy, you’re more than welcome to ask for as much advance notice as possible. Usually, when people have a box they can check or a way to send a quick message, they’ll be much more courteous.
hope some of that helps
-RR
Also, you could aim for running more episodic games. Gotta adapt as your playerbase changes.
As others have suggested, I run more episodic games to try to account for a missing player or two. We have a core group of 5 and I’ve run for 7 although that’s a bit too large for me. I still have the problem of missing players right now because we are nearing the end of a chapter, and possibly this story arc, and I don’t want one of the players to miss out on it. It’s also an issue when I plan a story for a particular character and that person cancels last second. Unfortunately this has led me to the bad habit of not incorporating as much of their stories into the plot line as I would like.
I was briefly in a 3.5 game. We played from 8 pm to midnight in a sandbox game. We had to make it back to town each night or risk a calamity to our character, such as losing a limb. In some ways, it helped with this issue. The first x people to sign up got a seat. The main problem for me was that things were too open ended and we often spent the first half of the session just gathering information and working up the courage to do something cool. Sadly, I can’t say we played boldly in that game.
I don’t know. I’m all for small groups of consistent players. My favorite number of players is four plus gm. Granted it has to be folks you can rely on being there 90% of the time or it all goes to pot.
Some folks would argue against this. There aren’t enough characters for the different “roles.” Actually, if the players are consistent, there is. A GM can adapt the game to the people he knows will be there. A cozy, consistent group can focus more on a game about the players instead of the players satisfying a generic “LFM, need tank.”
To be honest, I find a well-rounded group to be boring. Far more interesting to be lacking somewhere and trying to overcome that than making sure you got all the numbers covered. Small groups almost by their very nature makes sure that a well-rounded group won’t happen.
I do wish we could capture a dragon turtle in a bottle once again, Rob. Back to the old halcyon days when we were young (well, YOU GUYS were young. Me and Joe not so much) and had nothing so much in he world as time on our hands and we used it to game to our hearts content. Those fabulous sundays when I would run DArk Sun for 8 hours, we’d break for Taco Bell, then another 8 hours in the campaign setting of your incredible imagination. Every week, damn near all year long holidays and family be damned. Everyone there for every game, even Jim driving long distances and sleeping on my couch just to be there in the morning when we served Athas over cold cereal.
Alas, I suspect it is not to be had until everyone else is like me…their kids grown and playing right along side them. Yes, dear readers, I am the proud parent of a second generation D&D addict who now plays alongside his old man in the very group that I used to have him sit in my lap and watch daddy kill the bad guys. I have been at every game with only one missed game for over three years, on all the nights we play. Why? How? Because I have already left behind the things all our friends are striving to acheive or hold onto. I have a job and a cat. And no matter how many nights I game, Woodfin is always glad to see me when I come home. (this is why cats are better than wives)
You already know the answer to our dilemma Rob. The Village is getting older. As the saying goes, “Too old to rock and roll, but too young to die.” Just wait a few more years. Kids will be grown. Wives will give anything to get their husbands away from them for one night. Alcohol will no longer be the salve it once was. Things will come full circle.
And then you guys can use my coffin as a gaming table. I plan to have cup holders installed.
Till then, you will have my lavender eyes aqnd snow-white hair lurking in the shadows of your basement one, sometimes twice a week. It;s as close to the Underdark as my damaged back can muster.
As usual, I like Rook’s advice.
As for my own input, though… it’s a mystery, Shaggy, and a good one. You *could* run missing PCs as NPCs, and just give dropped characters the benefit of the doubt on Death Saves, so no one’s PC drops while he’s gone. The downside could be a reduced or eliminated treasure and/or XP share. That way, the group still has its full roster, no one is in danger of getting killed while his character is being puppeted by the GM, and players who miss the session still lose out on something tangible.
I take the route of being a fascist about attendance. I keep my groups small and we don’t play if someone has to miss. We wind up missing about six to eight games a year, but the rest of them have a full roster. Admittedly, this means there are some people we couldn’t play with, which may not be an acceptable solution in your situation.
Failing all else, I’d say err on the side of caution with the scaled-back encounters, because you can always stretch the bad guys’ hit points in the back half of the fight if the PCs are cutting a swath too easily, but you can’t easily unkill a PC once he’s been downed. Early success followed by a nail-biter finish, which is what this technique would produce (ideally) is more fun than an anticlimactic first-round slaughtering of the PCs.
Just my ideas.
I don’t have anything to add to the topic on hand, however, I hated it when people missed games, because like Rook said, I loved playing so damn much every weekend, it was worth the drive and my imposing on everyone for a place to crash. I miss those days very much. I haven’t rolled a 20-sider to hit some foul beastie in a long time.
Unfortunately, life gets in the way of stuff like this. You know, stuff we really love to do. My wife would be more than happy to let me go game somewhere every other weekend or so, but the thing is, any gaming group here wouldn’t have you guys. Some of my fondest gaming memories were at Rook’s playing Dark Sun, or Rob’s Sanctuary games. And going to Coyote’s mid-morning for some kamakazi hot wings or a coyote burger and beer.
