Topic: When players don't show...
I have four players, and we've had a rotation of last minute "not gonna make its." They're all good friends, and they have good reasons (sick, unexpectedly have to work late, friend in the hospital, etc.) So this post is not on how to deal with people who are messing the game up, etc.
What I want to do is figure out an interesting way to deal with the character when a player isn't there to play it. Historically, we've dealt with it in a few ways:
1) The character just isn't there. "Whoa - the rogue must be hiding in shadows...you can't find him anywhere!"
2) They are there in a "jackknife" capacity. Mostly they just follow the party around until needed. "Can we get the rogue to check for traps and try to pick this lock?"
3) They are "played" by another character. This often results in minimal playing and ends up looking more like #2.
I feel like LotFP needs a more unusual approach as it's not like many other games. I was thinking of developing an "AI" for absent players (with input from them). Here are my initial thoughts. There's no need for the "jackknife" method as most (any at all?) encounters don't require a particular class.
When the party comes to a decision on something, like, "we will move down the cave carefully, keeping an eye out for traps and listening for noises." I make a roll for the character (3d6). Most of the results are skewed toward them following along with the group (8-13). However, on a 3, they do something really stupid. Usually the opposite of the what the group intends. On an 18, they seem to have "inside" information and may alert the group to something dangerous. On the rolls of 4-7, they may still go along with the group, but have some other negative thing happen. On rolls of 14-17, they'll go along with the group but have some positive benefits.
The pros to this are some more interesting things happening, and some risk to the character. (As of now, they'd only die if the entire party dies...)
The cons are, they have a chance of being the only one who dies.
I also don't normally allow players to gain xp when they're absent, but would allow it under this method. They're getting greater risk, so they should definitely get some reward out of it.
My players were at first skeptical, but then were starting to get into the idea. Especially when we talked about them having catch phrases they would say when they rolled a certain result.
What do people think of this? Is it crazy? Would it work? Anybody try other methods for making it more interesting when players don't show up to play their characters?