Splitting up The Party [split off from Midnight to HQ]

[Kerstin Schmidt]

You want one of the PCs to go nuts and attack a Night King. That's drama. You want all the other PCs to be pissed about it. But the players secretly loving it. Knowing that no matter what the PC does, the players won't be punished.

Who knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.

Cripes, that's a whole nother post. Actually I should link you to one of the threads where I've already explained this...

Looking forward to the link.  And the post... Or whatever.  I'm so hoping you'll say that barging in is better than sneaking up. :-)  Or even better, provide specific techniques/examples.

[Ranko]

One of the techniques is giving players importaint NPCs  to play while their PC is out of the picture. It was touched upon in the  (Exalted) Ten Thousand Broken Dreams: session summaries for an ongoing campaign thread on RPGnet (around page 4).

Also, making sure you keep some action on other characters is a good tip.

[CCW]

Hi

I'm in a very similar situation to yours, having recently switched from d20 to HQ in mid-campaign.  I've found that the characters are now very rarely all in the same place at the same time, while they almost always were while we were using d20.  I still can't keep everybody focussed all the time but I'm getting better at juggling.

One of the techniques is giving players importaint NPCs  to play while their PC is out of the picture.

A variation of this idea worked well in my game last night: players of 'out of focus' characters controlled the opposition in two extended contests.  

In the first contest, two players acted as the audience, while the third player, a bardic type, was trying to entertain at a party.  The audience members, apart from rolling the dice, making bids, etc., also made catty remarks, made requests, and applauded.

In the second contest, one player who wasn't at the party controlled the hoard of zombies who attacked the place around closing time (as they do).  I essentially had nothing to do but watch and throw in the occasional bit of narration (though they were doing most of that themselves).  I even got up to go to the bathroom at one point, and they just carried on without me.

Another thing that seems to work is to give information that player A is interested in to Player B's character.  Of course players (and often characters) will share the information anyway, but people seem to like to be listening when things are revealed.  So far this isn't something I've really done consciously, but I've noticed how concentration has improved when this has happened accidently.

Finally, don't stay with any one player for too long and, if possible, cut to another player just after you offer the first player a choice (but before he or she has had a chance to choose).  This is just the old idea of the cliffhanger.  These don't have to be life-altering choices, it's just that you shuoldn't always wait til the end of a scene to switch players.  

You have to use common sense with this sort of thing of course: if you're going to ask player A (who you're interacting with now) to play an NPC in the next person's scene, you might think of concluding A's scene so he/she can concentrate on the next role.

Charles

[Brand_Robins]

Sorry for being so slow on the reply with this one. My wife and I had dual dentistry today (she had root canal, I merely got 4 fillings), and as a result I've been a little bit less than quick with the snappy. Hopefully I can make up for it by saying something useful.

I'm right in the middle of running a fairly long standing Exalted game (a year, about 25 sessions, and about 2/3 way through the story) in which the PCs are very rarely in the same room with each other. Of all the play they've probably spend less than ½ of it even in the same city, and well under 1/3 in the same scene at the same time. I've been practicing a couple of ways to keep the game interesting, which I'll now share.

The first is remembering that even though the PCs are in different scenes they are in the same story. Player interest in other player's scenes tends to stay high when they can see direct and tangible links between their scene and the other scenes going on. It gets even better when the things they find out by watching others' scenes will be immediately important to them. So something from the plot going on with one (or many) non-present PCs will show up in almost every scene with another PC. What one does will impact the others, giving the players a selfish motivation to care about what the others are doing.

For example, in the Exalted game we've a Lunar character, Kika, who is in a long lasting battle of mythmaking with a creature known as Rook in the Garret. He is a hidden foe, about whom she knows very little (and all of that bad), whose hand she can almost never see until it is almost too late. He takes great pains to hide himself from Kika, as he knows she is dangerous to him. He doesn't take such pains with the Dragonblooded, however, and so the Dragon Blooded PC, who regularly deals with demons, will often stumble onto information about, or cool things having to do with the Rook. As soon as I so much as mention the name "Rook," Kika's player will become all ears and attention – because she knows her story, her character, and her survival are all important in this scene, even though she isn't there and the main focus is on another player.

This works especially well if you use a technique that Ron Edwards calls "Crossing." In this method players are allowed to use the effects (and some knowledge) of a previous scene in their current scene, even when their character wasn't present for the scene. This can be a bit tricky to work out, and get used to, but it works well when you find a way your characters can deal with. In the Exalted game I run, the players became okay with it when their characters found a spell that let them empathically communicate with each other – thus giving them reason to use things one PC learned even when they were across the continent. This adds another reason to be interested in other player's scenes – the info they find you may be able to use as well.

Of course, if you can set up climactic back and forth framed scenes, shifting between characters to build tension, it works the best. Think of the Star Wars movies, or the Lord of the Rings movies, or back to Braveheart, Gladiator, and so on -- all of them use cutaways at dramtic moments to highten tension. Often they cut back and forth between different parts of the same conflict, showing how the rise and fall in fortunes on one protagonists side causes the effects on the other side. In the Exalted game we did this durring one huge conflict with a massivly powerful NPC. One PC snuck into the NPCs manse to deactivate his magic hoozits, while another found his family to come and reason with him, and the third fought a brutal defensive battle to try and hold him at bay. The action went back and forth hard and fast, and even though none of the PCs were even in the same city (until the very end) they were all working together as a team and inherently involved in the combat.

I don't generally have PCs play NPCs in other scenes. I've done that sometimes in the past, but for this game it was unsatisfactory. What we use to replace it is table-talk, input, and advice on the current scene from other players. So when someone is stunting away in, say, a huge combat the other players will start calling out extra ideas for props or visual themes for the active player to use. We also often have a psychological-deconstruction peanut gallery that goes on, mostly in breaks in scenes where the massive amounts of Exalted dice rolling is going on, in which players speculate about the characters in the scene (PC included) in the same way that we do about characters in books and movies. This keeps everyone game, character, and scene focused. The only issue to watch for is making sure the game, rather than the analysis, stays front and center. Give the peanut gallery an inch, but don't let them take a mile.

