Two, two games in one!!!

[MachMoth]

In my early days of RPG, I quickly became trained in the art of never letting the party split.  It was believed, at the time, that attempting to juggle multiple scenes was a cardinal sin, punishable by death.  Many attempted to proove this 11th commandment wrong, and all were struck down with the fury of a thousand angry fantasy-gods.

Well, in my recent exploits into the world of internet gaming, many times have I met native tribes, who worship a different god, and do not fear his wrath.  A people who see no harm in running a single game, with nearly unrelated characters, undestined to meet save should fate play the fair mistress.

Still, I have difficulty grasping this strange ritual.  I find it hard to except a world in which two, or more beings can share a single game, bound only by the setting, and the GM that guides them.

Please, could someone show me the light, such that I may understand and except this new world.  Explain what I must do, so that I may "wait patiently, for thy scene cometh next."

[Callan S.]

I'd imagine this would be dead easy in a play by post game. But hell in a chat room, since those run slower than normal games but require everyone to be there at the same time.

I'll talk about the play by post. Unless the GM sets up the PC's to affect each other, even distantly ('there's a church burning in the distance!?'), it'd be dishonest to call it anything but a solo game. That's the only prob I could see happening with a play by post.

[Daniel Solis]

It would be interesting if a system encouraged solo storylines that wove into one another at certain points. The first things that pop into my head are Seinfeld and non-linear movies like Go, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. The first mechanical encouragement that comes to mind is something like "get a metagame resource every time you incorporate an event from another character's storyline into yours without directly involving yourself with the other character." It'd be tricky, but, as I said, interesting.

[C. Edwards]

Hey Moth,

In my experience with irc play, it's all about scene-framing. I tend to cut and switch scenes rather rapidly (when I'm at my best anyway). I try to frame scenes as if I were a movie director looking for the best point in the scene to cut at in order to have the most (emotional) impact on the audience. Rambling, pointless dialogue makes my eye twitch, so I cut it at every opportunity. Now, when I say "rambling" I mean "any dialogue that goes on beyond what is necessary in order to give the audience a sense of the character". We (the participants) don't need a full course meal in every scene, we just need a taste.

Dealing with multiple unrelated characters in a game just means that you need to pay a little more attention to who is doing what, and to whom. You may need to do a lot of scene rotation to make sure all the players are involved and nobody is just left sitting for 30 minutes.

Remember that there is no rule that says certain things must be accomplished in a single scene. I've had scenes that just involved a character exiting a room. Call it a "color" scene. The point is that the scene had impact and allowed the player some screen time.

That's just a quick primer from my POV. Try lurking on some irc play and see how things are handled. It will probably help more than anyone just telling you how they handle such play.

-Chris

[MachMoth]

I'm not saying it doesn't work.  I've made it work before myself, though the pace is always very quick, and the matter is usually time-sensitive.  Problem is, it is really hard for me to except it.  It's not so much a problem in PBP/PBEM where character seperation actually speeds up play, but in a medium like IRC, it stands out in my mind as an artificial barrier.  When not playing, I selfishly want in, and while in, I want the other players there to.  I can talk to the other players, but my character can't talk to the other characters.  

For example, most of you have probably never played Graal Online before.  It's one of the many MMORPGs out there.  Well, you can download the software, and sign up for a free account.  This allows you to roam around the world, seeing everyone else playing, and enjoying themselves.  They, however, cannot see you, nor can they interact with you.  They even allow you to go hack stuff up on the old servers, but you still can't interact with other players.  You can see other people play.  You can play yourself.  Why is it free?  Because, you can't interact with anyone.  Your, essentially, playing by yourself.

While this isn't a perfect example, it gives a general idea of how my mind's eye views it.  Not to say I don't enjoy myself.  I just feel I'm missing out on a major part of game, like I'm playing the free version.  I guess its something I'll have to adapt to.

