Greetings Elegan/tg/entlemen
Let's talk about party splitting.
Is there any way to make it work, or make it interesting?
Is it always going to be a boring mess?
Anyone here managed to do one without boring half of the table to death while following the other half?
Disclaimer
> I'm talking about live sessions around a table
> Solid group of friends, but other experiences and stories are of course welcome
Thanks in advance
Unless you actually split the game into separate sessions (or the people who aren't currently playing have something else to do), it's always going to be a case of half the people sitting around twiddling their thumbs. There are things you can do to make this better or worse, but ultimately everybody is involved in the game only about half as much, so at best you're looking at damage control.
Any tips on damage control, or about the things you can do to make it better?
Or your experiences, even
>alright X Y and Z, you guys stay at the table. A and B, my xbox is in the bedroom. Knock yourselves out.
Doing something akin to this is the best option IMO. It lets the other players have fun while waiting for their turn, effectively eliminating the boredom that sours the session - and may also potentially add an element of secrecy between the individual members: perhaps there are things that happen during the split that A and B would rather keep from the others..?
XYZ* not A and B in the last part
Avoid breaking up the group when you can. The players should be a part of this, preferring actions that will keep the party together. (Metagaming for the good of the game as a whole is a good thing.)
If the group does break up, trying to provide opportunities for it to join back together as soon as possible, at least in terms of actual play time. In order to achieve this, you may want to fast forward through or skip past events you might otherwise play in detail, summarizing to keep this quick.
Otherwise, I'd say that you want to find the proper amount of time to spend with one group before switching to the other. This can vary depending on the circumstances. If you're going to spend a decently long time with one group, let the other group take a twenty to thirty minute break, smoking, eating, or just hanging out outside or something, so they're not just sitting there bored. Otherwise -- and this is something you really have to feel out -- I'd think that 10 to 15 minutes with one group seems about right. They need enough time to sink into character and get shit done, but not so much time that the other group starts getting bored and zoning out.
Battles, of course, are going to tend to fall into the longer "take a break, guys" category.
I DMed an all rogue campaign so this happened a lot (would get a job tip from someone and they would all split up to try and get it done for a big payout without having to share the payout). This was kind of stressful on me because it was literally my first campaign DMing, but a more experienced person could probably make it work.
I basically gave each person a set number of actions they could do, so like 3-5 depending on what all they were doing (sneaking, speaking to someone, interacting with something, etc). I would stretch it a little longer if the player didn't get many events (like if they used all their actions on moving silently) or shorten it if they got stuff done (interrogate someone, spying). It didn't work perfectly all the time, but I didn't have people sitting on the sidelines for an hour. Once I got a little better, I would have them end up meeting up by accident anyway.
Bump for interest
A lot of bad advice here. Splitting the party is fine you just have to juggle between them frequently. If you want to see it done right suffer through Dice, Camera, Action! because Perkins splits the group all the time to weaken them.
The basic move is work with a group until they either shit a brick or are indecisive about something. Then swap to another group for the same pace. You shouldn't be spending more than 10-15 minutes on a split party group ever, even if they get into combat you should be breaking the combat to go to the other group for a bit. It gives players that don't know what to do time to plan, and the action is paced enough that everyone is listening in and can't wander off too far.
Use callers. You should use callers regardless of whether the party has split.
Democracy picks a caller, they make all group decisions.
If can make character decisions too, but players get veto rights for that.
Caller is free to ignore advice, the group is free to vote a new caller.
Yous till end up with lots of discussion on what to do, but giving a random guy final say cuts out a disgust amount of time.
When the group splits, each sub-group elects a caller.
Handle what one group does while the other group is discussing. If both groups are waiting, request a quick decision.
It's worse than twice as slow as using a caller for a single group, but it's still /much/ faster than handling a single group without a caller.
>You should use callers regardless of whether the party has split.
I'm not sure about this.
I can understand that being an emergency situation I should use emergency measures, and try to do damage control until I have the party whole again - and specifically speed up things up to that.
I don't understand why the group should give up their agency to one member just to play faster. What if one is not the caller, has an objectively good/more interesting idea, but for any reason (especially metagame reasons) the caller ignores him/her and goes a worse way?
Yes, the caller can be elected again, sure. I'm not sure if I want my game sessions turned into ballots or popularity contests either, though. And given historical data, it's not a given that this is a reliable failsafe.
Thanks for the food for thought anyway, it was helpful.
If you're having your players split for shorter periods of time, do the Tenra Bansho Zero thing of letting other players jump in as minor NPCs or enemies. Takes a load off of you, gets everyone involved, and creates better and more enjoyable dialog between goons.
If it's going to be for a longer period of time, just host two different sessions.
What do you do when one group shits a brick or are indecisive about something less frequently than the other?
The smaller the party the easier it will be.
Whatever the case don't be that GM who forces the party to be together at all times no matter what. This is literally every "Sandbox" game I've ever fucking played.
It'll be a good learning experience for them.