The other things that help this setup work are some practical matters. I keep scenes short – shooting for 20 minutes and maxing out at a little over a half hour. This keeps the flow of the game going and makes sure that attention spans aren't taxed. It also helps encourage everyone to get to the meat of the story, do what they want to do. (Or, as one player puts it "Hit it and quit it.")

We also seat ourselves such that people can have side conversations, or scenes, without talking across the table. This often allows the more immersivist players in the group to have IC discussions without interrupting a scene that isn't crossing with their plot. We don't do that much in the Exalted game (there are only 3 players and I have a –lot- of crossing), but I've done it in games with more players in the past to good effect.

Even with all of the above, things don't always work out perfectly. For example, last session we had one player who'd been up for 41 hours who burnt out towards the end of the game and checked out of everyone else's scenes and got pissed when they went on longer than expected. The player also told us at the time that there was no need to give the character more scenes, then got irked that they ended up with fewer scenes than everyone else. Afterwards, however, we talked the situation out, the player agreed it was mostly crankiness, and I promised to keep a tighter reign on scene-length (which I had been a bit lax on that week).

All in all, however, keeping a focus on the central themes and story and making sure that all the characters are all parts of the same meta-narrative, goes a hell of a long way to making split party games work.

[Mike Holmes]

What Brand said.

This is hard for players of other RPGs to get, but play this way, when it's working as described, is no less engaging in terms of quantity than "Party Play."

The first thing to do is to simply reject the idea that it's "Split Play." That's completely a Party Play POV, and comes from where people in Party Play get split up. If there is no "party" and never was, then that's the first step towards making this all seem right to participants.

Let's go back and look at what Party Play implies. First, it developed solely because of the emulation of JRR Tolkien in D&D, and because of the development of RPGs from wargames. Basically, D&D was play of "scenarios" that were like those encountered by the fellowship from LotR. This became the default form of play thereafter. When it became sensible for the PCs to split up, what happened is that people noted that, basically, you had to wait your turn to play. So Party Play became even more entrenched. It goes from being a metagame connection of the characters due to the structure of scenarios, to becoming a social contract agreement to play this way so that everyone can maximize fun.

Well, what does this mean? It means that players have an incentive to ignore PC motives in order to maximize this fun. So this sets up the initial problem. If you want to play to PC motives, then what do you do?

The usual suggestion is interesting. Most games tell players to use author stance to create a reason why their character is with the party, and then retroactively make that the character's plausible motive. Even in games where you're told to ignore OOC information, this is encouraged. The problem, of course, is that it leads to incoherence in play. Some players are being informed that they should use OOC info, others are against it (in fact, I could write an essay arguing that this is the primary incoherence cause in RPGs).

As it happens, it's not incoherent to suggest coming up with a reason to have a party in a game where you want to support narrativism, since that sort of author stance is part and parcel of play for the most part. But, then, what's also true is that it's OK to use actor stance for whatever, not just for party play. I mean, what if you just can't come up with a reason for being somewhere? It's just implausible to have PCs hanging around with each other all the time.

Worse, it stifles drama. If PCs don't have a chance to do things on their own, then there's a far more limited set of things that can happen dramatically.

So why not use Actor Stance in other ways? Well, in practice this is what happens in "split play" games. That is, what people don't often get is that, for example when I run a game, I'll ask a player, "Want in on this scene?" Players more used to the style will say, "Can I get in on this scene? What if I just happen to be wandering by?" OK, wandering by is only used such as it doesn't become implausible, but there are often more plausible reasons to be coming by. Deliveries are good, for instance, because often the delivery itself can be interesting.

The point is that "split play" doesn't mean that characters are separated a "realistic" amount of the time, it means that they're separated a "dramatic" amount of the time. The players will, themselves if given a chance, monitor their own enjoyment by inserting themselves whenever they think it would be cool to do so.

Know what? Sometimes they insert themselves very, very little, however. In my FTF game, often we do just rotate scenes around the table, each player taking their "turn." In the latest installment, in fact, scenes in which the PCs cross paths are pretty rare (although they're on a heroquest together starting next week). This is not because they can't engineer ideas for crossing each other's paths. No, we play like Brand describes above, and what that means is that there's never any "down" time for any player.

Just because your character is not in a scene doesn't mean you're not participating. And, like Brand indicates, I'm not talking about playing an NPC or anything (though that happens often on an impromptu basis - Josh often hijacks my NPCs to give them a funny characterization since he's much better at it than I am, for instance). I'm talking about kibitzing. They're co-GMing with me to some extent, and they're helping the player with a character in the scene come up with ideas about what they want the character to do.

Basically there's just a lot of sharing going on.

Again, it's hard for a traditional player to wrap their heads around, but what we're describing here is not "split play." There's no wating around for your chance to make a contribution to play, you're contributing constantly. The question of who has a character in the scene is not unimportant, they are getting the spotlight shined on them more, yes. But it's nothing like a binary, "I'm going now", "I'm waiting now."

Two more points:
When you play like this a lot, you actually get to the point where you enjoy your "downtime" out of the spotlight. When you're "on" it means you're under substantial pressure to produce neat play. All the other participants are giving you feedback on what to do. This can be exhausting. So when it's not your turn, you actually relish that you are now allowed to participate at whatever rate you like. So you go from periods of "Go, go, go" to, "go as much as you like."

This is really a great pace to play at, IMO, going back and forth like this.

Lastly, are you even really getting less spotlight time? Think about it for a moment - there's still only one GM, either way. He can only shine the spotlight for 60 minutes each hour. And even when the PCs are dialoging, the spotlight is switching back and forth between players. The total number of minutes is the same when playing "split." In party play, you feel a tad less engaged when your character is not in a scene, because you know you won't be able to be called upon to do anything. But everyone has experienced in party play where they've been in the room, but really not involved in the action going on, right? So is that possibility that you might be called on really all that much less engaging than just watching?

