Absentee Players

The bane of our existence as game masters is the eponymous "I can make it tonight" player.  I'm going to leave out the notes about how to deal with players who are lecherous in their absenteeism and just stick to how to mitigate the impact of the disappearance of those who occasionally vanish.

Now, if they are the center of your arc, the player has injected some difficulty into your game session.  I'd suggest you consider introducing, without disruption or seeming mechanical (i.e., organically) an immediate side quest to shunt them off to the side away from the primary plot arc.  Preferably something tangent to what is going on without disrupting the plot line.  If you can't, then cast it as a dream sequence, forced action, such as a kidnapping or blackmail, or other heavy handed tactics.  You can equally proceed but inflict the player with sickness or death (nothing like having a nagging ghost added to the list of mcguffins you have to complete!) and make the other players lug him around or otherwise deal with his body.  I like petrification about as well and even once turned a player to salt and another into glass and one into a painting.

Whatever you choose helps keep the continuity of the story.  If the player is not central to the current story arc, then it gets even easier.  You can handle them in all kinds of ways, from employing any of the previously mentioned or send them off on some plausible action that the other players don't find too disrupting to the ongoing game.  I like to preserve my storyline whenever possible so I tend to build in side quests at all junctures that I can apply to different characters should situations like this arise.  In fact, I'm notorious for sending players off on side story arcs if they vanish on me, ones they may or may not like (sold into slavery, anyone?  pimped out to demon?  donated as parts to the local guild?  volunteered in an experiment?).  My players have quickly learned to have side jaunts of their own at the ready should the need arise.  Which I prefer and they do as well, since I enforce a mortality chance on these little unscripted walk abouts.  Sometimes I make the disappearance the main focus of the night.  It really does vary depending on my need and what's occurring in the story.

So, if you boil it down to its succinct parts, its really two ways:

1. Make them part of the story
2. Take them out of the story

Just remember, however you handle it, make sure you build in the way to bring them back into the story as well.

Also, before ending, its important to handle the issue when you stop a session in the middle of climatic act, like in the middle of a journey, in a dungeon, a battle or similar circumstance where you need to pick up immediately where you left off.   These are the worst and why I suggest you always end at a nexus (see previous post, Ending On a Nexus).  Here you have little choice but to be heavy handed, though I tend to allow something in the story reach out and take the missing player out of the story.  Be it by kidnapping, death, a chase scene, or a similar mechanic, you'll pull them out.  Oh, and by a chase scene, I mean they run off in some fashion, usually ahead of the others, after the penultimate bad guy or target of the story.  It could easily be anything you desire.