It's bad enough when you're suddenly asked to accept the vagaries of television, trying to convince us that two clearly different actors are the same person, or that a character we've enjoyed is just "on a trip" that's lasted for the better part of two years. It's even worse than the entire illusion of events that requires you to accept that someone has gone missing from a major storyline. How do you accommodate a player leaving without too much damage to the shared illusion?
Option 1: Put down your boat payment
If the player is leaving with a fair amount of lead time, you can follow a time-honored dramatic tradition: kill off the departing actor.
Now, on the one hand, this might seem a little cruel for a player who might return one day. On the other hand, permanently killing a character isn't the sort of thing that you get to explore as a storyline very often, and this is the perfect opportunity. You can run an entire storyline with your group of friends and even result in several long-standing character threads and developments. It's win-win.Of course, in the event that the player does return, you have to go through a corresponding storyline in which you reveal why being stabbed several dozen times through the chest didn't kill someone. That's not a route you frequently want to go down, so perhaps it's better to stick with an alternative.
Option 2: Honey, fraulein, I'm home!
Maybe the player's character is just too darn vital to be written out of the ongoing storyline. That's OK; it happens. Instead of trying to force him out, why not take over the reins? It's sometimes better than just having a character vanish or die in the middle of several ongoing plots.
You'll get some of the meat of a big character-killing story, since you'll want the character in question to go through some large-scale traumatic event. (As a convenient side-effect, large traumatic events have been proven through years of superhero comics to allow individuals to change personalities, appearances, and even powers or skills!) Then you (or a fellow player) can take up the departed character's mantle for the necessary time period, and hand it back seamlessly when the original player returns.
Sort of, anyway. After all, the character is going to have someone else in the puppeteer's chair for quite some time, possibly forever. There's no way that Darrin Mark Two is going to convincingly match the behaviors of Darrin Mark One in every situation. Plus, the character may be no more engaging to you than to the departing player, which raises a whole new set of issues...
Option 3: Retroactively purchasing a boat
Of course, the prior two options assume that you have plenty of warning that Sir Raids-a-lot is unsubscribing. This is a nice state of affairs, and one that happens with remarkable infrequency. More often, you find out that Sir Raids-a-lot is leaving when he's got one day left on his subscription -- he logs in, and announces his impending departure with a possible "anyone want all my money."
Sometimes your best option is to assume that the newly absent character is dead and buried. You have to explain why a major character isn't around any longer, and trying to pretend that circumstances require the character's absence at all times doesn't make for very convincing storytelling. It also denies any sort of emotional punch -- if your character is the son of the newly absent player, he can milk a bit more character development out of a dead parent than one who remains permanently off-screen.This is neglecting the fact that you are, essentially, dragging a friend out back and shooting him in the back of the head. If your wayward companion returns, not only do you have to explain why Sir Raids-a-lot is no longer very dead, you have to explain to Sir Raids-a-lot's player why you decided the respectful thing to do to your friend was murder his character. And if he never comes back, well, you still have a corpse from off-screen. As long as we're talking about a fair bit of television this time, that doesn't sit well with many people.
Option 4: We don't know that guy
If none of the above options sound like a good idea? Well, maybe you just drifted out of touch.
Real life doesn't always include dramatic reasons for the entrances and departures in your immediate companions. Sometimes your best friend drifts away for a while, then comes right back to the forefront of your life. It could be that amidst all of the various adventure-related activities undertaken by your character, the character who left just... fell out of touch. Any storylines with them are quietly forgotten or moved to other characters, and life goes on.
I'd be lying if I said this one was dramatic. But it's true to life, and it certainly causes the least disruption to everyone's playstyle. It certainly does feel anticlimactic, though, and few players will be happy about just ignoring the metaphorical elephant in the room. Whether or not the damage it does to your shared mythology is too significant is up to you and your friends.
As always, comments and questions can be left in the comments field or sent along to eliot@massively.com. Next week, I'm going to both go off on a rant and kick off a cooperative project! It should be fun.
