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It mostly comes down to communication. Both for practical matters (to allow for planning around your absence), and for social ones (letting the other people in the group know you aren't a flake). Tell the GM ahead of time that you will likely be unreliable, and why. Details aren't necessary, but a cursory explanation is polite. When a specific instance of ...

My girlfriend and I have played 4E D&D and she is completely blind. Here are some of the things I did to help her out: I obtained a PDF copy of the rules and copy/pasted enough of it so she could print enough of the core rules out in Braille. I also made a plain character sheet for her as well that was also printable in Braille. I bought her a set of ...

I am a legally blind 4E D&D player and DM. I have been playing for many, many a decade now. I have utilized several different approaches over the years. • For dice: If the blind person has access to speech synthesizer software on a laptop, mobile device or other electronic medium, there are all kinds of compatible applications available. Mach Dice on ...

Here's some advice I'd give, based on what unreliable players in my group do and don't do: Pick a support role, but not one that's necessary; avoid being the headliner. Let people know you're not going to make it to every meeting, and when the GM announces the times of a meeting or puts out a theorized potential meeting time, let them know whether or not ...

I'm going to take the contrarian point here: If you're still designing elements for the game, a playtest is the wrong choice See a much better written explanation here: You need to stop playtesting. It's not just that you're doing it wrong, it's that you're doing it wrong in ways that hurt your games. Furthermore, by promoting a culture of design in ...

Play a character with a split personality. Keep one of the personalities for yourself (this would be active when you can be present at the session), give full control of the other (the "NPC", surfacing when you're not there) to the DM. Watch weird adventures and consequences unfold. ;) As always, your DM has to approve this. (We had three unreliable ...

Put them in their place: Tell them to try and focus, to calm down and play the game - what you described that they do ruins the fun for everyone not aboard the 'silly train', not to mention the GM loses interest in the game and might stop running it. No point in gathering and playing if not everyone is having fun. Raise your voice if you have to. (not in an ...

You can run limited-scope tests as long as you let your playtesters know that everything won't be available, consistent or reliable until you sort things out. All you need is the part you intend to test, and that does not even have to be written down. You may even test things like different dice mechanics, switching between alternatives on the run. You just ...

Solution 1: Harlequin Have an extra player play NPC's. At start of scene, give them a card with their goals for the scene, and the NPC's sheet. If needed, give them also some information about what that character knows about the bigger picture. (But note that what they know may or may not be true.) Solution 2: Expand the structure to 2+ Teams Split the ...

When deciding whether to playtest, the two options I usually consider are: 1) Can I in fact learn the thing I hope to learn from playtesting what I have? 2) What can I learn from playtesting what I have, and is that valuable to me right now? For me, the answer to one of those usually turns out to be "yes". Then I go playtest, get surprised by a lot of ...

The big things I can think of off the top of my head that you need to be ready to playtest are: 1) The mechanical ways a character is defined and made distinct, PC and NPC (stats, attributes, moves, whatever method for doing this you've chosen) 2) A mechanism to resolve conflict, PC-NPC and PC-PC (physical fighting, potentially also social conflicts) 3) A ...

Note that role playing games are an opportunity to be someone you aren't in real life, so I wouldn't even suggest this to someone unless your are confident they would have fun. Physical game mechanics aside - depending on how comfortable the player is with his or her disability, you could try having them play a character that has the same disability. It ...

Our group scattered all over a couple years ago, but we've kept playing through free tools such as Gametable and VirtualDaivve (very similar but the latter is more geared towards 4.0) with a simple wiki for group visible documents. Some sort of voice chat (Vent, Skype, ...etc) is a must, as it allows you to still have those moments of random ...

You'll notice in TV show that all characters have complementary skills, personalities and specific roles. They don't always get along with each other, but nobody is only "the second fighter". If you take a TV show with 2 main character and you want to create a campaign around it for 4 players, look at the two main character and identify their skills, ...

The biggest and most obvious problem is players abusing their temporary characters - taking big risks, for example, or using up valuable items. In magic settings they might cast a lot of magic that ages the caster or otherwise can cause long-term problems for characters. You would need to be prepared for players being slightly less careful with their ...

