Had a dude who was something of a time mage. When I needed him outta the story, he'd suddendly have a time portal swallow him up and whisk him away. When the player rejoined us, his character would pop outta the time portal right then and there. No time had passed to his character, so the party would usually have to catch him up just like we had to in reality. I found it to be not only a good way to have the dude naturally pop in and out, but an organic way to have the "What did I miss" conversation rather than waste time outside the game. - Awsm Chimera
We had a good friend that that was an inconsistent play due to his work schedule. Each time he’d show up for a game, we’d find his character chained to a wall in the next room. It was funny, and he built a backstory for his bard that he was traveling around interviewing villains and famous monsters for an in game collectible trading card game. We left it a mystery as to how he would always arrive ahead despite the distance between where we’d find him versus where we last saw him. Have always loved how elegant a solution that was.
I've been in a session where I personally played a Rogue named Tarkus. Basically, he'd be a dude who had no Dexterity, but had a wicked high Charisma stat and would intimidate enemies to stay silent. I knew I was gonna be sporadically appearing in the campaign, but rather than be an inconsistent ally, I instead opted to be a sorta third party in the game in which the DM would randomly insert me into the story. If I was there when my character was "on screen" then I'd get to play. If not, oh well, it was fun to hang out and chat. It was really fun being in the game and the players always tense to see whether or not Tarkus would show up. At some point, the party named me a sworn rival (I dunno, I tried my best to help at first) and decided to try and kill my character every time he showed up. I ain't even out to kill those guys, just trying to steal their boss' amazing wagon. The main thing I wanted to address with this ramble is that you can fix nearly any issue with enough creativity. I not only wanted to play an antagonistic force for once (not necessarily a villain, but clearly an explosive personality who'd... Honestly ended causing a number of problems for everyone playing, haha), but also be someone not really needed to play in every weekly session. Also, on the off chance anyone else reads this, do y'all have any builds that involve basically ignoring the primary stat of a class yet still retaining their core functionality? For example, my Rogue Tarkus had no Dexterity bonus, but instead was never caught because nobody was brave enough to move from their posts once he yelled at them. - Awsm Chimera
In one game I was playing in, I was going to be introduced early on in a dungeon. I was playing a Ifrit Inquisitor of Asmodeus (this was Pathfinder) and I was introduced as a prisoner of the orcs who ran this prison. I was trapped inside a brass bowl and since I was part fire elemental and would start to heat up when I got angry, I ended up super-heating this bowl. I was freed when the bard decided to throw chilled water on the bowl in hopes of killing off the monsters with the resulting explosion. It was a really neat way to be introduced and added a lot of flavor to my character, as well as giving my LE character a reason to help these random people out (honor-bound to serve his liberators). Extra fun fact: the paladin failed multiple checks to recognize that I was a follower of Asmodeus.
Nice video. I once had the honor of playing for 4-5 sessions in a long term campaign, while I was on vacation. They were just about to acquire a major quest item they had spent the last year searching for. I was inserted into the game as someone else searching for the item who shows up in the midst of the final combat to grab it. The DM help build my character to counter some of the skills of the party (their sorcerer unable to read my mind for example) which kept the party a little suspicious of how much they could trust me. But I had more information than they did concerning how and where to use the item. It created a fun dynamic with a little tension. Since I knew I was leaving, I thought it was a good chance to have a heroic death my last session. But the character became such an interesting part of the story the DM made her a regular NPC.
I recently introduced a new player to a campaign that has been going on for months. The player knew he was coming into a well established campaign, so he was willing to work with me to come up with how his character fit. We spent an hour or two figuring out his proximity to the party and why he would join them. I was able to have him come in with some information that the party had missed and set the stage for a follow-up adventure to the one the party was currently in. Basically, he had the same enemy as the party was currently dealing with. He heard about their fight and came to try and recruitment to help with his side of the conflict. They ended up with a "I scratch your back you scratch mine" situation, and since everyone knew they were suppose to become a unified party they quickly had their characters form battle-brother bonds that would take them to adventures beyond. Its worked without a hitch. I was eager to watch this video because now I have a player whose character has been dead for considerable time wanting to return to the game. It'll be interesting springing a dead guy back to life in the middle of an adventure, but I think I've got some ideas. As you guys mentioned, simple is better.
GM Jaken True Simple is better but the more reason you can give for them coming back to life the better (assignment from a god, strange magics, etc... ). This allows for more plot hooks and drive for the different players. But it is easy to go too far one way on it
I agree with NerdArchyTed with the "sometime you need cheese". Also, sometimes people forget that in a fantasy/medieval setting people aren't as isolated as they are in the modern era when they are travelling etc and many folks are met "on the road", "on your way to" or "inside of"( i.e. D&Ds Dungeons are not "instanced" like in MMOs). I really agree with crew's point about designing the new PC to easily fit in with the story and party is extremely helpful. With Nate's point about avoiding combat before adding the new character; you do have the option to just narrate a combat that are sometimes "necessary" for things to make sense.
