Handling Absent Players in Fate

Handling Absent Players in Fate

We've just gone through the lean winter months of RPing running up to Christmas when family events and real-world commitments start to really make it hard to get a game going, even regular groups start to experience trouble (unless extremely commited) as plans have to be made and re-made in order to accomodate all the many various social events and other things that occur in the time surrounding Christmas; having had to reschedule a number of games recently due to this my thoughts have recently turned to how to handle absent players in my online Fate game.

I've recently been reading "Odyssey: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Campaign Management" (a review can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-350PrvUUA), and it contains some good advice for setting down the rules of the social contact between the GM and the players in a roleplay group; from that and my own ideas i've been able to start formulating some rules that I intend to adhere to in my game going forwards to help minimalise last minute disruptions/cancellations, i've noted them below and then gone into my reasoning in a little more detail.

• Choose a more regular time for the game to take place.
• Determine how many players are the minimum for the game to go ahead.
• Come up with rules for how to handle the characters of missing players.

Choosing a more regular time for the game to take place

At the moment we tend to negotiate the date for the next session when we reach the end of the currently running one, initially this was because the players had trouble committing to a more regular time (due to altering work rotas, etc) and it was thought that through choosing it nearer the time it would minimise the amount of absences; this hasn't really proven to be the case and I feel that not having a regular time causes players to feel less committed to the game or likely to be able to make plans around a session date, so it is my intent (at the beginning of next session) to discuss a regular day for the game with the players, if someone can't make the odd one then hopefully the next couple of points should still allow the game to progress.

Determine how many players are the minimum for the game to go ahead

My current minimum of number of players for whom i'll run the normal game is going to be 50% of the player party (in this case 2 players), should I have lower than this then, rather than abandoning the game, I will run a flashback/side-quest for the player that I do have, filling in some part of their character's history and will then return to the 'present day' of the game when we have 50% or more players.

Come up with rules for how to handle the characters of missing players

My current plan is that the characters of any missing players will be available as an Aspect that can be used to aid the players who are present, for example, if Gunnar Kron's player can't make it then the group will gain "Gunnar Kron, haunted norse warrior" or something similar as an Aspect, although Gunnar would not take part in a combat or encounter normally, if a PC found themselves in a situation where Gunnar could conceivably help then they could spend a Fate Point and invoke Gunnar Kron like any other Aspect.

I've not yet decided what i'd do regarding potential compels on these Aspects.