[Trevis Martin]

Hey Moth

A big portion of this too is group interest in each individual character and a commitment to entertain the rest of the group as well as yourself.  Group character creation has become a big deal in my gaming group.  People look for tie ins and express wether they think the protagonist  of a single player is interesting to them or not, if not, we find out why and see if we can make it so.  Each character, while piloted by one players vision, is a group endeavour. The entire group becomes invested in the story of each character with much kibbitzing, opinoins and so forth issueing forth whether their own characters are in the scene or not.   This process eliminates much of the 'waiting for my guy' syndrome because everyone, no matter who is in the scene, is involved.

That combined with good GM control, sceneframing and crosscutting tends to keep everything bumping right along.

regards,

Trevis

[jdagna]

On IRC, I find it very easy to run multiple scenes at the same time, but I have a hellishly fast typing speed compared to most players.  I'll generally do a three-ring circus approach - one center-stage scene, and one or two on the side that I do through private messaging instead of in the main scene (to avoid confusion).

By the way, there's no reason everyone has to simply wait their turn when the party separates.  In science fiction games, its almost impossible to actually separate the party in the first place - communicators, computers and the like keep them connected.  I've had very successful games where two characters went down into a building while the hacker helped out from home, and a pilot and gunner kept the skies clear overhead.  Similar devices in fantasy games can do the same through magic though its a little more limited.  It is one reason that I prefer science fiction settings.

Another good technique - get both parties into combat-like situations at the same time.  Then, you just handle things in initiatuve order as usual, regardless of where the characters are geographically.  No more waiting is involved than there usually is with such systems.

[contracycle]

I'd love to develop techniques to get characters out from under each others feet.  The party mentality is not just a hangup, its a response to the practical limits of being in one room, at one table, as well.  I can see some sort of mechanism being introduced that folds one characters down-time into another characters up-time.  Inspiration here is GRR Martins' ice n fire series; the use of not-strictly-linear time, and multiple perspectives from viewpoint characters, I find both interesting and effective.  Its still difficult, however, for me to see how this would remain engaging - not devolve into seperate games - over time without being artiificially forced.

[Paganini]

Moth,

The secret is part GM technique, and part player attitude. I was talking to Chris once about character death in the context of a horror game. He was encouraging me to kill off characters more. I told him I was always trying to find ways for the characters to survive, so that all the player could participate  in the resolution. Chris said he didn't mind watching, as long as the play was interesting, and as long as his character bought it in a suitably dramatic way. :)

With respect to GM technique. James has this to say in the GM section of TQB:

"More than one Scene can happen at once. The Heroes probably won't be together all the time. They may not even know each other. If more than one Scene is happening at once, the Guide will cut between them at natural places or cliffhanger moments, keeping each player as involved as possible."

The secret is mostly timing. There have been IRC games where I've logged on to KGS and played Go in between scenes for my character. It wasn't so much that the other scenes were boring, but that the difference in time the players took creating them relative to the time it would take me to read them was quite extreme.

When we playtested TQB with James, he was cutting scenes like a machine gun. And, IIRC, he didn't do it with any particular order, so you never knew when your turn was coming up. This works well, as long as you make sure no one gets TWO scenes until everyone has had ONE scene.

There is a certain amount of system concern as well. TQB generates an insane amount of narrative per system unit. There have been times on IRC where one line of dialogue or description will sit in the Narration window for 15 - 20 minutes while the players involved in the scene handle system overhead. This can be boring even when you're *in* the scene. When you're not in the scene, for all intents and purposes, NOTHING is happening. This kind of thing doesn't happen in TQB, because someone is always adding to the narrative.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

My reply will completely ignore the IRC issue and anything else except for plain old face-to-face role-playing groups.

First place to go is this thread: Simultaneous multiple-scene play.

Back? All right, the main point is this: to get beyond the notion of these two options.

1. Player-characters are all together, and the players are all engaged in what's happening because their individual characters are immediately involved and presumably at risk.

2. Player-characters are all separated, and each player is engaged insofar as his or her own character is currently in play.

As long as you think these are the options, then there's nothing we can talk about. The mind-set involved arises from easily-understood sources: the notion that "my character takes damage" constitutes the primary risk and attention-getter of play, the notion that "act out your character's quirks and schticks" is the primary job for the player, the notion that the player should feel the character's fictional feelings (e.g. surprise, wonder, fear), and the notion that "GM reveals all when he feels like it" is the source of story-ness. All of these notions, in my view, are relatively difficult to sustain and not especially rewarding even when they are applied.

