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So my group suffered the dreaded schism known as "schedule drift". We've twisted, plotted, and contorted our schedules in every direction and method known to man, and a few we invented on the spot, and we just can't get 5 guys in the same location at the same time. We can get 4 though, and that's what we're settling for during the next couple months. We were trying to figure out what game to play during this time, and since the 1 guy who won't be joining us is the Alternity GM and the Johnson in the Shadowrun game, we can't do those.

Twenty emails later, we still couldn't decide on a game. There was one we had hanging, but one of the guys wasn't a part of that one, and we were in the middle of some heavy stuff, so it wouldn't make sense for him to just fall from the ceiling, ready to go. I winced, and mentioned that I could start my Ravenloft game back up. Unfortunately, everyone jumped at the idea. It's a paradox: I hate DMing, but my players love my games. :(

Anyway, to get on with the point. I left my players at a convenient stopping point. The campaign was over, they accomplished their goals, and the threat was gone for the time being. Perfect place to start over fresh from. One problem; the guy who can't make it (from above) was going to be the major plot point, as he has a curse upon his family he's trying to remedy, and it's time sensitive.

Now, I think he has years, at least a couple left still on the curse, so he's got time to be out of it, but the other players did just tell him they'd help him with it, so it would be odd for him to wander off by himself and them go on their merry way.

What I was thinking I might do is have them "flash forward", but a level or two under their belts to represent that they dealt with his issue, and have them dealing with some new horror. Then whenever our other guy can finally join us again, I just have them flashback to that point in time over a campfire "remember back when we help Svinsky out that one time..." story.

I want input on how good an idea that is though. How would you handle it? Do you have a better idea?

I've been apart of something like that.

It requires very careful planning on the GM's side. You have to make sure than any major plot points are accounted for and that the "in between" quest doesn't over or under level them.

You have to make sure the quest with the 4 guys takes place on a differnt part of the world to avoid anything they might change when you do the "in between" quest.

The bright side of this is you can use stuff that happens to model the "in between" quest on. and If are really good you can drop hints with the 4 players and have those get resolved when the 5th joins you.

Good luck

Make his disappearance part of the plot point. They recieve a letter from him saying that something has changed and the timeline isn't right, that fate is shifting and that things are spiraling out of control.

Eventually have the party find his character dead (or is he? dun dun DUUUUN Let the player know you will fake his death ahead of time and have him play along if needed). They have to set destiny and fate back in order in order to save their friend and the world from an even worse fate. Have it be something simple like a farmer accidentally found an artifact so that it can be tied up by the time he gets to come around, but also explains his disappearance.

They reset the timeline and you resume as normal with an extra level or two and everyone ready to go.

Oooh, that's good. That's really good. That also prevents some sort of "Bill and Ted" scenario with time-warping back and forth.

Thanks, you gave me something to really think about.

What part of Ravenloft are you running? It's probably my favourite setting (planescape gets edged out and Ptolus is a runner up).

As to solutions, Ahtman said what I was going to but made it cooler with the Bill and Ted suggestion.

I did something like that in my Eberron game. The party were all family members (or family employees) except for one guy who was a buddy of the eldest brother from the War.
I TPK'd the party, except for that one guy, who was a Binder, and made some crazy deal to go back and fix it all. He got quantum leaped into the body of their nanny, and had to prevent that future from happening.

It was madcap, but we managed to not detonate the continuity and actually tie in the "back in time" once off to the overall plot very neatly. It's still fondly remembered by all involved.

Well, they were just in Dementlieu, which is one of my favorite domains in Ravenloft, but it's likely they're going to be traveling soon. I threated the Falkovnia expat with possibly having to go back. That should be fun times.

I started thinking about it more, and I recalled that I started the first game in this campaign with a group hallucination between the two players I had at the time, where they were joining other people and charging up a tower to save a woman who was about to be sacrificed. The cultists in the tower killed her before the players could do anything about it, and then attacked and killed the two of them.

They woke up afterwards, unharmed and lying in the middle of a field. There was grass trampled down around where they had been running "up the tower".

The primary focus of the game was to figure out what was the deal with the dream, and, if possible, to stop what they saw from ever happening.

So, in a way, I guess I've already done some stuff with time travel/predicting the future; I'm just trying to figure out if doing it more is thematic or contrived at this point. The biggest reason why I did it last time was because the players hadn't met each other yet, and I figured that'd be the surest way of forcing them into a situation where they needed to work together, especially if they both experienced it at the same time.