Is It Okay To Split The Party?
Written by c
July 29, 2010
9 Comments
I started a thread on the Paizo forums about my recent articles on romance in RPGs, and a conversation developed on the issue of the amount of time that needs to be spent with just one or two players to play out a romance. The conversation took a slight tangent, veering toward the question of whether the party should be split to deal with any individual story (not just a romantic one). Some were of the belief that the party should be split as little as possible, and when it is, the roleplaying should be brief and not overly detailed, so as to bring the party back together in quick order. Others felt that splitting the party is a necessary part of the game that adds realism, and makes more sense than all eight adventurers sticking together at all times.
Whether it’s a flirtatious scene between the sorcerer and a local noble, a recon mission by the rogue, or a diplomatic visit by the paladin, something happens in almost every game session that doesn’t truly need the whole party’s involvement.
Should you split the party? I say yes.
You Go That Way, I’ll Go This Way
Say you and a group of your friends pile into your Mystery Machine van and head to the big mall a few hours’ drive away. During your travel time, you stick together. One person drives, one or two people read the map and help with road signs. If one person has to pee, the whole group stops and takes advantage of the opportunity to stretch their legs and buy another bag of Corn Nuts.
When you get to the mall, if two of your friends want to go to Hot Topic, do the rest of you go even if you don’t want to? Probably not. But does that mean the rest of you tell them to hurry up, and just sit idly in the food court, wait for them to come back, and then let the next two go off to do what they want? No way! A few of you head off to Barnes & Noble, a couple go to the music store, and the rest go to buy shoes. You agree to meet back in the food court for lunch. If the two who went to the music store are late getting back, you might start to worry and go looking for them.
Let’s go back to the game table. When your party is traveling, it makes sense for them to stick together. Sure, the ranger and the rogue may scout ahead, or they may go off on their own to hunt, but for the most part, everyone keeps everyone else in range of sight. But once you’ve reached your destination, the characters don’t need to remain attached at the hip. If the cleric wants to check in at the local temple, the others don’t have to follow her, but that doesn’t mean they have to sit and twiddle their thumbs at the inn, either.
As a GM, it’s your responsibility to make sure no one just sits at the table with nothing to do. If the cleric announces her intent to go to the temple, and the fighter chimes in that she’ll go there too, turn to the other players and ask, “And what are you guys doing while they go to the temple?” Once you’ve established where everyone’s headed, focus in on one player or group of players and work with them. Keep an eye on the rest of the table. If anyone is starting to look bored/fidgety/frustrated, tell the ones you’re working with, “Alright, let’s hold there,” turn to the next group, and play with them for a while. Then move to the next pair of players, and repeat as needed. Yes, this means you have to switch gears a lot, but it also means you keep everyone involved and on their toes. It also means there’s less of a “hurry up” factor. If a specific scene or encounter is taking a while, you can find a nice place to pause and move to the next sub-group instead of rushing things. More things get accomplished, because the characters are doing their tasks simultaneously, and can then all regroup and report in.
As a player, it’s your responsibility to entertain or occupy yourself while other players have the GM’s focus. You can watch and listen to what’s going on with the other characters, but if you worry about learning things your character shouldn’t know, turn your attention to something else. You’ve already declared what your character is going to be doing, so be prepared for your turn with the GM. If another PC is going to be with your character, you and that player can (quietly) discuss your plan of action, IC if you wish. Take advantage of the downtime to plan out what feats and spells you’ll take when you level up next time. You can even bring a book or a knitting project along in case the downtime is long, just don’t get so engrossed that you can’t get back in your character’s mindset.
Play Nice!
The world would be a better place if everyone followed the Wil Wheaton Rule: Don’t be a dick. That applies here too.
GMs should be careful to not let one sub-group of players dominate the entire game session. That’s not fair to the others at the table. Also, don’t be a hardass and insist that the other players just sit and look while your attention is focused elsewhere. So long as they’re not being disruptive, and are ready to roll when you turn to them, let them do something to occupy themselves.