What happens in party play is that, since you're assumed not to have a character there, and so not to be allowed to affect anything, you have to sit silent as audience. All you have to do is change that expectation, and "downtime" becomes nearly as fun as being in the scene itself. And then you're participating more overall, and then looking forward to the downtime....

It works, and works well. Perfectly? No, but I think it works at least as well as Party Play, and possibly with greater fecundity.

And, of course, it's better for drama. Period.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

We went over a lot of stuff in this post: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8920

You may have to dig to find the related materials.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

In the first contest, two players acted as the audience, while the third player, a bardic type, was trying to entertain at a party.  The audience members, apart from rolling the dice, making bids, etc., also made catty remarks, made requests, and applauded.

In the second contest, one player who wasn't at the party controlled the hoard of zombies who attacked the place around closing time (as they do).  

I like it.  I'd be more than willing to experiment with stuff like this in our group.  I especially love it when things like this happen:

I essentially had nothing to do but watch and throw in the occasional bit of narration (though they were doing most of that themselves).  I even got up to go to the bathroom at one point, and they just carried on without me.

Another thing that seems to work is to give information that player A is interested in to Player B's character.  Of course players (and often characters) will share the information anyway, but people seem to like to be listening when things are revealed.  So far this isn't something I've really done consciously, but I've noticed how concentration has improved when this has happened accidently.

I've tried that a bit but it hasn't worked too well yet, partly because not all of my players listen carefully when it's somebody else's scene, so something like this might float by without them catching on.  

Finally, don't stay with any one player for too long and, if possible, cut to another player just after you offer the first player a choice (but before he or she has had a chance to choose).  

That one has worked with our group. When I manage to cut in the right place, people become much more focussed on driving the game forward because they want to find out what happens next.  It also gives the player "hanging" off the cliif a chance to make their choice and think about tactics and how they want to narrate it, so they don't get bored even if they're not playing anyone else. (And I agree, having a "hanging" player play an NPC might be counterproductive.)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

So something from the plot going on with one (or many) non-present PCs will show up in almost every scene with another PC. What one does will impact the others, giving the players a selfish motivation to care about what the others are doing.

What this says to me is that like all the rest of our shift in style it'll likely be a process.  The more the players develop individual goals for their PCs, the more opportunities for stuff relevant to one PC to turn up in other PCs' scenes - and also the other way round, the more PCs play individual scenes, the more opportunities to develop varying goals that we can use to link scenes together.

...He takes great pains to hide himself from Kika, as he knows she is dangerous to him. He doesn't take such pains with the Dragonblooded, however, and so the Dragon Blooded PC, who regularly deals with demons, will often stumble onto information about, or cool things having to do with the Rook.

This is such a cool setup.

This works especially well if you use a technique that Ron Edwards calls "Crossing." In this method players are allowed to use the effects (and some knowledge) of a previous scene in their current scene, even when their character wasn't present for the scene. This can be a bit tricky to work out, and get used to, but it works well when you find a way your characters can deal with.

Do you mean a way my players can deal with, or actually their characters?  If it's about the players, I'm not too sure what solution might work.  
My players vary quite a bit in how strictly they will separate character knowledge and player knowledge: one player in particular will act upon player-only information as soon as he feels there is some kind of threat or challenge involved.  The other two keep PC knowledge and player knowledge pretty much separate in all circumstances.

The group had a magic communication device for a while, but it never caught on too well and passed out of play (with almost a sigh of relief, it felt like to me) when the player of the PC who owned it had to stop playing.

In the Exalted game we did this durring one huge conflict with a massivly powerful NPC. One PC snuck into the NPCs manse to deactivate his magic hoozits, while another found his family to come and reason with him, and the third fought a brutal defensive battle to try and hold him at bay. The action went back and forth hard and fast, and even though none of the PCs were even in the same city (until the very end) they were all working together as a team and inherently involved in the combat.

Well, if PCs can work together as a team, we probably wouldn't count it as "splitting up", or not in the sense that causes me concern.  PCs homing in on a specific common target from different directions and locations is one thing.  Having them pursue individual interests is another I'd say.

I don't generally have PCs play NPCs in other scenes. I've done that sometimes in the past, but for this game it was unsatisfactory.

Why was that, do you know? In our group players appear to shy away from playing NPCs just because.  The other GM tried to introduce a troupe style of play in his game a while ago, in which each of the long-standing PCs would rotate for the "lead" role from session to session and the other players would play NPCs.  This plan resulted in a minor revolt and as far as I'm aware he's dropped it.

The other things that help this setup work are some practical matters. I keep scenes short – shooting for 20 minutes and maxing out at a little over a half hour.

Thanks.  I tend do cut after around 10 or 15 minutes and I'd say I more often than not manage to cut before people get seriously bored; but as I've said not all my players really buy into listening or otherwise contributing to other players' scenes.  Not sure why that is, personally I love being the audience some of the time, no matter whether I play or GM.  

Ok.  All in all, helpful advice here, and also some bits you write suggest to me that I may have been doing some things right already.  

What's the problem then?  Not sure, except that one of the players keeps stressing that  he doesn't like to split up (even though he also agrees about what some of our most fun scenes were, and hardly any (or none? have to think about that) of those had all the PCs in them at once.  

Maybe I just need to push ahead regardless.  

All in all, however, keeping a focus on the central themes and story and making sure that all the characters are all parts of the same meta-narrative, goes a hell of a long way to making split party games work.

Well, I reckon we all share ideas about the central themes and about the meta-narrative (asuming that "Win This War or Die in the Attempt" is meta-narrative?), so that bit should actually be easy to work out.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

This is hard for players of other RPGs to get, but play this way, when it's working as described, is no less engaging in terms of quantity than "Party Play."

Oh, I so agree.  Most of my best and most roleplaying experiences have been scenes that had the spotlight on a single PC, mine or another player's.  