>I don't understand why the group should give up their agency to one member just to play faster. What if one is not the caller, has an objectively good/more interesting idea, but for any reason (especially metagame reasons) the caller ignores him/her and goes a worse way?
Electing a caller doesn't mean you give up your agency, or that you can't speak up, suggest ideas, or say 'fuck that my character ain't doing that, fuck you guys'
But there doesn't need to be a session of congress held for every bullshit 'left or right' decision or a chorus of 'me toos' after every little thing.
>even if they get into combat you should be breaking the combat to go to the other group for a bit.
Fuck a whole lot of that. It's going to be awkward and people aren't going to retain what's going on as clearly. A fight should be covered in one go unless there's a naturally good point to cut away (a break in the action where the sides are temporarily unengaged for whatever reason), and even then I'd be hesitant. Just let the other guys know it's going to be a while, and they can go grab a bite to eat, or go into the other room and play video games or something.
My two recommendations:
1.) Prepare logical ways to disincline the party from splitting.
2.) "Roll initiative" to add structure and ensure pacing is equal between players.
Kept a steady pace, letting each group make just enough actions to feel they've done something and immediately switching to the next group. Even the party member who got left behind guarding stuff was included.
Moderated the party so nobody dawdled and kept a steady rhythm
>Group one, 2-4 minutes
>go to next, give them 2-3 minutes
>rinse and repeat
>but for any reason the caller ignores him/her and goes a worse way?
If they can't elect a new caller, they weren't going to get the idea through without a caller.
>'m not sure if I want my game sessions turned into ballots or popularity contests either
It won't devolve into that.
Unless the caller just shrugged off an argument, calling elections consistently goes nowhere.
If they do shrug off an argument, people considering an election have a pretty good sense of the votes.
>(especially metagame reasons)
You pause the game, and politely tell your players that having fun /together/ involves not being a cunt.
Kinda related:
I need a good way to handle some people not showing up.
Due to the way everyone's schedules work, we usually miss one or two people out of 7 players. I need a good way to handle their characters functionally not being played. The setting is decently packed with magic, and it's dnd 5e. I just can't keep stuffing them in plotholes, it breaks the story and immersion too much.
Please help me, tg?
Sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. No NPCs bat an eye.
It's less about the npcs and more about the other characters. It breaks up flow a lot as well.
Best way is to limit the campaign geographically and keep to self contained sessions. That way they can still be around but kept to the background.
The PCs have been cursed somehow and keep fading in and out of the ethereal plane / twilight realm / whatever. Or the adventure takes place in the dream realm and the PCs are periodically awake and therefore not present.
Or they're part of some adventurer's guild or larger team or something, and different groups of them go out on missions, but always return to home base and the larger group. If you need to drop a character in the middle of an adventure, he's teleported back to base for reasons (or perhaps summoned by the international leaders of the organization to which their local guild is just a part).
OP here.
Very simply, the camera portraying the action is not focused on them for the whole session.
They are still there and following the others, but nothing interesting at all happens to them.
Combat? They fight a surplus monster and they win when the party wins.
Social (or other kind of) encounter? They just shut up, or if the GM sees fit, they gives out ideas related to their character.
Very specific ability that is absolutely needed by the rest of the party? The character does his thing, and fades into background again.
That should be all.
So, if we have a caller and everyone is still perfectly able to take decisions and enact them freely, to the point of splitting the party, what's the point of having a caller at all?
There are occasionally things you can do to mitigate or even exploit a split party.
In a recent session of mine, the party were dealing with stuff in a town they'd conquered, when one PC decided to fly back to another town they'd conquered previously and do some stuff there. So I adjust on the fly, and tell them that a trade caravan shows up at town A, accompanied by a recurring NPC.
Simultaneously, a trade caravan shows up at town B, accompanied by the same recurring NPC.
*town A group* "He looks at you, nods, glances off to your right and nods again."
*town B group* "He looks off to your left, nods, then looks at you and nods to you."
The NPC proceeds to hold two conversations at once, one in town A and one in town B, with everything the NPC says being heard in both places. It was hilarious.
Given that two people talking at once turns into an incoherent mess, it's sort of already like 4 out of 5 PCs in a regular scenario aren't actively participating at any given time.
The trick is that the active participant rapidly changes, and all the players have something interesting to be thinking about while they are not the active participant.
Handling split groups is basically identical to handling a single group as a result. Make sure all the players have something interesting to be thinking about no matter whose "turn" it is, and make it so that you can rapidly switch who is the active participant.
In other words, switch between groups frequently and do so at a cliffhanger or point of indecision. Stuff like "you open the door and we'll find out what's behind that in a minute," (cliffhanger) or "while you decide whether to attack the ogre we'll see what the other group is up to," (indecision).
In other other words, basically got it.
When my party splits, I try to set it up in such a way that their actions have potential to impact on each other in some way, that way the players still have to listen to each other so they know what's going on (it's meta-gaming slightly, but it's a necessary evil I feel).
