General OoC discussion

No worries!

Sorry, Suspicion in the Starlight group: I'll have a map ready in the morning.

After losing hours of creative writing on characters multiple times, I just can't see using this site as I have noted. I'm exiting this site.

Hey, @GeneCortess, what happened mate?

Haven't heard from him, but another player in a mutual game with Gene said he's run into an issue where sometimes you preview a post or try to post, and there's some sort of error and your post is just gone.

It sounds like Gene has run into this a few times, and is understandably frustrated.

Dang, that sucks! But he’s been a super consistent player here on GP for a while, I’m sad to see him go…

If you've been in games with him like me, you may have noticed that Gene has rage quit many games in the past, both games where he's the player AND games that he was running. So this isn't a surprise, though I wasn't expecting that he'd exit the site entirely. Nevertheless, I've enjoyed his contributions in the various games I've seen for as long as he's participated, and he will be missed.

But what matters for us right now in this game is the decision on how to handle the Reptile PC now that his player is gone. Generally speaking, in RPGs, there are four ways to handle an absent player:

1) The character just fades away or makes an immediate exit.
(I generally don't like this option for the story difficulties it presents: "He was right here - what happened to him??" That said, this is what I've done with many of the characters who have left in this game: they are NPCs now, but mostly back in Hochoch, so removed from the action here. But I only did this because the players left/didn't return in between adventures, so the exit was less of a shock. That's not the case here, though)
2) I run the character as an NPC until such time as the character can leave or is replaced
(I have done this when a player has announced that they will be absent for some amount of time, and are expected to return. For example, in this game I did this at different times as Ogbar, Xana, and Joseph this past year.)
3) The group of remaining players collectively runs the absent player's PC
(Doing this is my strong preference for real-time games, though I haven't tried it yet here on GP. Would you all like to run Reptile?)
4) We find another player who takes over playing Reptile
(Again, this is something I've done in real-time games which I haven't seen on GP...yet. I'd be willing to try it, if there was a player interested and it was OK with the rest of you.)

What are your thoughts? Do you have a preference, or other options of things you've seen work in the past?

I think I'd prefer option #2.

Maybe we can come up with a reason to send Reptile back to Hochoch, such as reporting to Olpert with whatever evidence we've gathered. This assumes we find enough to make a compelling case, of course, and right now we don't have much. Heck, best case scenario is we find Joseph and Reptile takes him back to Hochoch?

On that note, I'll also point out that soon enough some of the PCs will have enough XP to train to the next level, which could be another good reason to return to Hochoch.

Going to second CancerMan's idea. That said, I certainky could pilot the character for a ahort while, until he takes a pendant and a full accounting of everything that's happened here back to HQ.

I would agree with the others on the second option unless there was someone who wanted to join the game as Reptile.

I share everyone’s preference. You roleplay the former player’s characters very well, and if it isn’t excessively demanding, I think it’s the best short-term solution, until Reptile can be replaced.

Wow, unanimity! It's great to see. Great; I'll continue to play Reptile and Joseph in Orlane until such time as they are retired from the action, and the other Dungeon Busters when/if the party returns to Hochoch. Thank you all for chiming in!

Just a scheduling head's up: I have a busy weekend this week, and may not manage to post every day.

Well... that simplified things.

I laughed way too hard at that. 🤣