I have only run a few sessions. I find adding people is easy. Deleting people I handwave they're on a side quest and will come back with something, or off at wizard college or whatever. Vanishing people mid-combat is harder if you don't want to continue delving down that road and mount a rescue. So I just avoid cliffhangers if infrequent players are there. Because when you and your party are all employed adults with families consistency is hard.
The GODS know we needed this video! Thank You Guys! I personally have had to do this numerous times! It always takes me half my brain power to figure this out. I love Dave's solution with the disk thing. I've had characters become prisoners, the other PCs find the new PC beat close to death or in the middle of a fight. Once I had a party find a bag of holding and inside the new PC was inside. As a DM it gets pretty nuts trying to get new players in a game, especially if the new currently in a dungeon. Great solutions guys! Edit: Also from doing this is how I ended up with around 8 or 9 players in a game... It was crazy!
I think to many dms think way to hard on it. Getting everyone playing the game is the most important thing. It's not like our campaigns are novels or going to become them. - Nerdarchist Dave
There's an owner of a gaming store who has an adventure league druid (and he won't be able to join the game every session), so I took a new character sheet with a spell sheet and copied some of the basic information from his official league sheet. I basically did a new game plus sort of thing. He'll inexplicably 'blink out' whenever he can't be there.
Griffingaff sounds like it has the perfect mechanic to add a player mid-session/-story. The errant player gets stuck in a portion of a chaos bleed that suddenly appears nearby. The player is sitting in a tavern havin' an ale after a hard day of adventuring and the chaos bleed suddenly drops that tavern down in the middle of the forest the adventurers are currently exploring. Or you could go even smaller and more comical. The character went to the outhouse to do his/her business, the outhouse gets hit with the chaos bleed, suddenly plops down in front of the characters and out staggers this character covered in ... you get the idea.
This happens all the time with online games I start. It usually takes a few months before I end up with a solid group. I've had to learn the hardway that having a plot device that inserts and removes characters without breaking the story is a must. I have a few campaign journals with completely different characters than what the campaign started out with. In one instance, all the players changed! In my current campaign, the party is working for a planar guardian who controls a pocket plane. New characters are summoned to the plane by the gods and then sent to the party via a portal. I've even used this device to make character swaps. This plot works very well with gods of the dead or nature gods who reincarnate.
idk about 5th but in pathfinder theres an artifact that marks all the pc's and when they cant make it to the session the artifact phases them out of existence and when they can make a session it phases them back in near some one who has a mark and it gives them vague knoledge of what happend when they were gone
How about the past aquaintence? PC1: ''Hey I know you! You're Tommy and Edvina's boy! I knew your father. He was a good man.'' PC2: ''Uncle Bob? What are you doing here? Your hair is gray!'' Just pick the current PC that fits best as knowing the new PC from sometime in the past. Another thing is the adventurers union. The group is part of a
Luckily my newest player is a sort of ranger-y character, and I had already set up the need for a ranger-y character in the previous session. Plan was to have an NPC, but this is obviously better.
I've seen this a lot. We had a long running campaign where one player couldn't make it every session. His character was mad, usually drunk, and had a penchant for teleporting in and out of sessions. I've been introduced once while fighting a pack of wolves by myself, and the players helped me. But to be honest, I think that this problem is usually overthought and over complicated way too often. I would like to provide a simple solution that works very easily and happens every day in real life: Have the new PC either know/be friend/aquaintances with one of the group. This new player already has an "in" within the established group, and the established PC can introduce the new player around. They were a childhood friend/former business associate/fellow veteran/etc of the established PC, so there's a certain level of trust aleady. Look at your own group of friends around you as an example. I once watched a DM's Roundtable from the WoTC D&D channel, and one of the DMs brought up something like this as a way to get a new group underway without all the stumbling about in figuring out why a group is together. He put the onus on them as players to describe the last thing they did together as a group. This turns into a collaborative deal where the players ran with it and explained old scars, jokes, and stories about why they knew each other. It was an off-the-cuff collaborative background for the group. This relates to the "I knew this guy back when..." in that the new and the established player can then reminisce about "That time we had to run out of the inn without pants being chased by the constabulary..." This may not make the other players immediately trust the new PC, but it gives them an opportunity to use the trust that they DO have for the established PC as a basis to begin the relationship. Just my two cents.