IME party scenes have a tendency to either spill over into OOC discussions and unfoccussed mutterings from all directions, or else figure a party of seven or so ducking and hiding behind the broad shoulders of their leader/spokesperson - essentially a solo scene in which the other PCs figure as mere extras.  How that is more fun than "splitting up", I can't see.  Maybe that's part of the reason why I don't understand the resistance to it from some players, and maybe that makes it difficult to me to gauge how, if at all, to make this thing fun for the group.  

The first thing to do is to simply reject the idea that it's "Split Play." That's completely a Party Play POV, and comes from where people in Party Play get split up. If there is no "party" and never was, then that's the first step towards making this all seem right to participants.

Again, agreement from me.  However, in our game the group has always seen itself as a party, so if I mean to offer ways to change that pattern in this game, I'm gonna have to think about splitting up, simply because "party" is the starting position.  

At least one of my players insists that he prefers playing like that to splitting up.  Another drops out and loses touch pretty quickly when scenes with other players go on, strangely enough he seems attentive and often entertained enough but he can almost never remember any facts from those scenes.  

The usual suggestion is interesting. Most games tell players to use author stance to create a reason why their character is with the party, and then retroactively make that the character's plausible motive. Even in games where you're told to ignore OOC information, this is encouraged. The problem, of course, is that it leads to incoherence in play. Some players are being informed that they should use OOC info, others are against it (in fact, I could write an essay arguing that this is the primary incoherence cause in RPGs).

Erm, that so precisely describes our group it's scary. And yup, it's incoherent. Very much so.

It's just implausible to have PCs hanging around with each other all the time.
...
Worse, it stifles drama. If PCs don't have a chance to do things on their own, then there's a far more limited set of things that can happen dramatically.

Exactly my problem, yes. It's something I can find pretty frustrating even as a player; but as a GM with three very stylish PCs with a lot of depth and dramatic potential, played by players who really buy into that whole True Heroism thing, it makes me want to curl up into a ball and gnaw the legs of the dinner table.  

That is, what people don't often get is that, for example when I run a game, I'll ask a player, "Want in on this scene?" Players more used to the style will say, "Can I get in on this scene? What if I just happen to be wandering by?"

In our group it's more that I tend to invite players in - "You want your PC to come in on this?"  "Come in whenever you want."  In which case I end up making the decision for them anyway because they usually won't barge in on a scene on their own even if expressly invited.

The point is that "split play" doesn't mean that characters are separated a "realistic" amount of the time, it means that they're separated a "dramatic" amount of the time. The players will, themselves if given a chance, monitor their own enjoyment by inserting themselves whenever they think it would be cool to do so.

Hm, maybe I haven't made clear enough to them that this is the whole point. They might just be sitting there counting out the minutes until they think their character would "realistically" arrive...  

Know what? Sometimes they insert themselves very, very little, however.

Which is fine as long as everyone is ok with it. In my case, I have non-self-inserting players who claim (or look like) they're not having fun.  

By the way, by now all the players do have fun when it's their own turn in the spotlight, which is good.  

Just because your character is not in a scene doesn't mean you're not participating.
...
I'm talking about kibitzing. They're co-GMing with me to some extent, and they're helping the player with a character in the scene come up with ideas about what they want the character to do.

Basically there's just a lot of sharing going on.

Hm yeah.  We have had kibitzing and peanut-gallerying a few times, in fact I remember it as having been pronounced in that highly dramatic capture/escape/hostage negotiation session I've mentioned in the other thread.  We were all so extremely focussed and "into it" that session that all our mutual advice and funny comments (and even completely off-topic joking) only added to the tension and focus, for some reason.  

Somehow playing, waiting turns hanging off various cliffs, and cracking jokes all over the place while other PCs were in dire straits all seemed to feed off and reinforce each other.  Not sure how that worked, or why it doesn't always.  

And, by the way, it was a session in which all the PCs were operating separately.  They were all moving around in the mansion pursuing their separate goals (escape for two, stealing the McGuffin for the other two, whose players had decided they belived the two captured PCs had been killed and eaten by now);  and none of the PCs knew were the others were or what they were doing.  The players knew of course, we were using a floor plan of the mansions and minis to represent where each PC was at any time.  Up until the very end, we had no scene in which all of the PCs were together, most scenes were solo.  Strangely enough, no one has complained about that being boring.  

Hm.  

So why do people still insist they'd rather not play like that? I don't get it.  I've asked the player who insists on a "party" what is more fun about that for him than "splitting up", but his answer wasn't very clear to me and he was reluctant, so I didn't push.  

Again, it's hard for a traditional player to wrap their heads around

Yes yes yes.  But is there anything a poor GM can do to help them with the wrapping?  Seeing the posts in this thread, non-party play has already worked fine in our game at times, perhaps better than I was aware (sneaking up again...).  
But it would be nice to have everyone on board and happy to control their own involvement in another PC's scene (whether on screen on in the peanut gallery), so _they_ will contribute to their own fun rather than sitting there waiting for me to shift the spotlight back to their PC or (more comforting even) bring the party together again.  

When you play like this a lot, you actually get to the point where you enjoy your "downtime" out of the spotlight. When you're "on" it means you're under substantial pressure to produce neat play. All the other participants are giving you feedback on what to do. This can be exhausting. So when it's not your turn, you actually relish that you are now allowed to participate at whatever rate you like. So you go from periods of "Go, go, go" to, "go as much as you like."

That's exactly how I feel about action/"downtime" when I'm a player.

Lastly, are you even really getting less spotlight time?

On the contrary, I'd say you get more.  Not more time necessarily, although the quieter players in the group tend to get exponentially more spotlight than they would in party play;  but more quality time in the spotlight.  When you're the only PC in the scene and you have other players backing you and attentive to what's going on, you get such pure spotlight shining on you as you hardly ever get in a party scene.  

All you have to do is change that expectation, and "downtime" becomes nearly as fun as being in the scene itself.

Maybe my attempts to invite players in on this have been too feeble, dunno.  As in so many of these style things, I suspect I'm still learning to develop the skills to provide clear direction.  

I know I haven't used "information relevant to other PCs" enough by any extent - this might change as the PCs gain more individuality when we convert over to HQ.  

