The On-Call Player
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 03:37PM If you subscribe to J4’s roleplayingtips.com e-zine (and if you like tabletop RPGs, you really should) you’ll have already seen my featured tip on the on-call player, and why it’s awesome to have one for your game.
An on-call player is a backup player that can fill a vacated session slot, ensuring that your game continues to hum along even when one or more of your “primaries” can’t make it to the session.
If your on-call player can’t make it, no problem—the session wasn’t really hinged on them showing up anyway. But as J4 points out in the article, you’ll probably find that your on-call player will become a regular face at the table as there’s almost always something from RL that can keep one of your primary players from making the game.
In short, having an on-call player helps ensure that everyone gets to game more often, which is a big win.
U20 is Still Looking to Hire Artists
Know someone who can draw monsters, maps, comics, and/or scenes of battle? Know someone who wants to practice their craft, get published, and earn some money? Direct them here, or have them email me directly at rpg_ike@unnatural20.com.
If you can draw this I want to hook up!
Critters on the Way to the Crate
We’ve got four critters in the works right now as we hope to fill out a few missing niches in 4E and just provide some cool new character options in 3E. Look for them starting later this week. I hope you like krakens, dogmen, and giant psychic avatars... :)
on-call player in About Unnatural20, fluff/inspiration 
Reader Comments (2)
I feel like some of my permanent players are basically on-call players. It's a sad fact of life that as more of the players at my table have kids and get better jobs their time has become more valuable and it's tougher to get them to come to the game table regularly. I think I need to find some on-call players to fall back on so that I can maintain my gaming fix.
I hear ya, Ameron. It occured to me that the on-call player idea is just a way of managing your player expectations, which I think is the real meat of what's behind having someone you can call on to fill a seat at your gaming table. It sounds a little insensitive, maybe, to want that option, but the goal is always fun, right? If we can be open about our expectations and needs when it comes to our free time, then on-call players are awesome.
Unfortunately, it would be far less of an ideal situation to have a whole group that feels like they don't need to make it to the table whenever anything comes up, but that sort of player probably isn't into the game enough in the first place to be really dependable...
*sighs*
I guess the lesson is, if you find a great player or DM who you like playing with, do everything you can to keep them happy. Even then, you can't always compete with RL. Thems are the breaks.
Bleh. Tangents. Thanks for dropping by, and good luck finding those perfect players! :)