So for example, if the party splits while sneaking into a castle, and one player startles one of the servants, I'll have the servant scream loudly, alerting the other players that someone in the party has messed up and they need to change their strategy. That's when I switch over to the other players and ask them how they react to this new development.
A thing I'm going to do from now on, is run over things in less detail. Just figure out the general things the two groups do before they meet up again. Hopefully avoid long encounters.
Twice now I brought in a friend to DM one group while I kept going with the other. Of course, this requires some preparation, but I knew ahead of time that they'd have to split up. If it's unexpected or if you don't have friends it's a different thing though.
>If they can't elect a new caller, they weren't going to get the idea through without a caller.
And, if they can elect a caller, they are as well able to get the idea through, because they reached an agreement.
>If they do shrug off an argument, people considering an election have a pretty good sense of the votes.
So the guy with the good idea who's not the caller is fucked anyway and cannot unfuck himself. Apart from splitting the party of course, which OP is specifically trying to manage.
This has potential to raise all sorts of problems way more difficult to fix than a simple party split.
OP, give the party a couple npcs if possible, and make the splitting players play those npcs. This way you can bring the action forward and create suspance about the other PCs standing by.
You're always going to juggle attention, but at least you're keeping everyone involved, which is solving at least half the problem.
Same as when the whole group shits s brick- you bail them out in some fashion. Change things up, limit choices.
It's pretty clean to break at the end of initiative or before an enemy attack. It also gives an excuse to switch after something particularly bad or threatening.
Party splitting comes down solely to the party itself. If there are any new players at the table I will encourage them to stick with the group for obvious reasons, but it should really be up to members of the group to enforce this dynamic.
People aren't stupid, and know how much splitting the party can slow down progress. Ultimately the GM can only "carry on" and deal with the events as they unfold. A PC that spends the entire session circling the perimeter of a camp will normally deal with less encounters (and thus have less table interaction) than the rest of the party that strolled right though the front gate.
If your party decides to split you should keep the following things in mind and react accordingly.
>Is the party splitting due to some factor you have added into the game? For example Pursuing a thief and the party comes across a fork in the road.
In that case allow for them to split up and just be nice to them in terms of encounters.
>Is there a aspect of the plot that one part of the party will experience and the other will not?
Let them split players should be able to share information and I personally find players enjoy little secret things, it gives them something to go back and share with the group. If this plot thing ends in a encounter just give these players a opportunity to run and make the encounter for the rest of the party more difficult.
>Will one branch of the parties actions take longer than the others?
This can be a huger problem because you can end up with one or two players being left out of a entire game. The best way to deal with this is to not be afraid to cut one group off mid action to allow the rest of the group some shinanigans as well.
>Is one player going off on his own in the middle of a dungeon?
Punish that dumbass, especially if he doesn't tell anyone one he's doing it and is doing it out of greed. That isn't even DnD logic that's basic horror movie logic.
>okay, guys, please, don't do that. We want to have fun together, okay?
this
Players who split the party just make the game hard for the DM and diminish the fun everybody has
I dont think its the DMs job to allow their players everything.
At some point you have to tell them OOC that what they're doing is bad/disrupting the adventure
If the players have roleplay reasons to split the party and dramatic situations that cannot be solved otherwise, I see no problem in that.
I'd gladly allow them to split if it's more fun for everyone that way, and if I as GM have to do a little juggling, then fine.
>And, if they can elect a caller, they are as well able to get the idea through, because they reached an agreement.
Yes, and that particular instance of forcing an idea through takes the same amount of time with or without a caller.
But the vast majority of disagreements are handled much faster.
Suggestions that don't involve disagreements are much easier to push through, too.
It's easier to persuade one person than it is to persuade half a group.
>So the guy with the good idea who's not the caller is fucked anyway and cannot unfuck himself.
You seem to have misread that.
It doesn't say, "if the caller ignores an argument, your side doesn't hold the majority."
It says, "if you just had an argument, you know who is or isn't or your side."
It was a response to:
>I'm not sure if I want my game sessions turned into ballots or popularity contests either
A round-about way of telling , "you know how the votes will fall before asking for votes."
Phrasing that a bit differently, "the game doesn't bog down with elections called by people who don't have enough votes."
>Apart from splitting the party of course,
Not sure where you pulled that idea from? But speaking of cancerous levels of referee overhead,
>OP, give the party a couple npcs if possible, and make the splitting players play those npcs.
Apropos of nothing, you know that the caller only makes /group/ decisions, right?
If you want your individual character to do something, you're welcome to do it.
> let's fish for information all around the city, and let's do it together, no problem if our guy is going to get executed in a couple hours
This shit can be resolved by a couple of rolls and
>you get back together. PC A found out OP sucks cocks, PC B found out a wagon loaded up with dicks.
>why waste time for good xp grinding with roleplay and flavour? Go play a roleplay game!
nice checklist, I'll keep notes on this, thanks