3 of my 8 players not here? I have a solution... I think... [Archive] - Wizards Community

3 of my 8 players not here? I have a solution... I think... [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
kaeso
10-21-05, 04:12 PM *WARNING* long, and has a City of the Spider Queen spoiler.

In my upcoming campaign, there are going to be 7 or 8 PC's. They will not all be able to show up each time, and splitting them into two groups is not a solution. There will be times where one of them will suddenly not be there, and they'll be in the middle of a dungeon or in jail, and there will be no plausible explanation to why they are gone. Also, I will not allow their player to be hijacked for that session. One person told me that there would be some artifact that makes people randomly disappear. At first I didn't like that idea at all, but it has grown on me and I decided that I'm going to use that solution. I decided that somehow, once all the players are together for the first session (I will need all 8 there for the first one, which is going to be extremely difficult to manage) and somehow there will be an orb that breaks apart, and shards of the orb are implanted in each of the players. (I'm thinking Inuyasha.) So, every so often some of my players wont be there, and we'll just say that their PC's disappeared because the orb shard in them made them phase out of reality.

However, there are some problems with this. If I use this orb idea, then my players might (and most probably will) make getting the shards out of them top priority. This is bad, seeing as I plan on running the City of the Spider Queen adventure and from their very first adventure, they are influencing events that lead to the adventure somewhere around 12th level. To fix this, I was thinking that I might possibly make it so that drow raid the town where the party meets, and they end up throwing the orb at one of the party members (I'm thinking the drow party member... I'll explain this in a sec.) and the shards break apart, magically phase into them, and make characters randomly phase out of existence into a dream realm. I'm considering asking the player who has the drow character to add it into his story that he was a noble drow, he's dishonored his house by abandoning drow society to live on the surface, and now they want to hurt him (I'm totally thinking the Drizzt Do'Urden series). I might influence him, telling him how cool it would be for him to do this, and I might offer a cool but not overpowered magical item-something very weak, like a wand of magic missle- to get him to be more willing to add this to his story.

Once he does this (if he does this...) then I want the drow to come to the surface looking for him, raid the town he's in, they find him, they throw a magical orb at him that they absolutely HATE (it's got somewhat of a consciousness about it, and it was created by that one drow goddess who wants them to be good so they absolutely can't stand it. They know its magical properties, they think 'ooh, well if he likes surface dwellers so much then he can just be linked to them for the rest of his days!' They throw the orb, the shards are in the party members now, and from now on a certain number of them will randomly disappear, and then that group will re-appear near the largest grouping of the shards (so if 2 disappear, and 4 are in one part of town, and 2 in the other part of town, well those 2 will appear near those 4. That's supposed to be the curse, the drow will always end up near surface dwellers either because he appears near them, or they appear near him. Weak, I know, but that's the best I've got so far.)

