I don’t have a fun and entertaining way, but I wanted to put in two cents anyway. My husband DMs frequently, and regularly has players miss sessions. Life gets in the way, whatever, no biggie. He always explains players being gone as a story that is told long after it happened - different people remember things slightly differently, sometimes they remember certain important figures being there and sometimes they don’t. They might even argue about it, ten years down the line. To him, every session is just another chapter in a story, told by imperfect people with imperfect memories.

I couldn’t upvote or comment until I added a lemmy.world account. Now it seems like I can upvote and comment from my Beehaw account? Definitely strange, but the app is clearly in development, so hopefully that’s an issue that gets ironed out quickly.