I've tried some of the other stuff you people were suggesting, and it's working to some extent, but the usual feedback from one player after sessions with "splitting" in them is that yes ok, he had fun, yeah, but he wouldn't want that kind of session all the time.  

So what else? Maybe I, too, am stuck in some "party paradigm" that I don't see and have to break that to push the game further in the direction I want?

I'm hoping the HQ system will support me better in what I want to do;  and thanks for all the advice.  I'll keep doing what I've been doing and more of it, and try to include other stuff you people have suggested.

Oh and Mike:  I'll be checking out that thread you linked to, hopefully tomorrow.

[Brand_Robins]

Do you mean a way my players can deal with, or actually their characters?  If it's about the players, I'm not too sure what solution might work.  

A little of both. Sometimes it is the players only, sometimes it is the characters. The degree to which it happens depends on what everyone's comfort level is, and what people want out of the scene.

Think about the way this works in movies or on TV. Law and Order is especially good for this. In L&O you'll have a scene where someone learns something, then in the next scene everyone is assumed to know it. This is partly because the people are all on the same team, have phones, and are assumed to communicate. So when we go from the detectives to the lawyers we don't need scenes with the detectives telling Jack everything, we just start with Jack making his first motion.

In other setups it's far less direct. To go back to the Exalted example, Kika's player will often use things she learns about Rook in other scenes – to get her character in deeper trouble. There was a time when the player heard, in another character's scene, that the Rook had a stronghold in the mountains to the north. So in her next scene she had her character going to meet a friend who lived in the mountains to the north, stumbling across the stronghold and nearly getting captured. She was very specifically using her OOC knowledge to set up the scene, but she didn't let her character have knowledge of it – it was her pushing the game towards something, without having to have her character know all the information.

How many times do we see things like that in movies? In one scene you'll get someone expositing about how dangerous X is and how bad it would be to do Y, only to have the very next scene be some other character (who didn't hear any of this) wondering into X and doing Y. In traditional RPG play the GM would set this up, because players are disallowed from having authorial powers or using the knowledge the GM just gave them until the GM pushes them into it. By letting the players hear the scene and then force themselves into the situation, however, it's the players who start to drive their characters, become active rather than reactive to GM plot.

Now, I do have to admit you have a point when you say this won't be easy for a lot of your players to get a hang of. I'm about to be a bitch, please understand I'm not ragging on anyone, as what I'm about to say applied to me for years, and still applies to many people I play with to one degree or another. Most RPers are programmed, they have been taught with near pavlovian levels of feedback that there are "right" ways to play and that those ways are the only methods whereby they will have a fun game. Thus suggesting that other methods might be fun often brings them right up against a wall of conceptual limitation. They know that doing X is fun, and they've always been told that doing Y is bad, and so when you suggest doing Y, not doing X, and then adding Z the tendency to freak is natural.

The only real way to deal with this is to get them to exercise some trust in you, and each other, and give it a go. If you can show them that it works, if they can have fun doing things they wouldn't normally have, they will change their ideas over time. Don't push them too hard, start off slow and small, and learn to grow into it with them.

PCs homing in on a specific common target from different directions and locations is one thing.  Having them pursue individual interests is another I'd say.

This is true. In the scene I was talking about, however, the PCs didn't realize they were all on the same target until the fight was well underway. They'd gotten to the positions they were in because of individual interests -- it just turned out that their individual interests all brought them up against the same uber-bad. They were part of the same story, so it's only structurally sound that they come to the same crisis.

Really, think about a Midnight setup that goes like this:

Zardrix has been sent forth again, as Izrador readies for a final push against the Dornish and Drawven resistance. Hordes of orcs are pouring in, backed by the Wrath's power, and the last sparks of hope are an inch away from going out forever.

The PCs are an Elven diplomat, sent to unite his people with the Dorns; an Erenlander rider who is desperatly fighting to keep his people alive; an escaped Halfling slave who has been personally marked by Zardrix; and a Dworg who is the last of his clan, a creature of rage who wants only to kill the Shadow and then die.

The PCs do not start the game together, or even in the same area. They are all pursuing their individual interests, and doing their own thing. This will work, however, because all of them are fighting the same war, against the same enemy, and have the same basic goal (win the war). So when the Elf finds the Dornish traitor, who in the scene before had sent the Erenlander to kill a gnomish "spy", who in the scene just after was established to be the halfling's friend who had smuggled him to freedom, and at the same time the Halfling has found the Wrath's weakness and is trying to get it to the elves, but the Dworg has gone berserk and is killing everyone who is coming through the pass the Halfling must go through.... Well, everything will end up coming together. Even if its only when they character end up taking down Zardrix, by striking together but in different ways and places, the story and the enemy will bring them together.

So long as everyone's personal interests are part of the same story as everyone else's personal interests, it will all hit the same dénouement.

Why was that, do you know? In our group players appear to shy away from playing NPCs just because.

I think it has several parts. One is that players generally are in a game to play their character. They invest a lot in that character, and that character's story and protagonist role are central to what makes the game fun for them.  Tied into that is the idea in traditional RPGs that the GM owns the world, and all the NPCs thus belong to him. Thus playing an NPC is either encroaching on the GM's space, or being given a pacifier because the NPCs isn't even important enough for the GM to play. (Note, I'm not saying this is true -- I'm saying it's a common perception.)

Being put into another character, especially one so disposable that the GM doesn't even feel the need to play the character themself, just can't hold a candle to being the hero.

What's the problem then?  Not sure, except that one of the players keeps stressing that  he doesn't like to split up (even though he also agrees about what some of our most fun scenes were, and hardly any (or none? have to think about that) of those had all the PCs in them at once.

Sounds like he has some very set ideas about what RPGs should be, and has probably had some heavy reinforcement of those ideas in the past. All I can say is to keep at it, and keep him focused on the good aspects of play. Show him that splitting the group lets everyone be more heroic

Really, it's true. Familiarity breeds contempt, and there is a very real degree to which groups that never split never let the individual members really shine in a heroic light. That means that your character can't be as cool as possible, and that you come to see the other characters as resources, annoyances, and things to be dealt with as often as seeing them as fascinating heroes in their own right. So let him see how awesome his character can be when he's on his own, and how interesting the other PCs characters can be when he doesn't have to deal with them all the time.  

