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Sometimes a player will need to excuse themselves from a game for some unanticipated reason. While this is not ideal in terms of the game, there are sensible ways to handle it. Their character could be controlled by another (trusted) player, or by the GameMaster. Another possible option is to find some in-game reason why the character isn't participating in the action for a while - maybe they're wounded, or off shopping, or visiting parents.
The extreme case is to kill the character off. This actually works fine for Call of Cthulhu. Another option is to kill them off, and bring them back as if nothing had happened next session. This method would work just fine for Paranoia.
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Man, that sucks. It's tough getting everyone on the same page without a whole party meet-up and with similar play time/focus for all. And in this case... I don't know if I would have left early personally if I was Pete, but it would have been a close thing. It might be getting good for Sally, but Pete hasn't had any action and there's only so much commenting a person outside the game can do when your character doesn't practically exist yet. Pete can be kind of a jerk sometimes, but it seems like he's gotten the short end of the stick this session with no action and mismatched game expectations.
The group might do well to have a Session Zero of some kind, if even only a small one. There's been a couple other games this group has had where player expectations before the start of the game don't match up with how the GM or other players feel things should have gone (Ben's Batman game and Annie's vampire game for example). Session Zero, for those who haven't heard of that concept before, is essentially a short planning session where the overall details of a campaign are laid out, as well as expectations for party behavior and any rule changes that might be in place, at least for the start. Character building could occur in a session zero as well, though it wouldn't be necessary. This would be where things like determining if a campaign will be a "party vs party" type game or not, and what forms of PvP would be fine if accepted (minor stealing vs killing). The game can develop into different things later of course; Anakin's slow growth going down the path to the Dark Side is one great example. Anakin doesn't obviously turn on Obi-Wan when he's down, and Annie and Ben bring up the consequences that could result from it later and check that it's fine with the other.
And of course Poe is going to attack. Might as well since he's got a doom mark too, but the makeshift cannon would have been my choice to start with rather than a little blaster. In-movie, I wonder if Poe was spotted by Kylo and then he came out like the panels suggest, or if Poe was sneaking up to try and save Lor and was too slow. I guess that'll be something to learn in.... *checks archives for episode lengths* roughly 5 years when Episode IX of the comic is finished.
Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)
I wanted to make sure I knew what Stereoscopy was. Sadly, I did have to make a second version with minor changes.
Wikipedia goes into all sorts of details on it, the history, and many, many forms that it takes. It ranges from simple Viewmaster style "different pictures in front of different eyes", to Google Glass style of a different picture on the left side of the screen or the right side of the screen. It includes the red and cyan, or the green and orange 3-D glasses. It even includes some type of picture design (and this surprised me) that is designed to be viewed without glasses and trick your eyes, as well as images designed to be viewed cross-eyed.
But to see these images, you do have to look at them from both angles.
Ben is certainly willing to create a new character. So he is not upset with Sally, or at least is not appearing upset with Sally. Sally however, seems very upset with the fact that Pete left. So, with the group starting to disband for the night, she is wondering what they're supposed to do next.
The answer: The person who needs to stay in hiding, the person for whom a character just sacrificed their life to try to hide, to give Ren the impression that this hiding character was long gone, and they should just move out in force, and leave him behind undetected; the person who failed the Monty Python sketch about staying hidden reveals themselves and tries to attack. A blaster against a lightsaber-wielding Jedi. Err, Sith.
That sounds like it is doomed to fail. His position has been given away. Even if he somehow manages to surprise Sally and get a hit, there are still what, 100 troopers that will shoot him down?
Clearly, as someone pointed out in the forums, this is properly a correspondence to the opening scene of Episode IV, where the diplomatic cruiser was attacked and boarded, and only the droids got away. BB-8 appears to have fled. The two humans appear to be dead or about to die. The robot has the secret instructions, and can now flee off in the distance to some distant town, and meet Pete who will probably be playing another robot, R2-D2. So once again, R2-D2 and some human-attractive robot (this time going for cute instead of humanoid butler-ish) will have to wander off to find this person while the Imperial forces are trying to hunt down the robots.
So so far, I guess I was wrong. The parallels to the original trilogy are strong at this point.
Transcript
Pete: Look, it seems like it’ll be a while before my character is introduced, and I have a case to prepare for Monday. I’m going to head home early.
Kylo Ren: You’re piking out? Just when it’s getting good?!
Lor: {dead} Pete, it’s fine. I can make another character.
Pete: No, I really should go. Bye.
Lor: Well... I’ll go with you, now I’m dead anyway. We can finish that Iron Man stereoscopy discussion.
Pete: You’re definitely wrong; I drew that diagram.
Lor: It’ll have to be some diagram. Bye all, see you next week.
Pete: You need to look at it from both angles, man...
[SFX]: Door
Kylo Ren: Well, now what?
Poe: {leaping out from his hiding place} Attack!!!