The last part of all this is that when a person phases, out, the orb has a consciousness and gives them dreams that eventually lead the players to believe that once they do what the orb wants them to, the orb will no longer be inside them and they won't be cursed. Obviously, its an orb of that one goddess (cant think of her name, sorry...) who wants drow to be good, and it will try to get them to prevent the drow in CotSQ from attacking the surface and taking over, etc. Ok, so what do you guys think? stupid? flawed? I wish I had something better, but this is the most plausible thing I can come up with. If any of you read all of this, then thanks for your help, you're my new heroes :)
Falkus
10-21-05, 04:19 PM Paragraphs, man!
Thynass
10-21-05, 04:26 PM Not a bad idea. It'll make the campaign unique, if nothing else. I had (have?) a problem with disappearing and appearing characters. I was temporarily able to get round it when the PCs accidently got shifted four years in the future (therefore not all of them appeared in the same place and time, thus joining them at different places later), but haing them disappear is hard to do (we all just had to put up with it in the end). One possible idea; when the PCs "disappear", they could turn into a small gem or even the shard itself. That way the PCs can be captured without them being able to escape (since evntually they would disappear then reappear with the party members). Instead, all transformed PCs have to be carried round. Might possibly be an idea, anyway.
kaeso
10-21-05, 10:39 PM I'm thinking I might have them just appear near the drow. It's simpler, and it makes sense for the story. If the drow is gone, he randomly appears next to one of the other characters I guess.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
kaeso 10-21-05, 04:12 PM	WARNING long, and has a City of the Spider Queen spoiler. In my upcoming campaign, there are going to be 7 or 8 PC's. They will not all be able to show up each time, and splitting them into two groups is not a solution. There will be times where one of them will suddenly not be there, and they'll be in the middle of a dungeon or in jail, and there will be no plausible explanation to why they are gone. Also, I will not allow their player to be hijacked for that session. One person told me that there would be some artifact that makes people randomly disappear. At first I didn't like that idea at all, but it has grown on me and I decided that I'm going to use that solution. I decided that somehow, once all the players are together for the first session (I will need all 8 there for the first one, which is going to be extremely difficult to manage) and somehow there will be an orb that breaks apart, and shards of the orb are implanted in each of the players. (I'm thinking Inuyasha.) So, every so often some of my players wont be there, and we'll just say that their PC's disappeared because the orb shard in them made them phase out of reality. However, there are some problems with this. If I use this orb idea, then my players might (and most probably will) make getting the shards out of them top priority. This is bad, seeing as I plan on running the City of the Spider Queen adventure and from their very first adventure, they are influencing events that lead to the adventure somewhere around 12th level. To fix this, I was thinking that I might possibly make it so that drow raid the town where the party meets, and they end up throwing the orb at one of the party members (I'm thinking the drow party member... I'll explain this in a sec.) and the shards break apart, magically phase into them, and make characters randomly phase out of existence into a dream realm. I'm considering asking the player who has the drow character to add it into his story that he was a noble drow, he's dishonored his house by abandoning drow society to live on the surface, and now they want to hurt him (I'm totally thinking the Drizzt Do'Urden series). I might influence him, telling him how cool it would be for him to do this, and I might offer a cool but not overpowered magical item-something very weak, like a wand of magic missle- to get him to be more willing to add this to his story. Once he does this (if he does this...) then I want the drow to come to the surface looking for him, raid the town he's in, they find him, they throw a magical orb at him that they absolutely HATE (it's got somewhat of a consciousness about it, and it was created by that one drow goddess who wants them to be good so they absolutely can't stand it. They know its magical properties, they think 'ooh, well if he likes surface dwellers so much then he can just be linked to them for the rest of his days!' They throw the orb, the shards are in the party members now, and from now on a certain number of them will randomly disappear, and then that group will re-appear near the largest grouping of the shards (so if 2 disappear, and 4 are in one part of town, and 2 in the other part of town, well those 2 will appear near those 4. That's supposed to be the curse, the drow will always end up near surface dwellers either because he appears near them, or they appear near him. Weak, I know, but that's the best I've got so far.) The last part of all this is that when a person phases, out, the orb has a consciousness and gives them dreams that eventually lead the players to believe that once they do what the orb wants them to, the orb will no longer be inside them and they won't be cursed. Obviously, its an orb of that one goddess (cant think of her name, sorry...) who wants drow to be good, and it will try to get them to prevent the drow in CotSQ from attacking the surface and taking over, etc. Ok, so what do you guys think? stupid? flawed? I wish I had something better, but this is the most plausible thing I can come up with. If any of you read all of this, then thanks for your help, you're my new heroes :)
Falkus 10-21-05, 04:19 PM	Paragraphs, man!
Thynass 10-21-05, 04:26 PM	Not a bad idea. It'll make the campaign unique, if nothing else. I had (have?) a problem with disappearing and appearing characters. I was temporarily able to get round it when the PCs accidently got shifted four years in the future (therefore not all of them appeared in the same place and time, thus joining them at different places later), but haing them disappear is hard to do (we all just had to put up with it in the end). One possible idea; when the PCs "disappear", they could turn into a small gem or even the shard itself. That way the PCs can be captured without them being able to escape (since evntually they would disappear then reappear with the party members). Instead, all transformed PCs have to be carried round. Might possibly be an idea, anyway.
kaeso 10-21-05, 10:39 PM	I'm thinking I might have them just appear near the drow. It's simpler, and it makes sense for the story. If the drow is gone, he randomly appears next to one of the other characters I guess.