Players should be respectful of the fact that others are involved with something, even if they’re not. Don’t make loud phone calls or crank your iPod up to 11. Don’t sigh dramatically and drum your fingers on the table because you think it’s taking too long for the GM to get to you. I know you want to kick some ass right now, but have patience – your turn will come.
Sometimes, Bad Things ™ happen when the party is split. The wizards find themselves in a nasty bar fight, while the rest of the party is blissfully unaware at another tavern across town. Wouldn’t it have been better for the whole party to have stuck together? Maybe. Maybe not. True, if all of the party members had walked into that bar as a united front, the thugs from the corner table might have reconsidered starting a brawl. But, a large group of well-armed adventurers may not have seemed as friendly to the bartender, who was happy to tell the “harmless” pair of spellcasters where the head of the local merchants’ guild lives, and that the rumors that he’s keeping slaves are the gods-honest truth. Roleplaying opportunities would have been lost, and information would not have been gained.
Don’t be afraid to split the party. It may make a little more work for the GM and a little more downtime for the players, but overall it will benefit the game.
What methods do you use for splitting the party?
By day, Connie Thomson (aka Ariel Manx) is a mild-mannered shoe salesgirl, geeking out about insoles, outsoles, and shanks. But when night falls, she takes her turn at the helm of 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, where she writes, edits, and does layout for table-top RPG products. Regardless of her persona, C is always a fangirl, bookworm, and craft diva. (Email C or follow @arielmanx on Twitter.)
I’m a big believer in everybody taking turns in order, so splitting up the party is pretty much no different from what happens if the party is together. Everyone gets a turn, every time we go around the room.
Now this doesn’t mean that it can’t be dangerous to characters to split the party, just that it doesn’t affect Player’s relative amounts of game time
The number one argument against splitting the party I usually hear is that it leads to too much potential danger for one of the sub-groups of the party. In my experience as a GM, that is frequently true. However, I am not going to stop the players and say, “You shouldn’t go in that tavern unless all of the characters are present.” If 3 of the PCs go in the tavern and get their butts handed to them on a silver platter, then so be it.
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When you get to the mall, if two of your friends want to go to Hot Topic, do the rest of you go even if you don’t want to?
It is not a crime to go into stores you wouldn’t shop at together! Solidarity! Windowshopping! Besides, you never know when you’ll find something good that you wouldn’t have known was there, if you didn’t go in and look.
If my players split up I tend to summarize part of what they do and let them play out the significant part. Using your own example, if two players go to hot topic I describe what it looks like, the atmosphere and that they’re fitting the clothes while talking to a friendly shopassistant who loves to gossip. Knowing my party, the clothes will be almost forgotten and only mentioned in between while they try to get some useful rumours from the shopassistant. And that saves me and the other two players about half an hour of shopping. Then we switch to the other two who are likely to go to the book store.
I agree with the possible extra danger for the subgroups Robert mentioned though. In one small session with just the druid and the rogue (not with me DMing though) they both nearly died because the druid thought the DM ‘wouldn’t let us die anyway without the whole party present’ and didn’t use his healing spells. But that probably has more to do with the fact that both players thought their PC’s were invincible.
When it’s possible and what they’re going to do is more significant for the player (or 2 players) than the rest of the group I tend to do a small session in between the big sessions with just the two of them. This way I can also easily give the one player some information the rest of the group doesn’t have. Or each one a different rumour concerning the same thing. Since we play online, it’s rather easy to find a spare hour inbetween to play it out.
My group splits up frequently. When we did a nautical campaign, it made sense for the characters to go different routes when we hit port (captain buying supplies and hiring new crew, wizard buying new scrolls so he can add the spells to his spellbook, ranger replacing his deceased animal companion again, swashbuckler buying flowers, druid communing with nature and trying to kill the warmage NPC, etc).
