D&D 5E Help me build a Drop in/Drop out DnD 5E campaign

[danskmacabre]

I like to run DnD 5e and I have a few regular players. but some players have a busy life schedule (work, family, married life, commitments etc) and often can't come regularly, but DO love to come and play.

As such I prefer to run short and sweet sessions that only span over a few sessions, rather than a campaign. HOWEVER, I want to run Prince of the Apocalypse soon, as I bought it and it looks a lot of fun and it's a sort of sandbox style campaign scenario.

The problem is there will be a lot of characters/players dropping in and out over the months and months I'll be running this.
I would love to have some sort of RP justification for this to happen and not feel contrived. Does anyone have any ideas on how to handle this.
I don't really want to just NPC characters or leave them standing at the back of the party, so some way to justify why they might not be there for some sessions would be great. This would have to be something that's sustainable over an extended campaign.

Thanks in advance. Oh and hi all, I haven't posted here much (well at all actually, although I registered some years back) , but you'll probably see me posting around here more.

 

[Rhenny]

I've been having my players wander off and go to different locations to scout or try to gain information, but my group is still dealing with surface issues. They have not gotten deep into a temple yet. It is easier to have them do other things when they are near town or near another important location that needs investigating.

When I ran a long-time 3.5e homebrew campaign (about 6 years ago - it lasted for 2 1/2 years), I built in a way to work with drop ins and drop outs. I invented what I called "The Chaos Curse."

It all started when one character, a Celestial Dwarf, was cast out of the Queens court in Celestia. He was cursed and banished until he could atone for his rude behavior/offense. (This was part of the PCs backstory). Then, when he joined up with a party, the "Curse" spread so that any party mate could suffer the effects of the curse.

The effects: Randomly without warning, PCs would be teleported to Celestia where they roamed the land. Sometimes, I'd invent side stories to develop the story of what was happening in Celestia. Sometimes I just used it as a way to say, player gone...PC gone.

It was actually a really fun way to deal with it because sometimes, players who had to leave early would force their PCs to pop out mid battle. Other times, a player who came late would pop in and help turn an encounter to the party's advantage. Also, part of the Celestial Dwarf's entire motivation was to redeem himself with the Queen and some how figure out a way to break "The Chaos Curse."

I'm not sure you want to go that far to legitimize and deal with absent players, but it was definitely fun in our homebrew. If I homebrew a new campaign, I'd use it again if I could find a player who wanted to work with it.

 

[Henry]

If you weren't planning to run a pre-gen campaign, I would say that the best way to justify it without being too straining to plausibility js that the PCs are members of a guild of adventurers, and set the action in a major metropolitan city, a la Waterdepp, Absalom, or Ptolus. That way each session could start with a new mission, very serialized a la a TV show.

For something like PotA, it's kind of rough, but perhaps them being part of a even something like a caravan, a mobile home base as it were, and then they could be off resting or recuperating at the caravan, allowing drop-outs mid stream.

Diarrhea. That's the ticket. Bad curry, or stagnant water.

 

[danskmacabre]

Yeah some sort of curse or magical effect through an item or something would be fun.

I'm currently running them through an adventure where they're protecting a frontier town from an undead incursion that joined forces with some Lizardfolk to control an area.

They're about to face off a Lizardfolk High Priest and his cronies. There's a Drow Necromancer and his cult involved too (an agent of Orcus). so if they defeat them, there could be some sort of curse or magic item involved that drops characters in and out "Randomly" .

I was planning on tying in the end of this adventure with a hook to PotA

 

[danskmacabre]

If you weren't planning to run a pre-gen campaign, I would say that the best way to justify it without being too straining to plausibility js that the PCs are members of a guild of adventurers, and set the action in a major metropolitan city, a la Waterdeep, Absalom, or Ptolus. That way each session could start with a new mission, very serialized a la a TV show.

Yeah I could do that, but some mini adventures as part of a campaign can span over multiple sessions, so I'd still want to be able to drop characters in and out adhoc.

For something like PotA, it's kind of rough, but perhaps them being part of a even something like a caravan, a mobile home base as it were, and then they could be off resting or recuperating at the caravan, allowing drop-outs mid stream.

I will be doing this anyway, so at least have that as an option. Which will work well to a degree.

Diarrhea. That's the ticket. Bad curry, or stagnant water.

Heh, yeah that's the alternative...

 

[bedir than]

It's sometimes convenient to have a Barbarian that Frenzies too much. Dropping them out of a session is rather easy, as they are busy recovering their levels of exhaustion.