We had our second play session last night and got to test out “how DW works with A player missing” (one of the reasons I switched from MHRPG and WFRP was that one of the three players in our group often cannot make it, and too-complex games fall over because the other two players are novices, gaming wise)
Short answer: it’s okay.
The character driven narrative both benefitted and suffered as the two remaining players got a chance to shine a bit more. Barbazar’s player is more than a little larger than life and his playing style is quite, umm, expressive (he’s banned from playing bards or any other class that sings as he himself will burst into song with zero provocation) and his absence i reckon helped the other players get a bit more into character.
It fell to me to shadow-play the character which on top of being DM and GM and notewriting and so on was a bit more of a push than it’s been when we’ve played games like pathfinder and dnd.
Still, rooms were cleared, goblins slain, and more of the mystery of the Forest Temple Ruin was uncovered. Again we recorded the session, I’ll link the uploaded files when I’m home and off this bloody phone.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7FQWMeQsN2Keklkd1FYdk1wVXM/edit?usp=sharing
and part two
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7FQWMeQsN2KV3ozc1RCNEtCcFk/edit?usp=sharing
aha. issue corrected and those files should be accessible now.
well kind of. its not as super-easy to work round a no show player as say PF or DnD3e as the game is much more character driven.
but its nowhere as tricky to work round as something like, say, WFRP (oh, the cards… the tokens….) or 6D6, or MHRPG….