When players go awol

For all you PbP GMs out there, what is your policy on players that go AWOL?

Depends a lot on the situation, but generally a couple of unanswered PMs would result in an ad for a replacement. If I find someone before the AWOL player gets back in touch, they get swapped out. If the player gets back in touch later wanting back in I'll try to accommodate but it again depends on circumstances.

Basically I think that a disruption to regular posting can kill one of these games. If you want to keep it going you need to take action as soon as possible.

This is going to be my first time DMing here, so I'll have to work something out, maybe send a PM or e-mail to the absent player to see if he can or can't come back to the game, and then figure something out from there.

Some games I'm in will wait until the Zzzz's appear in the player's name, which indicates a long period of inactivity. If no reason was given for the absence, the GM will open up a slot for a new player. Should that player return, the GMs I know are willing to take them back, and will run with an increased party size (adjusting encounters as necessary).

I've tried to be fairly generous when it comes to people not posting in my games for one reason or another, but it's gotten to a point in a couple of my games that I think I'm going to have to replace people, as it's just killing the flow.

Here's what I put in my game descriptions regarding posting expectations:

I personally would say if no message from the player after a week then i would boot them. I say this because in this day and age with the technology we have, if you can not get a hold of them then they didnt really want to play or can't play.

If the it is scheduled then either hold the game or take control of character. A long period absence would make me wana kill the character off or have them disappear from the group.

Nothing irks me more then some one wanting tonbe in the group and there is room made for them and then nothing from them.

I understand people have real life stuff however if you are not keeping people updated then everyone else is waiting and then soon the game is dead. That is not fair to anyone.

As a GM, I'll keep the player in until a reasonable break in the storyline / campaign. After that point, I'll find a way to narrate the character out of the main story thread and look to backfill them with a new player if the crew is interested. As an example, my Force and Destiny campaign has had someone go idle and the character in question happens to own the starship the characters are using. So I'll need to figure out how to make that work -- but we have 4 active players, so it'll be up to the team if we decide we add a new fifth or not.

Net result, I'll probably keep an idle player around for close to a month before I decide I need to segue them out of the picture. I know there are weeks where I just have Way Too Much Life going on, so I try to be really relaxed here.