![[Imperor] A possible solution for running sessions with missing players - The Woven Dream](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fb79df4d-dc8e-4410-b36b-2378f21b1553.png){kind=link}
Good day everyone, hope you’re doing well!
I’ve made a new video and blog post on the topic of how to deal with sessions where people can’t make it.
My solution is fairly simple but effective: The Woven Dream, a state of dreaming where party members experience shared dreams. Besides allowing the group to play instead of skipping a session, it also allows you to really dig into the background of any (or all) of the present characters.
It’s not something that’ll work every time, but it’s served me really well, and I wanted to share the idea with you.
I’ve also taken the feedback from this and other communities around here and my stuff isn’t just videos anymore, but blog posts as well and the blog posts have a full audio narration of the blog post for those that prefer podcasts or to account for accessibility.
Hope it gives you some inspiration!
Blog post: https://impheim.com/2023/09/skip-or-play-a-solution-to-sessions-with-missing-players/
I’ve done this before when I wanted to do a “holiday” session. Basically I wanted to run Death House from CoS as a one-shot on Halloween, but only 2 of my players were available on Halloween, and also the whole party was in the middle of an actual adventure in the middle of nowhere in my actual campaign. So what I did is said that during a long rest, those two characters had a shared dreamscape which embodied the experience of going through the Death House adventure together. Side note: Death House becomes extremely scary when you only have 2 PCs, even if they are level 5. If I wanted to be able to do this in a hurry for any time some players couldn’t make a session, I would keep those one-shot compendiums from Kobold Press (“Prepared! [1/2/3]”) handy.
Little One Shots sound like a good idea as well, yeah. I like to take a step back during those sessions and really allow the players to bring out their own ideas and let the main dreamer basically Co-DM the session. I’ve yet to be disappointed with the results!
Did it turn out to be a good session in your case?
It definitely did. I wanted to make the session meaningful for the players that made it, despite the fact that the dream conceit limits the realism of letting them keep any treasure they find. So instead I homebrewed a very minor consumable effect (like a “blessing”) and gave it to them as a reward for escaping the house with their lives. As I said, Death House is brutal for a small party, so the spookyness was reinforced by the deadliness of the adventure for two people.