“The Player Character in the Backpack” or “Dumbass ways to explain a PC absence”

For those of us with a regular gaming group, one of our common problems is a player having to miss a session. What are you going to do? We have lives outside gaming unfortunately what with jobs, family, and non-gaming friends (Superlotto tonight – c’mon lucky numbers make me a full time gamer) taking up our time.

When we were kids, we didn’t really worry too much about why Varn the Vicarious was suddenly not present in the dungeon when we continued an ongoing crawl. Back then our go-to fix for this was teleportation. You teleported out of the dungeon. When you returned you teleported back. Sometimes this even happens in the middle of a session. Sometimes we said they teleported back to town. Sometimes to just outside the dungeon with the pack animals. Sometimes we didn’t even say where the hell they fucked-off to, and what power or entity caused them to do so. Needless to say at 14 we did not really give a rat’s patoot why this happened, because we were too busy busting Gnoll heads and getting poisoned by treasure chests. We did not care about verisimilitude. We didn’t even know what that was.

As we got older our role play become more sophisticated. Not that we became story tellers, but it suddenly mattered why your character was not present during important play. This is one reason I like to have a couple of campaigns of different genres going on. Sometimes a particular character just has to be there for one reason or another, and if you have other options you can wait for that scenario when the important character can be present. But in a pinch and the PC is not that needed, “personal business” fit the bill for why they are not there.

It works in fiction. Character come and go willy nilly. In The Hobbit and LOTR the wizard Gandalf seemed to make a career out of constantly fucking off on some personal errand, even when you needed him. It works especially good for mysterious types. Wizards, thieves, rangers, druids – these guys usually have their own agendas beyond the party. Even in the midst of level 4 of Deathtrap Dungeon, it is conceivable that these mystery men could come and go and not even feel the need to explain. Even a plain fighter can have an important side thing to do. Maybe a date with some red headed doxy he met at the 2nd level dwarf tavern.

“I must away for awhile, I shall return my comrades in arms!” they shout (or something less lame), as they flourish their cape into the air and march off into the darkness.
OK, it is not easy, and you of course still have to do a little shrugging and whatareyagonnado?-ing, but you do your best and move on.

But I was shocked recently to read a forum post about how to explain character absences. Seems a no-brainer. These guys all being adults (some quite old), I figured they had all probably evolved my “personal business” procedure when their players decided they would rather play Skyrim than get together for D&D. But to my shock and awe, people still seemed to use the childhood method of “he teleported out of the dungeon.”

Look, I know it’s all “beer and pretzels gaming” and all that, but I feel to avoid a board game mentality you need that role play and a little bit of gravitas. I mean, these guys even had “explanations” for the teleporting, like unlimited but limited (?) teleport scrolls, or it was a limited use ability the dungeon grants to you when needed (because shit, we all know dungeons are just like tough love soccer coaches who want you to succeed in the end). One guy even had the most unique reason for absence ever explained on this planet. The party had the ability to shrink a character down to an inch in height, paralyzed and invincible, so the party could shove that character of a missing player into a backpack and keep him safe as the crawl continues. Jeez. Even in a high magic world, that seems pretty Ronald McDonaldland to me. That breaking sound you hear is the shattering of any sense of disbelief.

No need for all that weirdo, gravitas-killing super magic to explain an absence. “Personal business” ain’t perfect, but at least it doesn’t sound like something my dumbass childhood self would use.