Therefore putting aside the false #1-2 dichotomy is the first step.

Now, the question arises: what does the group do instead? The answer is, examine the Creative Agenda. Yeah, GNS - not the cure-all, but certainly the key in this case. What's the engaging point of play for this group in the first place?

a) If it's Step On Up, then elements of play revealed during scenes with characters 1 and 4 should be relevant to strategic decisions made by all the players. Yes, that means that players 2 and 3 will be using "out of character knowledge" for their strategizing. Horrors! Heavens to Betsy! The skies open and the gods peer down in frowning disapproval! Me, I just call it a more complex and interesting arena for the "meeting of minds" necessary for Gamist play.

b) If it's The Dream, then elements of play revealed during scenes with characters 1 and 4 should "deepen" and further Color scenes experienced by all the players. So crucial (e.g.) Character or Setting stuff in scenes with characters 1 and 4 becomes Color for the scenes with characters 2 and 3, and vice versa. Problem? (Looks all around room, under chair) Can't find the problem.

c) If it's Story Now, then elements of play revealed during scenes with characters 1 and 4 should be relevant to the same Premise experienced by all the players. So if you're playing character 2, then events in those scenes change what your scenes are "about" to the audience who gets to see them all (which includes you). Again, the out-of-character experience (which is to say, a real thing rather than a fictional thing) is the key one - can you be more invested in what's going on with your character, by becoming invested in what's happening to another and what they do? Yes, very easily.

In all cases, in my experience over many many people and games, the out-of-character vs. in-character knowledge enriches the role-playing experience under all circumstances. Contrary to the expectations reinforced by game texts, players are usually wholly committed to preserving their characters' ignorance when they well understand what the characters are ignorant about, or while they (the players) are developing that understanding.

They are also expert - far more expert than the GM, in practice - at announcing actions that will bring characters together exactly at the key moments which (a) make for exciting climactic moments and (b) do not bring in Dame Coincidence to a "oh groan" degree.

Playing in this fashion is, as far as I am concerned, the primary and default method of play in terms of Exploration and person-to-character creative input. I suppose I should stop there before commenting on what play without it is like.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

OK I'll buy that for a buck.  Off the top of my head, this could be as simple as sticking an NPC that character A has a mechanical relationship with, but has not met on screen, in a scene happening with character B, that is on screen.    This makes a lot of sense.

[MachMoth]

Everyone has had some very interesting things to say.  Thank you.  What it boils down to is a paradigm that will take some work to get rid of.  For the most part, the use of multiple scenes hasn't been handled badly, and at no point did I find myself not enjoying myself over it.  It's just a very different mindset.  Much like when I tried to introduce the opposite concept to a group of players.  I was trying to run a setup, where in the players moved from character to character, always in the scene, but not in the same person.  This too was met with much distaste, not because it was a bad idea, but because the players had a very strong "my guy" mindset.  They even told me it was a stupid idea, because people only wanted to play a single character, and don't care about the others.  No wonder none of them liked to GM.

[M. J. Young]

Dang, I hate it when a thread runs its course in a single day--so often they seem so relevant to me. Am I the only person at the Forge who doesn't keep the forum open 24/7? I know that's not true--I see the lists of people signed on at the bottom, and they're never terribly long.

Multiverser is like the poster child for splitting the party. It is so basic to standard play of the game that we gave it a name, multiple staging, and provided a lot of suggestions for how to make it work.

At the heart of it all, though, is that everyone at the table must understand this: everyone is interested in everyone else's story.

That means that for each individual player, when we get to the dull parts we find a way to take the focus off them. Going shopping? Player writes up a list of what he wants to buy while the referee works with someone else. Involved in some sort of training program? We'll roll the dice to see how it's going from time to time, interrupt for the unusual bits, and spend most of our time with someone else while you burn up ten months in as many minutes. There are a lot of tricks like this.

