It’s looking like a player in my campaign (the Beacon) will have to miss three sessions in a row. We are all a bit bummed about it. I’m thinking over how to handle this so that positive things come out of it for his character and for the story. I’m open to advice!
My basic idea is to chat with my player about what he’d like his character to do, in general terms, during the sessions he’ll miss. I may suggest playing to some of his current Beacon drives: Take down a threat all on his own, and Travel to an incredible place or time.
Then I’ll craft love letters based on that, probably one for each missed session. I’ll also allow/encourage the players to play a couple out-of-session roleplaying scenes (in a Google doc or something like that) for times the Beacon is able and willing to communicate with the team.
How have your playgroups handled things like this? Or how would you advise me to proceed here? Any tips are welcome!
A single love letter when he returns can give you plenty of material to fill in the gaps of his story while he was off-screen and allow for an interesting focus-episode as he and the team deal with the fallout from his absence.
You could also have them get seriously injured and have him spend those sessions “in a coma”. If possible (they aren’t out of town) you may even offer a few one-shot solo sessions for them to play during their absence from the group and have them take place in their mind as a dream or hallucination. This opens up opportunity for drama as the rest of the team has to balance fighting bad guys and trying to stay by the injured’s side. (Or as an alternative, they could be sick/poisoned instead of injured and the 3 missions without the player can revolve around the team acquiring a cure.)
I’ve always done as Grey Kitten recommends, single love letter no matter how many absences. If I’m accounting for more missed time in game I may wind up with a slightly longer letter, but it is always just the one letter. Keeping it to one keeps it from being overwhelming when the player comes back.
I also usually ask the player if they want any input on their character’s situation or if they want to leave it entirely up to me.
If they want input, you can do a two-move love letter instead of hashing out those details off-table. The first move allows them some agency with what their situation has been, the second move functions more like a standard love letter move.
You could pull a Young Justice Artemis situation where The Beacon goes undercover with the bad guys or something like that. Maybe give him/her one “What do you do?” question per session break influenced by what the PCs did in the last session and see if they can keep their cover intact? Could be fun.