In this case your 2 cents goes pretty far. Put it on the players and over thought are the things people should take away from your comment. These are gold. - Nerdarchist Dave
I sometimes am able to join an ongoing campaign a friend runs when I visit from out of town (2000 miles away). He doesn't care to run that one on computers. I visit once or twice a year and play a few nights before I go. My first trip we had a reason for me to be there and added me in, after that, when they play without me, I just don't exist. To start with my character is the cousin of another regular character (my real life daughter), so she could vouch for me and I came bearing gifts of booze and tobacco... now why I was in the middle of a dangerous woods in the middle of nowhere, we just sort of ignored. Fortunately our DM and our players are happy to have people join and leave, it happens pretty often with the school age kids that can't be there every time. Really there's only a couple of people that will be there every time anyway. It's a very long standing campaign and they've played together for decades. When I am there, I was always there. I don't gain loot or experience when I am not present and that's ok. Characters die and start over every so often in his game anyway, the joins and parts are fairly low key, we just play when we can. Next week I'll be visiting again and my level one puke warrior can re-join her friends! Fortunately she has 18 strength and 15 constitution so she's managed to survive so far.... though she did end up with three hands the last time I was there.... But that's another story!
Back in the 2'nd edition days I forced a wild surge from a wild mage the first time he cast a spell to get a new character into the middle of a dungeon the group was working their way through...
That is awesome. I may have to borrow the pc out of the amulet idea for my dm tool box. =) I haven't had anyone not come half way through and be flakey on a constant basis but I have had guest PCs and they worked out great. Got my nerdarchy shirt in the mail today as well so I'm very pleased. Great video.
A slight chapter shift. the party is going somewhere. The DM describes how they got there and how along the way they found this person who had shared/similiar interest and joined up. along this trip you got to know eachother maybe a little bit. Now you have arrived at your destination about to perform such and such. the another one that I personally like. The character is a guide, in a region that the party needs to go through like a ranger in a particular swamp, or is a mage with knowledge of the beast that they are fighting, who has interest in dealing with this particular beast.
I just felt the need to share my moments on this subject. The good ones :) ... but unfortunately the bad too :( . Despite having Asperger's syndrome, I am always, ironically, the guy that really feel the responsibility to ensure that everyone is having fun, when I am gamemastering. I'm always looking for tips to enhance both my DMing skills and my games. I just wish everyone else in my group did the same. Whenever I have to include a new player into the group, session and campaign, I always do my best to include him as soon as possible. That because I know how it can be frustrating to just sit there and watch everyone else having fun. There was one occasion where the players' group was already delving into an old ruin, pursuing a mad "serpent-god-thing cult", and a player just arrived from a trip (if I'm not mistaken, that was looong time ago). He quickly made a dragonborn paladin and I couldn't just leave the poor guy hanging there doing absolutely nothing. And then I thought "Hanging there? Why not?". BANG! The characters broke a door and there was the paladin, hanging upside down tightly tied above a nest of snakes :) . You can guess what happened after that. However, there were bad moments too. They happened everytime I was the mid-campaign-new-addition, and those same moments adds to the bad experiences I always had as a player throughout my gaming life (but hope is the last to die... supposedly :) ). One time, I sat for like ~5 hours waiting for a single combat involving the original characters to end (the combat itself actually lasted less than that, but a ridiculous amount of time nevertheless). When it finally ended, it was about time for me to get home. Summary of that night: the group fought the entire session, while I played meaningless 10~15 minutes. By "meaningless" I mean "you wake up on a beach after a shipwreck and you have no idea where you are, but you can take that cart to nearest town", literally. What I learned from that? As a DM you *must* care for all players' entertainment (as well as yours, you are not their slave, but a friend). Do not ignore a player just because he is a newcomer, he is also expecting to have fun. If you won't be able to include him on that same game session, be honest and tell him so, it will be better than frustrating him for an entire night. And finally, most of those situations can be avoided with anticipation. That is, it is better to skip a game session with the new player to plan his character and how he will be introduced than taking the risk of badly improvising. I hope anyone who reads my comment learn something from my successes and mistakes as well as from Nerdarchy's video. Good morning/afternoon/night everyone :)
I've done a similar thing with the Aasimar that you talk about (and mine was actually an Aasimar too, oddly enough). It was during High School, and the player went out of state to live with their mom during the summer, so we had the character, a fighter, received a divine calling to go on a holy pilgrimage. We still talked back and fort and all that about what the rest of us were doing in the campaign. So when they came back for school, we were all leveled up some, but we had planned, secretly from the other players, for them to come back with whatever divine prestige class, and blah blah blah extra equipment, so they could jump right back in, ready to kick ass. One of the big points I wanna make is, like you all said, keeping that conversation between the DM and the player/players helps tremendously with stuff like this, cause having to bounce between playing an extra character or two, that aren't yours, really kinda sucks >.