Scene framing (a term I wish I'd had when we wrote the text) is certainly part of it. I'll leave you when you have an important decision to make; I've never been one of those people to say,

You see a dragon, what are you going to do? Think fast; the dragon is turning toward you. It's raising it's head; it's opening it's mouth--I'm sorry, you're dead, you didn't answer fast enough.

I'd much rather give you time to think. So instead I'll say,

You see a dragon. I'll get back to you.

Cliffhangers, resolutions, decision points, even dull moments can all be used as break points, such that the player is on the edge of his seat waiting for his turn to return (and not knowing whether I'm going to turn to him in a minute and ask him one question or leave him sitting for ten minutes while I deal with everyone else or what). These breaks also keep everyone else riveted to everyone's story.

I noticed multiple staging in a number of epic stories--Lord of the Rings, Dune, a few others. I used it (hopefully effectively) in my own novel, Verse Three, Chapter One. When Frodo leaves for Mordor and Merry and Pippin are taken by the orcs, as Aragorn, Legalos, and Gimli prepare to follow the orcs, we're suddenly following three stories, and we really want to know what happens to all of them.

We do bring player characters back together from time to time, and that contributes to the interest. This is someone you've probably met before, and will probably meet again. Seeing what he does tells you about him, and prepares everyone for working together. In fact, one of my sons recommends that if you're bringing a new player into a game it's best to start his character alone, let the player develop him a bit in view of the other players, and then integrate him into the group.

It is challenging, and even with all the tricks I know I try to keep myself to six players maximum, and recommend three or four to people who aren't used to it. But it can be done.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[Ben Morgan]

I might have mentioned this a while ago, but one trick I'm really itching to try someday arose from a discussion I had with my brother about maintaining players' interest while scene-cutting. It kills two birds with one stone if you are dealing with, say, a social encounter, and the player in question isn't confident in their ability to come up with witty dialog.

Set up two scenes: Scene A is a social thing. Maybe a PC has to have a power lunch with a local official, or they're on a date, or something similar. Scene B is balls-out, inyourface combat.

While you're cutting really fast between scenes and maintaining all the players' interest in all scenes (even the ones that aren't theirs), you can also alleviate some of the social-phobic player's fears about not sounding like a dolt. Between scenes of asskicking in Scene B, show only snippets of the conversation in Scene A. This way, you can dial up and down your NPC's reactions based on the PC's social rolls, instead of relying on the player to carry the whole scene.

One source of inspiration for this is from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, near the end of the movie, where the four main characters are driving, and you only hear bits of a joke while it cuts to other stuff.

-- Ben

[LordSmerf]

This issue is one that i've given a great deal of thought to.  I've been involved in a split-party gaming group for years.  We've fortunately had a brilliant GM able to split and manage with the best of them.  Recently, i stumbled onto an interesting idea that doesn't seem to have been addressed yet.  I'll try to provide a parallel.

In light fiction you get two major types of books: multiple protaganist focus (think Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin) in which you have a type of "split party," and single protagonist books (Phillip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein.)  I'm sure you can come up with your own examples.

Essentially, i see most gaming situations established such that each PC has an equal share of the spotlight as it were.  Each one expects to be the focus of the game, at least part of the time.  This results in split party.  Not nessecarily bad, there are advantages to be had here.  However, i have yet to experience a game where the focus was a single PC.

For the local group i have put forward the following idea: In any campaign there is the option to present a single character as Primary.  This character will be the focus of play.  Any other PC will simply be a member of the supporting cast.  Also, major NPCs (allies, villains, whatever) will recieve a one page writeup of their character and motivations which may be handed to any non-Primary player to play in any scene involving them.

What i'm trying to accomplish here is an elimination of split-party altogether so that if you're not Primary and you wander off you don't get a scene.  The advantages is see here are: tight focus, greater variety in NPC interaction (since they are played by players.)  Disadvantages: some people don't like the idea of their characters being explicitly less important...

We've just started using this, so i can't really give any sort of feedback as to is functionality, but i thought i would put it forward as an alternative to split-party.

Note: this requires the same "everyone is interested in the story outside of their characters" that good split party requires...

Thomas