Unfortunately, that mentality is ingrained in our group now even though we’re in a dungeon crawl in a place known as Mt Thanatos. We had. The rouge/assassin slips out a side door the middle of the fight, the ranger wanders off in a daze mourning the death of her animal companion, the dragon shaman tries to use his breath weapon to break down the door so he can go back to town for more supplies, the beguiler hunts for traps in the main room, and the fighter (group newbie) just sits there and shakes his head. The bard had already died of a heart attack/missing character sheet.
It’s fine to split the party, just put reasonable limits on it.
@frijoles_jr – And I bet if your players are used to you going around the table, talking to them in turn, you don’t have to deal with them all talking at you at once! (at least not as often
)
@Robert – Hey, there were 4 of us, and my character’s butt was still firmly attached when we finally decided to run!
@Kensan_Oni – No, it’s not a crime to go into a store you don’t care for, but I think you missed my point.
What I’m saying is that your entire adventuring party doesn’t have to remain attached at the hip like a gaggle of teenage girls at the mall. Unless they really want to.
@Pixiedragon – The “my character is invincible” mindset is a dangerous one, and it often causes trouble when the party is split. For that reason, I think it’s sometimes good for those Bad Things to happen, as a reminder that hey, you may be a big fish, but there’s always a bigger fish. That’s not to say that it should be intentional (“OK, they’ve split up, I’ll spring these assassins on them!”) but if it happens, and it serves them a piece of humble pie, so be it.
@Jordan – While I didn’t specifically address splitting the party within a dungeon in my post, for the most part I think that’s a bad place to split the party, at least to the degree of everyone going off in their own direction. Dungeons are usually designed to need the whole party working together to get through. At most I would split a party in half in a dungeon – one to explore each fork of an intersection, maybe – and then have them meet back up in short order. Bad Things always happen in dungeons, and you do want safety in numbers!
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As a GM I personally like splitting up the party, it lets me hit people with challenges that simply wouldn’t be one if the whole group was there. It also lets you focus on the character, and really gives the player the sense that they had time in the spotlight. After all, they had one on one GM attention for a bit.
The trick to it, in my experience, is time management. Like you said in the post, you need to (as the GM) keep an eye on the other players and gauge when you need to switch gears and scenes. Generally speaking I try to use a 5 minute rule. 5 minutes of one on one can get a lot done, and gives me a hard time frame for jumping groups. I’ll also jump faster if the player is given a big decision, or any time the player’s brain stalls to think. This works as a double nicety as it gives the player time to think while keeping the game moving along at a good clip.
As a player, you need to recognize that everyone deserves a shot at the spotlight. If they sit back when they are given the chance that is one thing, but don’t try to hog the GMs time when they are switching groups. If the GM missed you, point it out, but don’t be rude. Don’t try to over-run the other players for your time to shine. If you really want more time on screen, give your character a reason to stick with other people so that the GM has more draw to go to you (more people = good use of GM time).
I ran a game once where the party was only a party in the barest sense of the word. A sci fi campaign where two people played infantry, 2 people played pilots, one person played a ship engineer, and the sixth played a civilian scientific consultant. It was a great exercise in time management, and it was really interesting that IC wise half the table had no clue the other half even existed aside from in the barest sense of the word. Was good times, at least until the school year ended and no one had the time to continue the following semester.
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@c: Yes, dungeons are a very bad place to split the party. We seem to be playing like characters in a horror movie that are not genre savvy with the added benefit of party members trying to kill each other. We’re not playing smart, but it’s been entertaining to say the least.
Note: When party members fight, Paizo’s Critical Hit Deck is not always a good idea.
@A.L. – All good points! And very true about how focusing on a player (or small group of players) gives the others time to think. I do that a lot.
@Jordan – Oooo, yeah, the critical hit deck would not be good for in-party fighting. It’s bad enough when a sellsword cuts off your arm, but the fighter who’s supposed to be on your side? Oof.
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