It may not work out. Some people really do just like one style and won't ever be happy with others. However, this guy sounds like he does like a lot of the same elements you do, he just doesn't have any good experience with them working out and making a good game. He knows the old ways will give him at least an acceptable game, and these new things might fuck everything up. Just make sure that he sees that this stuff can work too, and hopefully he'll learn to like it – or at least to meet you half way.

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, sometimes players just won't change. Whether or not they have any responsibility to change is another subject. From one POV, if they don't like brussel sprouts, serving them for dinner isn't the right thing to do.

I just can't tell if they might like the brussel sprouts or not. I mean I get lots of crossed signals from the examples you give. But none of that matters, really.

As I say in the sneaking up essay, just give them the brussel sprouts, and find out if they like them.

Here's one technique thing that I'd try. Don't ask the players to put themselves into the scene, instead say, "Do you want to have your character in this scene?" Note the syntax carefully. Not, "Do you want to be in the scene?" but do they want their character in the scene. If they say yes, then you frame in their arrival.

This does several things. First, the players aren't controling something that they're not used to - the GM is still doing the framing. Second, the question puts the player in author mode by how it's asked. They don't have the congnatively dissonant question before them that amounts to, "Do you want to go to some place in time and space that you're unaware of?"

Don't ask players what they'll enjoy. That comes under the umbrella of discussion that doesn't work. In part because most players really don't know how to express what they want very well. Better is to just throw them into something, and see what happens. If they react poorly, then you'll know that they really don't like it. Saying they don't doesn't really mean much.

For example in the case in question, what they're probably saying is that they don't like when in other games the party has split up, and they've been required to shut up. Tell me if this sounds familiar: a player not in a scene says, "Use your stoneskin spell." and the GM tells them to shut up.

I've done that. Long time ago, but I've done it.

In a gamism environment, hinting like this is "tabletalk" or kibitzing which is bad form at least, and illegal inmany cases in, say, card games and other competitions of the sort. So, again, we're canalized that it's not OK to kibbitz. So when we're not with the other characters, we're supposed to remain silent, essentially. That's no fun. Again, party play as a gamism support.

The point is that a lot of players remember that as what "splitting up" means.  They don't mean that they don't like the game where they're allowed to kibbitz (the original CA that had to be beaten out of them in the earliest of their play). So don't trust to that, and instead trust to the reaction to actual play of the correct sort.

Lastly, again, a lot of your techniques are "sneaking up" and this is, to me, the problem. You have to really slap players with the mode sometimes. For example, if you want to really give them the idea that they're allowed to author stuff, give them control of the entire scene. Do not ask, "Where are you going next?" Instead ask, "Ted, you come up with a scene. Who's in it, and where does it happen?"

If that doesn't really work, if the player says, "Well, I go to the smithy..." then next time say, "Ted, come up with a scene that your character isn't in." That ought to get the idea across. Be explicit if you have to. At some point say, "OK, forget what your character wants for a second, what would you like to see happen?"

Or, better yet, call a halt to a scene momentarily, turn to an uninvolved player, and say, "What would you like to see happen in this scene? What would you like the character to do?" That doesn't mean that you pass control from the character's player to the queried player. Once you get the answer, you say to the actual controlling player, "Well, what do you think?" They should feel free to reject the idea, but even the fact that you've created the interaction should indicate to everyone that it's what they're expected to do.

These aren't techniques that you have to keep doing, either. Once you've established your CA, you can go back to more comfortable routines. But you have to set up the CA first, or those old techniques will never get you to where you want to be (well, unlikely at least).

It's funny, but I use the "information pertinent to the other players" thing all the time, but I hadn't realized that it was a technique that I was using. Note that in the other mode of play that often what GMs do is to go off with the player in question to have a scene by themselves, so that the affected player doesn't know what his character shouldn't (and this is really dull, and what a lot of players think they don't like about "split play.")

So do this. When you have some information that's pertinent to the other player, turn from the player with the character in the scene, and say the information directly to the affected player. Thus indicating that this is not only something that they shouldn't try to ingnore, but that it's something that you want them to know and act on.

Another really author-ish technique that I use is to give mental states of characters that the other characters couldn't possibly know. For example in a game not too long ago, I had an NPC lie to a PC, and then told the player precisely what the truth of the situation was. In this case, the character said something like, "I'll turn myself in." and I continued, "But though he says that, what he intends to really do is to flee the country."

Yeah, yeah, I could make a roll out of that, but it wasn't an interesting conflict, and I wanted them to know the information.

Oh, that's another thing...if it's important information, not just from NPCs, but from "perception" or whatever, the players don't need to roll, they get the info. This is a hard one to overcome - I myself really like perception checks and the like (I like how they randomize action). But I've learned only to have these if in losing the roll, the situaiton is still just as interesting as if they'd made the roll.

That's actually not all that common. I use these rolls, for instance, to introduce information that has to do with plot threads that don't really involve the PC in question, for example. Like one time the PCs got close to a slaving operation that was run out of a nearby noble house, and I had them roll to see if they'd notice the secret entrance. If they had, it would have added a whole new, and possibly ancillary, plot thread to the game. So I was just as happy when they failed.

Better is to use these rolls to determine information accurately. That is, failure in these cases doesn't mean that the character doesn't get info, instead it means that they get bad info. This is simply the "failure means more plot" thing again. It's extra important with information, however, because info is the player's lifeblood. Sans info, the player has no context in which to make decisions.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Following the above post with a second post...

The PCs are an Elven diplomat, sent to unite his people with the Dorns;

I call the elf.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Most RPers are programmed, they have been taught with near pavlovian levels of feedback that there are "right" ways to play and that those ways are the only methods whereby they will have a fun game.

Hm yeah, that's pretty much true of all groups I've ever played in.  

