It's what he would have wanted!

It's one of those little issues relatively particular to roleplay groups; How many players have to be missing for the group not to play?

For us the rule of thumb is that if two or more of our number can't make it then we scrub the session, maybe just cracking out a board or card game.

A couple of weeks ago lurgy and work commitments meant that we scrubbed. This week Charlie had the lurgy but everyone else was good to go so we got the session in.

Looking to finish off the Deadlands intro scenario we've been playing through I ended up "looking after" Chaz's character Doc Lightning; mad engineer with lightening gun and voices in his head!

Something of a responsibility that I'm sure that many of us have shoulder over the sessions and once the standard "first through the doors" and wind up texts had been dealt with it was down to business. In all honesty it wasn't too difficult a task as we've all been playing together long enough to know each others' default responses and traits fairly well.

This, quite obviously, hasn't always been the case and I'm sure that any group would work to manage the situation as best as they can. We always look to minimise the use of a missing character. Thankfully I've never been in a group where someone's missed a session only to return to find their character horribly messed up. Again, a decision for each group to take themselves.

Picking the adventure thread back up we went back to chasing after our recently identified sabatoeur abnd after almost commiting the ultimate sin of SPLITTING THE PARTY we spent a while employing investigative guile and intelligence. Not too much for me to cover there really :)

Moving on to the final showdown things got a bit busier for me, especially as we each  suddenly had an ally / hired hand type to look after. So that's Doc Lightning and TWO blatant red shirtsto look after then....
Temptation or what!?

Aforementioned showdown involved a horde-ette of zombie lumberjacks around a cart-load of high flammable ghost-rock. So....acting as Doc L / Charlie would have I lightning-blasted said cart-load of high flammable ghost-rock at the earliest opportunity.

The result was, without a SINGLE roll made by the DM, the horses pulling said cart-load of high flammable ghost-rock spooked careering into the forest which spontaneously set itself alight. More importantly this was all a result of Doc L / Charlie's action, or what would have been, so wasn't MY fault in the slightest. It also gave me something to do while may character took a photo of the action and then ran off for help.........heroically :)

Elsewhere, we took care of the zombies and marshalled the un-undead lumberjacks to cut enough fire-breaks to prevent the CLEARING OF EVIL being touched, which would have released the evil spirit, before the Weird West MIB turned up to designate the whole wood a national park and protected from logging.

The 'Injuns will be pleased!