I would recommend deciding on the core mechanic, and writing it down as precisely as possible. I've found that the simple edits can be discovered while writing/typing it out. Also, once they are documented you can share them in a much more consistent format. PS: You might want to visit rpggeek.com because from what I understand, they have forums dedicated ...

Scene Budgets are a mechanic used in Burning Empires to enforce equal access to scenes. Each character gets to participate in a fixed number of scenes per "session". The GM also gets a budget of scenes. The player frames the scene, and may invite other PCs and significant NPCs; the PCs may opt not to participate. Further, the scene budget system limits how ...

First, you have to realize the players are not being obstreperous for the heck of it. If they are presented with a goal that in their mind justifies mass murder (and in an RPG, don't most of them?), and there is a way presented to them of accomplishing it without risking themselves, then they'll take it. In this case I'm not sure they're deliberately setting ...

Bite whatever hook the GM is giving you. Even if you have other ideas, come up with an in character idea why whatever the GM is pushing is the way to go. Then try and convince your party. This will help communicate to the GM that he's still got some control over the game. That alone may be enough to let him save face and continue playing. If it's not ...

Apart from everything else, make it easy and comfortable for them to get to the place where you play. Check if there are any foods they can't eat: a celiac can't eat gluten, so no bread, cookies, pizza, etc. I suppose a lactose intolerant guy can't eat cheese, so that would mean no pizza either. If the disability is blindness, taking a narrative approach ...

Google hangouts with the tabletop forge app has been a tremendous boon to the group that is playing here on the stack. Hangouts is great in that those that want to use video can, and it works with even the worst internet connections (I have about the worst broadband speed possible and the connection quality is pretty solid) Tabletop forge allows you to add ...

I'm not sure this method counts because it's game system agnostic, but it could still be described as a system. Here's how I do it. When I'm prepping the game I make sure that each session includes a scene for each character where that character gets to be in the spotlight. In my notes I actually keep a page with some outlines of ideas and next to each ...

This can be a tricky thing, if a group is used to a certain playing style, for example following quests along a more or less straight plotline in which the next step is somehow obvious and usually agrees on using violence with slightly hostile characters it may be difficult to transform that group to a more open environment where the player's decision is as ...

There are many mechanisms used to encourage sharing-the-stage in groups. Probably one of the oldest is the native American tradition of the Talking Circle/Talking Stick wikipedia and some modern forms team mascot, ancient tool. I have heard of this approach for some groups - sometimes a small boon is granted by giving up the "stick", other times the GM moves ...

Another option is the judicious use of the retcon. In a Deathwatch game I'm playing at the moment, we have a few players who can't make it to every session and we often don't know until the evening of the game who might or might not turn up. Since Deathwatch is heavily mission based and all marines are expected to be very close by each other at all times, ...

I had a similar question some time back. One of my players was at a distance for some time, but he is back now. While he was away we still wanted to play, so I asked what tools were available to run a virtual table top game. The answers from this group there might help you. Software VTT question

A number of games require players to choose archetypes, classes or areas of specialisation for their characters. Then, because certain situations that arise in-game require particular talents, abilities or social roles only posessed by one of those archetypes, the player whose character posesses that archetype comes to the fore. Admittedly, while such ...

I have never tried this transition from the player side, but I have done it once as a GM. The first thing, is to make sure there is interest. If most of the other players are not interested in play by post, then it is probably best to move on or start a "spin-off" with those that are. If you know there is interest, then you need to get consensus on how ...

Barring Player abuse/misuse as @Dakeyras describes I would see the biggest pitfall being that players will not know how to play the other player's characters to the fullest. Even if they can simulate the roleplay style of that character picking up a new player sheet that they had no input in creating may lead them to taking very long terms, making simple ...

I think you could achieve the fun with a slightly different take. Do a mind swap - so one character takes on the body and abilities of a different character and "encourage" them to pretend to be the character they have been swapped into. How you do this will be different for different games. Some, like Mutants and Masterminds would be straight-up changes ...