Thus suggesting that other methods might be fun often brings them right up against a wall of conceptual limitation. They know that doing X is fun, and they've always been told that doing Y is bad, and so when you suggest doing Y, not doing X, and then adding Z the tendency to freak is natural.

On the plus side, we've already been doing a lot of Y and some Z (not to mention K) under the old system, so maybe my style will still be kinda recognisable when we change over.

The only real way to deal with this is to get them to exercise some trust in you, and each other, and give it a go. If you can show them that it works, if they can have fun doing things they wouldn't normally have, they will change their ideas over time. Don't push them too hard, start off slow and small, and learn to grow into it with them.

The thing is, I'm not sure which things will be small or large.  I suppose we'll just find out.

... Even if its only when they character end up taking down Zardrix, by striking together but in different ways and places, the story and the enemy will bring them together.

Cool example.  The pattern I see here in my mind looks like an evolving Relationship map, only with similarities of interest and shared grief instead of personal ties.  Yes, I can so see how that would bring a game together.  

Being put into another character, especially one so disposable that the GM doesn't even feel the need to play the character themself, just can't hold a candle to being the hero.

Of course not - but all the PCs take turns being the heroes when they are in "their" scenes.  I just don't get it.  This isn't about being or not being the hero, it's about how many options you want to have open to you for contributing to scenes your hero isn't in.  
(BTW I realise you're just describing a common perception here, not stating your own opinion.  It's common perception I don't understand, not your post.)  

Familiarity breeds contempt, and there is a very real degree to which groups that never split never let the individual members really shine in a heroic light. That means that your character can't be as cool as possible, and that you come to see the other characters as resources, annoyances, and things to be dealt with as often as seeing them as fascinating heroes in their own right.

I so agree. Especially from a "star potential" perspective, I'll never get why people will prefer to have their PC as present but mute in scenes "led" by another player's PC to having their PC not present at all.  If authors or film-makers did that sort of thing in their stories, none of their leading characters would ever develop the punch to be a real lead.  In order to be a protagonist for the audience, you pretty much need to be either the focus of the moment or not there at all.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

From one POV, if they don't like brussel sprouts, serving them for dinner isn't the right thing to do.

I wouldn't think of serving my players for dinner.  Honest.  Not even to Brussels sprouts.  ;-)  

Seriously, I pretty much agree. I've never seen myself as the central personage in a game I run.  My first role as a GM is to enable player fun.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) I can't do that well unless I, too, have fun.  So yeah, this entire switching-over idea is for me primarily, but if I expected that the players would all hate it, I wouldn't even try.  Although in that case I'd probably give up on the game eventually.  

I mean I get lots of crossed signals from the examples you give.

Yup I know. Sorry for reporting crossed signals.  I'd try to report things more coherently (as far as I'm able in this strange cross-over phase) if my drift here was to analyse the group and get help with them - which it isn't.  

Here's one technique thing that I'd try. Don't ask the players to put themselves into the scene, instead say, "Do you want to have your character in this scene?" Note the syntax carefully. Not, "Do you want to be in the scene?" but do they want their character in the scene. If they say yes, then you frame in their arrival.

This does several things. First, the players aren't controling something that they're not used to - the GM is still doing the framing. Second, the question puts the player in author mode by how it's asked. They don't have the congnatively dissonant question before them that amounts to, "Do you want to go to some place in time and space that you're unaware of?"

Great, thanks. Thinking back I suspect have said "you" when I've invited players to decide when their character would arrive, for instance.  No wonder people weren't too eager to act on my invitations, I see the dissonance now - I actually see the pain of the dissonance on one player's face when I used to say that to him!  I never got what the problem was. D'oh.

If they react poorly, then you'll know that they really don't like it. Saying they don't doesn't really mean much.

That last bit is especially important for me, thanks.  You're right, I should just stop listening too closely to what they say and go by how the game goes. Which is more interesting than discussions anyway.  

Tell me if this sounds familiar: a player not in a scene says, "Use your stoneskin spell." and the GM tells them to shut up.

I've heard of this, but never played in a group where this was done.  It sounds horribly unfun.  

Although in our current group, we sometimes have had to restrict certain more dominant players from talking too much because otherwise they'd take over the game completely - and this is usually done by the other players shouting them down.  The way table talk flows and we float in and out of immersive play and table chatter, I'd say none of us are traumatised by past "shut-up" play.

So when we're not with the other characters, we're supposed to remain silent, essentially. That's no fun. Again, party play as a gamism support.

For DnD I'd go even further. Even in a group where kibbitzing is allowed, you still don't get to contribute to a scene in a meaningful way unless your PC is in it.  The only meaningful interaction the system supports is one that earns XP;  the only way earn XP is to play through an encounter.  Most GMs I know wouldn't split the XP from a "solo scene" out amongst all the players, they give out individual awards instead.  

... So don't trust to that, and instead trust to the reaction to actual play of the correct sort.

There.  Thanks, that's great. I'm usually reasonably good with intuition, I'm sure I can get there again.

Lastly, again, a lot of your techniques are "sneaking up" and this is, to me, the problem.

Oh, very important point to me. I can't change the players' tastes, I'll just have to experiment and see what I can do with this group.  But I can work on my own skills and mindset, which is why I posted here in the first place.

It looks like Brand and you are disagreeing to an extent. He says, go nice and slow, you say, slap them with mode. ?  

For example, if you want to really give them the idea that they're allowed to author stuff, give them control of the entire scene. Do not ask, "Where are you going next?" Instead ask, "Ted, you come up with a scene. Who's in it, and where does it happen?"

If that doesn't really work, if the player says, "Well, I go to the smithy..." then next time say, "Ted, come up with a scene that your character isn't in." That ought to get the idea across. Be explicit if you have to. At some point say, "OK, forget what your character wants for a second, what would you like to see happen?"

Or, better yet, call a halt to a scene momentarily, turn to an uninvolved player, and say, "What would you like to see happen in this scene? What would you like the character to do?"

Ah, examples for me. Fantastic. Yes, that's very helpful.  