I miss you guys.
Jim, we miss you too.
We love to dream of heroes, and champions, and legends.
We dream of those who we can never be, and of those who we want to be.
We dream of strength, of honor, of nobility, of wisdom, and of courage.
We dream of creatures we will never see, and places we have never seen.
We dream of the fight, the hunt, the magic, and the challenge.
We dream of those who we can never be.
We love to dream of heroes.
Sleep well rugged rock.
You didn’t explicitly state it , but I’m assuming that you’re the only person running? Because that would have been my first suggestion: have a backup campaign to accommodate a fewer number of people, preferably run by someone else.
My other suggestion would be: what about troupe style, in the fashion of Ars Magica? Each player would have their “hero” character and at least one mook. Assume that each session at least two of your heroes will be heading out each session, and scale the encounters to their level plus a level or two. That way if the person playing a hero doesn’t show, you send out a couple other heroes. They don’t even necessarily have to be part of the same band of adventurers, but the play style would remain consistent throughout.
Of course this would mean more work for you to keep all those balls in the air. But hey, it’s not like you sleep anyway, right?
Sorry, I know that I should register as my most famous of D&D characters names, but this did not seem like the forum for me to cross-dress once again and so Sinthea will have to be Dan while I am posting here.
As for the topic at hand, Rob and I (along with Rook) have discussed this at length. With beer, without beer, with bad attitudes, without bad attitudes, etc. and we always seem come to the same conclusion – There is no good answer; hence my guess as to why Sir Rob decided to open this can of worms up for discussion.
There is no perfect world, nor a perfect game. Even in the old days of living on D&D and Taco Bell, of talking about the last game all week, of getting together mid week to work on deciphering the mysterious prophecy, of what many would consider perfect gaming… even in those days we still had people miss games. We still have people ride the pineapple express to Austria but we block those moments out and remember the good nights, we remember who was at the game and what they great deeds the accomplished. Its just how it works. To try and compare our current gaming experiences with those of the past is unfair to both games.
In my little tiny mind I love to DM for 4-5 players, more than that and I get bored waiting on decisions to be made, and at the side conversations that perk up. I love to play in a group of 4-5 players so that I can role dice more than once per hour, and I can converse in character (god forbid you role play) without have to repeat my lines 4 times so that everyone can actually hear it over the roar of masses. My problem is the same one that Rob and so many of you face… its not realistic. So what do we do? We cope with it. We fudge numbers (as the DM). We push ourselves a bit further (as the player). We try to have fun under less than optimal circumstances… and in the end we are still playing a game with our buddies and escaping from the dregs of our everyday lives and even if that means poor Chris has to fail 6 death saves in one night in my opinion its well worth that sacrifice to indeed have some fun once in a while.
So I have not answered the question, nor offered any new solutions so I think my job is done for now. Maybe someday I will post something relevant, until then I bid you farewell.
The only real solution I can see is a bad one, and it’s to cancel game whenever 2 or more players can’t make it.
That’s what the Savage Worlds game I play in does. We theoretically are scheduled for every other Sunday. I have a recurring event set on my Google calendar.
So far this summer, we’ve played once in May, not at all in June, and once in July. We had 3 sessions scheduled for August – I haven’t heard about anyone having a conflict for our session scheduled for 08/29, so we may yet get in a game in August, too.
Not ideal, but this game only has GM + 4 players. So what’s the GM supposed to do if 2 people don’t show up and he runs anyway?
Its a real damned if you do damned if you don’t siutation. I think the games where 12 people show up are almost as crippled as the ones where there is only three or four. Instead of someone dying, its no one getting to act.
That being said, I should be more regular starting after labor day weekend until at least Christmas time when the wheels come off for everyone anyway. No promises though, I do like me some pineapple.
The campaign that I played in for several years before “Life” got in the way solved it, I think, neatly. We had a “large” group, certainly more than enough to cover all the roles, and a quota system so that no one would have to run more than 2 characters (and taking care of session notes was considered “a character”). What this meant was that the _players_ needed to track what they used. That, along with the session notes, made it pretty easy to reconstruct what was used and what wasn’t. Also, all the character sheets were stored with the rest of the campaign materials so that there’s no need to “print out a new copy” at game time.
The GM also had a “karma” system that contributed to the creation of new characters (in the event of the not-so-uncommon deaths) so that the new characters didn’t start too far off from the power level of the old character. Getting someone else’s character killed could be bad karma. Doing it maliciously or through negligence was really bad karma. If it was unavoidable (plain old bad luck of the dice, for example), it was either no karma penalty or a minor penalty. The karma was on the player though, not the character. It was complicated, but it mostly worked.
In the end though, the players need to feel comfortable with the system. If they are willing to have other people run their characters, then maybe they have some ideas about how to do it.
Robot Viking has a concept he refers to as the “Super Minion,” a player character minion to be used in the case of a player absence. It’s worked wonders for me so far.
http://www.robotviking.com/2009/07/30/rise-of-the-superminion-dealing-with-absent-players-in-4e/