Leaving a game.

D&D at it's core, as well as most Tabletop RPG's, is about playing as a group. Everyone has their roles. The GM agrees to run the game and the players agree to play the game and not derail it too much. Due to the weird time nature of PbP, this site brings those things to the forefront. If anyone disappears for awhile, everything grinds to a halt.

So this brings me to my point. If you don't want to play in a group anymore, SAY SOMETHING. I run a campaign in which two people have already wanted to leave. One came to me first and I was able to fix their issue and now they are happy. The other just left. This leaves the 5 other players and I with a random PC to deal with, which is not fun.

I also play in a game run by someone else. This person went on a camping trip for a week, which of course is ok, but never came back. They posted nothing for almost a month, only telling us the game wasn't going to work after I asked. This is highly annoying as a player. I spent a month planning out a character, detailing backstory and everything, only to have to throw it out.

So I ask you nicely, if you don't want to be a player anymore, come to your GM first. And if your a GM who doesn't want to run a game anymore, just tell your players. Please.

Also, an option if you're a GM and find yourself unable or unwilling to continue, offer the role of GM to one of your players. This can be passed off within the Game page by clicking the "Make GM" button by the players name. Maybe one of them will offer to continue the adventure, maybe not, but give them the option.

Similarly, offering the GM role to the community at large has previously worked, as well.

Yes in a world of technology we have at our fingertips i find it selfish the lack of communication. Life happens I get that. However its not hard for a post "sorry i cant play anymore" instead of having people just sitting and waiting. It is pretty rude.

Excellent points. I also just had two players disappear from our game with no warning what so ever. Perhaps Keleth could add a feature like they have over at Board Game Arena in which after a game you rate the person you played with. They keep track of players who leave games before the conclusion. Those who quit games like that frequently enough more or less get black listed on the site. It may be worth looking into.

I've considered ratings, but they're really abusable; we'd need to come up with a method of keeping it honest(ish). And I'd need to automatically turn all my reviews to 5 stars, as I'm one of those who vanish now and then (get wrapped up in a project and forget to post).

Ratings arent fair in general, I forever have a black mark on my xbox account because someone flagged me as leaving a game early when the power went out.

There used to be a feature where you could see the last time a user had logged on (I can't find that anymore). If that was added into the control panel of a game, that would help recognize absences from silences.

It should tell you if a user is 2+ weeks inactive with a little 'zzz' icon next to a user's name.

Aha! Thank you.

Maybe it should be shorten to 5 days. That is a work week

Does it also show when they last login also?

Regarding the OP, I think it's important as a GM to realize as well that in this format absences will happen, and people will drop out without telling you. They're not always trying to make your life more difficult, indeed the nature of the beast is that you often can't know why they suddenly dropped out. I've got several games here, three are 'active' (one I keep letting slip), and each of them has had 3-5 replacement players over the course of 6-8 months. It happens. Life happens, and many things in life are more important to people than remembering to tell their PbF GM that they're dropping out (and sometimes the drop out happens slowly and you don't realize it's happened to you as things stack up).

Knowing this will happen, my policy isn't to burden myself with NPCs - otherwise I'd have an army of them in each of these games. Instead, when a player vanishes their character does too, NCPs and PCs simply stop talking to and referring to them. It's as if, sadly, they never existed. This is the approach I recommend (and if you're in the midst of a scene, rapidly excuse the character in a non-permanent way). I do this also because i welcome players back if they return - and by fading their character out, their character is free to fade back in if the player does come back.

All wonderful points and insight. On the positive side, games that do stick together and play to a conclusion are just that much more memorable.

Candi; there's a difference between life happening and you no longer being able to post to the site as a whole, and just leaving my game but staying around. I'm not talking about absences. If something happens in your life, go deal with it, I will wait until you get back if you let me know.