Elven Ear Fungus

or... I can't make the game tonight.

Life of the Party

What do you do when a player can't make a gaming session? We have a tight group of gamers in our campaign and everyone makes an effort to show up on Monday nights. But every so often someone is going to be out of town, sick, or the boss says they are needed for the evening shift.

The first time it happened our game master said, "No problem. Hemorrhoidus has come down with dysentery and is confined to his bed and nearby chamber pot" and we played on without him. Although dysentery is a common illness in the fantasy world, it does get tiresome to give the same disease to all the players again and again. So here are a few others we've come up with.

Pneumonia. One character developed a bad cough after being exposed to toxic smoke in one week's adventure. He was absent the next week so we gave him pneumonia and had him suffer the woeful medical skills of the local barber who tried to cure him with leeches and bleeding the poor man.

Wrong time of the month. One of our PCs is a female archer and thief. She found herself out of sorts. (Maybe this was payback to my son for shooting my character in the back.)

Hang nail. We claimed that the character, our healer, was with us, but he stayed in a tent outside this tower we were exploring. That hang nail was difficult because we used it as an excuse for two straight weeks while the player was out of town.

And lastly... Elven Ear Fungus. We have two players who play elves. They were both absent last week so I got creative. Here are the details from the journal I keep on the game.

Elven Ear Fungus is a highly contagious disease, but fortunately, only to elves. It consists of colorfully red fungus that implants itself in the ear canals of its host and drawing nutrients from it. As it fully develops in two to three weeks’ time, it covers the ears completely creating a large puff ball with a particularly foul odor that attracts insects to break it, releasing its spores. During that time the patient is nearly deaf. Tincture of Diazinon is the only successful treatment. If caught early enough, four drops of the tincture in each ear twice a day for a week will prevent the puffballs from forming. The remains of the fungus will dry up and can be removed with irrigation.

So what do you do to liven up the absence of a player?