This happened last session. The PC was a Warlock, so I basically had their patron teleport them via fiery circle to where the PCs were. There was no clear indication why that PC was supposed to be there and what the patron wanted, but it led to a fair bit of RPing. The players didn't seem to mind, but I was like ::sighhh::
Some nice ideas for "plopping in and out": Mental illness (shizophrenia(which is not the one with split personalities), severe (manic) depression, any triggered trauma and so on): Sometime the character just mentally retreats into himself and behaves on a strict guideline (follow party, run and hide from enemies, talk to noone, try to hide when spoken to, eat, drink, rock back and forth) which is ideal for dungeon runs or other campaigns when there is no way of just leaving a character behind or them leaving and returning Narcolepsy: same as above but just falls asleep randomly. obvious need to be carried around ^^ undependable: might not show up for every adventure or might decide that there are more important things ("x absconds with their loot and will probably take while to get back to you" or " x didnt show up today. you wonder if they forgot about that whole adventuring business again or just overslept... again. anyway after a while you decide to stop waiting") OR what i use in my massive sandbox game which is held in university and has about 25 characters between 17 players, 5 of which have only played one session and only about 8 regularly play (and i refuse playing with more than 2 parties at a time since most of the characters are not exactly drawn to each other out of friendlyness so i usually play with a maximum of 6 players at the table, whoever is there when i announce that i have enough time and all my stuff done so i could run a session): a mixture of "could not be reached for comment" or "is doing other things right now" and since it is a vampire game and there is technically a roll if you even rise for the night: "is not even alive right now and noone knows where they sleep" (as is common for vampires who want to keep (un)living. I introduce characters by having some of their goals align and them meeting by "chance". They are issued the same "quest" which would be easier if accomplished together and where there is no exclusion (like a specific object to steal) The only other thing I have to do after they meet for the first time is "bind" them somehow. Maybe part of the (bonus) reward for working together /accomplishing the task faster/better than they could have done it by themselves is actually a shared thing (like rights to a certain location) or they just naturally become friends during the encounter. Or they both get the same follow up quest, meet again, encounter some retribution from the first quest (someone sending assassins for having foiled their plan?) together and decide to work together to keep that from happening. Sooner or later they will trust each others abilities enough to seek each other out on their own (since the people that you can NOT trust to not want to kill you as soon as you lapse in concentration is higher than the people you can trust^^)
ive used a bag of pc holding in one campaign. i had about 10 players that came and went and 3 always there players. it was kinda funny but it actually fit the game i was running. it was an epic monte python type game. the only one i allowed metagaming in bc one of the characters had a monster manual I. XD
after my character died my new character was seen as a prisoner being carried by and the party decided to take a long rest so the gm was stuck making the party fight the guards because why wouldn't the prisoner be locked up after an hour
I am working in Laos now bad WIFI skyping to tabletopgame the U.S with some friends. My character a Fremlin Illusionist stole a magical item from a wizard but it was cursed so only the wizard can use it. It randomly causes my character to teleport/planeshift away (When I get DCed) so this allowed me to randomly show up in the game with my friends and reappear later. We haven't had to use it yet except to initially introduce my character.
I saw the same kind of thing happen in an in-store game where the players don't show up regularly. The DM had the characters, new and returning, get expelled from and return to a horse ass. Commentary from the DM? Maybe...
I have had it happen were 2 players were joining a group lost in the under dark. (Me and the Guy I accidently killed) and the DM had the first player (guy I killed) join right at the start of the session. the group was then lead to a city role played around for about 2 hours and then left. then I showed up just as the session was about to end. there is a right way and a wrong way to do these things.
yea that always sucks. We try to avoid this at any and all cost now a days. There was a time when we'd make that horrible mistake. Thankfully we've learned are stories aren't so great that we need to torture someone for hours for its sake. - Nerdarchist Dave
It's nerdarchy the drinking game friendly version. When you hear you know take a drink. Best played with Nerdarchy shot glasses purchased from Nerdarchy the Store ;) - Nerdarchist Dave
I do cheese. The evil teleporting fog ports pcs in and out of the game play. After all, we all playing a game and it sucks to wait an hour to play. The story should not be more important than everyone having fun.
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I hate adding players mid-game.The more expedient methods will invariably draw the complaint about suspension of disbelief from my players. Worse, there will be that long role play concerning why the party should trust this new PC. So, I have to give the new PC something useful so he can bribe his way into the party. This whole thing has spilled out of control before. Still, Dave's solution is pretty nice.
I'd sum it up as your players really are being selfish. Next time they complain about suspension of belief just stab them. At the end of the day it's a role-playing GAME. We do it to socialize and have fun. I can fore go a little suspension of belief to help another person enjoy the hobby with our group. - Nerdarchist Dave
