Comment on “Worldbuilding 5c: Hamlet”

I wont do that because there’s a chance the player will return to our game in the summer, after her job gets less hectic. If something bad happened to the character while working as an NPC prospector, that player would have a loss of trust in me - “Sorry, you left the game for a while and now you can’t be your character anymore because they died while being an NPC” would be awful! Far better to just put the druid in stasis, or have her wander off into the forest until the player returns.

In general, my rule is “nothing can happen to/because of the character of a player who is not at the table; they are simply elsewhere, and the rest of the party proceeds without them.” For instance The sage skills of a character can’t be used when the player’s not there, his/her inventory can’t be accessed, and so on. Likewise, they can’t be targeted with spells or assassinated or have any other nasty thing happened to them. Not a legitimate target while the player isn’t there to take action.

I don’t see any reason to make exceptions to this rule. If players want to take advantage of the whole party’s capabilities then they should make sure everyone shows up :)