These aren't techniques that you have to keep doing, either. Once you've established your CA, you can go back to more comfortable routines. But you have to set up the CA first, or those old techniques will never get you to where you want to be (well, unlikely at least).

Point taken.  Yes, that's exactly how it should work, if it works at all.

So do this. When you have some information that's pertinent to the other player, turn from the player with the character in the scene, and say the information directly to the affected player. Thus indicating that this is not only something that they shouldn't try to ingnore, but that it's something that you want them to know and act on.

Heh. Cool. "... and act on" is the important bit here, for me. It's pretty clear to everyone I think that I generally like everyone to know everything that goes on in play. How that translates into player actions isn't so clear because I've never given clear enough guidance about it.  As things are currently, only one player will act on player information, and uses it to "win".

Another really author-ish technique that I use is to give mental states of characters that the other characters couldn't possibly know. For example in a game not too long ago, I had an NPC lie to a PC, and then told the player precisely what the truth of the situation was. In this case, the character said something like, "I'll turn myself in." and I continued, "But though he says that, what he intends to really do is to flee the country."

Oh right. That's great too.  That will make for another big step away from old habits. I've never yet given players "mental state" information directly, although I would say things like "he looks shifty".  Not the same thing obviously.  

Oh, that's another thing...if it's important information, not just from NPCs, but from "perception" or whatever, the players don't need to roll, they get the info.

I've learnt this the hard way, too, by having rolls made when I really wanted players to just get the information.  

But I've learned only to have these if in losing the roll, the situaiton is still just as interesting as if they'd made the roll.

Or even more interesting.  Yep, a great rule of thumb.  And it fits in with the general "many fun and interesting outcomes" way of thinking, too.

[Mike Holmes]

Seriously, I pretty much agree. I've never seen myself as the central personage in a game I run.  My first role as a GM is to enable player fun.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) I can't do that well unless I, too, have fun.  So yeah, this entire switching-over idea is for me primarily, but if I expected that the players would all hate it, I wouldn't even try.  Although in that case I'd probably give up on the game eventually.  

That's pretty much Forge canon - the GM is there to have fun, too. No, to continue the analogy, if you can only enjoy brussel sprouts, and they cannot, do not have dinner together.

Again, since you don't know for sure, have them try your mode of play. If they don't like it, then say that's OK, and that maybe you can go to the movies instead. Or they can run a game, in which you can play.

Yup I know. Sorry for reporting crossed signals.

Not at all. What I'm saying is that your accurate reporting admits of no diagnosis. Which is actually rather common. Sometimes you just don't know.

Great, thanks. Thinking back I suspect have said "you" when I've invited players to decide when their character would arrive, for instance.  No wonder people weren't too eager to act on my invitations, I see the dissonance now - I actually see the pain of the dissonance on one player's face when I used to say that to him!  I never got what the problem was. D'oh.

Don't anguish over it too much, it's the standard syntax for most play.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: a player not in a scene says, "Use your stoneskin spell." and the GM tells them to shut up.

I've heard of this, but never played in a group where this was done.  It sounds horribly unfun.  

Well, it's key to some people's enjoyment, actually. Just because you or I find it odd, doesn't mean that it's not what works for some people.

Keep in mind, I'm not providing you with an innately superior way to play - just one which I think you personally will enjoy more. I'm sure I've gone overboard in my presentation, so my apollogies.

Although in our current group, we sometimes have had to restrict certain more dominant players from talking too much because otherwise they'd take over the game completely - and this is usually done by the other players shouting them down.  The way table talk flows and we float in and out of immersive play and table chatter, I'd say none of us are traumatised by past "shut-up" play.

But you do have the restrictions in question, which is interesting. Instead of trying to mute the talkative players, channel them. First, scene play should do this pretty well to start. But ask these talkative players to help the other players through their scenes. Once you put the burden on them to help (not replace) the others, their input will become positive.

And I'm betting that it's these players who least like to do "split play?" Since it means a definite reduction in spotlight time for them? If you employ them as mini-GM's and player-helpers, they'll be more engaged overall.

Or do you have a quiet player who doesn't like to be out of a scene? I know that type, and it's a whole nother bag of problems.

It looks like Brand and you are disagreeing to an extent. He says, go nice and slow, you say, slap them with mode. ?

That might be. It would in fact be good if we were disagreeing. I wish somebody would  come in here and tell me that I'm incorrect on a lot more so this would be less a teaching thing by me, and more a way to find new things out. So to the extent that Brand thinks otherwise, great.

But I don't think there's any real disagreement here. I think that what Brand is saying is that you should be make the changes that I propose, but just apply them very intelligently. I personally haven't the time to be that smart, so I go for the shotgun approach. But he's right that if you can insert these things selectively, such that they aren't problematic with some of the previous notions of how people play, you can still manage to show them the way you want to play less "painfully."

But you do this at the risk of being too subtle, and the point being missed. I am not about the subtlety. But that's just my style.

Heh. Cool. "... and act on" is the important bit here, for me. It's pretty clear to everyone I think that I generally like everyone to know everything that goes on in play. How that translates into player actions isn't so clear because I've never given clear enough guidance about it.  As things are currently, only one player will act on player information, and uses it to "win".

Note the similarities between gamism and narrativism here - the willingness to let the appearance of metagame into the decision-making process.

If you have to, hit them over the head with this. When they come to a point where they do something that ignores OOC information, suggest the course of action that includes the OOC information.

"Are you sure you don't want your character to go to the park where Bob's being beaten up? I mean it's probably on your character's way home. Maybe he wants to see the birds or something? That way your character can taunt Bobs. Cool? Or do you want your character to continue straight home?"

Note how odd it is that it's OK for the GM to create "coincidences" in most play, but not the players?

Oh right. That's great too.  That will make for another big step away from old habits. I've never yet given players "mental state" information directly, although I would say things like "he looks shifty".  Not the same thing obviously.  

Well it's what I'd do most times. It's just not the instructive version. For me, with players already in this mode, stating mental info is like saying to the player, "Hey, it would be cool to act on that information - your call."

Mike