PC interaction and party split-ups

[Matt Wilson]

I was just reminded of this thing in Trollbabe where you can have your 'babe start anywhere on the map, and so the whole adventure - or maybe even series of adventures - can pass without the characters ever interacting.

The experiences I've had with that sort of play - it also happened in the game of The Pool that I played in, up until the end - tell me that it's not my preference. I like my guys to be able to talk to the other guys.

What I'm wondering is where that preference lies in the scheme of things. Part of it is about communication period. This sort of play strikes me as having the strongest lines of communication between player(GM) and player(PC), and less so between player(PC) and player(PC). Some of that I would guess is about administrating the participation of players who aren't directly involved in the current scene.

But some of it for me is about the opportunity to communicate with the other players in multiple stances. I like being able to play a character communicating with other characters, and if they're all controlled by the GM, I get less variety.

So, this is kind of a weird question, but what does that mean? I don't mean for it to be a "hey, analyze me" post, but I figure that if I understand what I like, it'll help me create rules or whatever that best fit "how Matt likes his gamin'" and maybe someone else will dig it too.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I, personally, am sick of the party mentality. "Keep the party together" "Never split up the party" It feels like a literal, rotting albatross around my neck. However in many games, it is pure folly to go off by yourself and some GM's take offense to this because you *should* stay with the party. My friend was running D&D3e for a bit and had a player with multiple problems but one problem was he was always going off to the temple of his god. My friend eventually stopped playing this out with the guy and just said "OK, so you're at your temple," and that was it. He told me about it and said, quote, if you can't stay with the party, you don't get any screen time, end quote.

I have nothing against PC interaction, but forcing the issue with this that it effects you when watching movies & stuff. (Rented Ghost Ship and at one point the wife said "don't split up the party") I just find this wrong, really. Wrong in some kind of life lesson kind of way as well as "the party seems forced" kind of way.

[C. Edwards]

Hey Matt,

A Trollbabe can also appear in any scene pretty much regardless of where they were in the last scene. Only a minimal amount of explanation of "hey, how did you get here?" is required. This allows for some really interesting situations, last second rescues, surprise attacks, etc.

-Chris

[clehrich]

I think Matt makes some good points about party play, notably the desire to interact with other players in multiple modes and Stances.  I also think Jack makes a good point about what happens when this is taken to extremes.¹  I just want to point out that this is all a question of spectrum, and has a lot to do with what the GM and the group think the game is about, i.e. Social Contract.

Let's face it, if you're trying to run a CoC game, it's very helpful if the players agree not to have their PCs suddenly decide -- as any remotely sane people would -- to pick up stakes and move to Nebraska and become CPAs and never, never think about anything odd or unusual again.  If half the group does this, the game is pretty much over.

On the other extreme, punishing people for splitting the party is not reasonable behavior unless it's clear, at a social contract level, that this is really unacceptable behavior.

Since Jack has made the point about when such punishment is not reasonable, here's an example of the opposite end.  The party decides, in a Star Trek-like game,² that we're all beaming down to the surface to go do X.  During the discussion of the plan, one player/PC held out for doing Y instead.  So when we all beam down, that PC leaps out of the transporter before he can be beamed down, and then goes off and does his own thing.  The GM now has to try to run two quite different games, and the player has now also set up a competition: who can win first?  Furthermore, by doing this he has undermined the whole point of the discussion (which had taken some time and some heat) and made clear that he wants to do whatever he likes regardless of anyone else -- at a player level.  This behavior should have been punished; my preference would be for that PC to be captured and for the rest of us to have to rescue him.  A similar phenomenon came up in an Actual Play discussion recently, where there was a player who wanted to be a psychotic over-armed Navy SEAL, and who essentially didn't give a damn what anyone else did: he just did his thing and expected everyone else either to follow along or watch from the sidelines.  Party disunity to such a degree is simply not acceptable.

I think it's really important in game design and campaign design to set limits on the sorts of party unity that are involved, and then expect people to accept this or debate it at the outset.  It sounds like Multiverser doesn't do parties at all; so long as that's clear, nobody feels like a failure for not cooperating.  A fairly traditional Star Trek sort of game, however, would expect that party unity be respected, whether or not this involved occasionally physically splitting them up.  That is, you can beam down to the surface alone, but it should be a pretty big plot point if you do so without letting anybody know.  Shadows in the Fog tries to play off this conception of a party by assuming that the gang will stick together, but that this may or may not mean they trust each other -- or can trust each other.  My hope is that people will stick together at least partly because they want to find out how to use each other, not because they get along.  And by running things Soap-Opera style, they also get to do things alone without that being a pain for the GM or an issue of "me me me."

Chris



1. Although I do wonder in what circumstances he discovered what it feels like to have a rotting albatross around his neck, but that's another story.  :)

2.  Yes, this is a real example, but a lot is changed to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.

[Cassidy]

Depending on the game there may often be very valid reasons for the characters wandering off and doing stuff seperately. Characters aren't joined at the hip after all.

Quite often I find characters split off into two (and sometimes three) groups, each group doing their own thing. That's cool, makes for some dynamic play at times as the GM switches back and forth from group to group.

Maximizing player participation is the key Matt; keep the players involved in play even if their character is not. One easy way to do that is by letting players assume the role of NPCs in scenes that don't involve their main characters.

[Matt Wilson]

I'm not understanding some of these replies. I wasn't saying that splitting the party is bad or good or should never happen or should always happen. I just don't like it, and said why, and wondered what that means in terms of game theory. Is is social contract? a stance issue? Something related to G/N/S?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Matt,

There's the trouble - you haven't posed anything specific to discuss beyond your own value judgment:

I just don't like it, and said why,

... which can't be discussed in terms of anything at all. People can offer their contrasting judgments, as Jack did, or offer "why that judgment might be hasty," as Chris did, but that's all. Your "why," which is to say, communicating with other players via multiple stances, is nifty, but it's not really an explanation or analysis.

and wondered what that means in terms of game theory.

As a preference, nothing. It can't "mean" anything beyond your particular chosen sub-set of the potential multivariate space of the hobby.

That's why you're not understanding the replies - we have nothing to say if all you're offering is "here's my thing." The only possible response is "glad to hear it," and to be done.

Best,
Ron

[Bankuei]

Hi Matt,

Here's some food for thought:

The game is run by a group of people.  Traditionally, the players have input into the game via character.  Hence, all interactions with the group are divided into "in character" and "out of character".  Out of character occurs all the time, regardless.  Its plain and basic socializing.  In character, only happens during play, with the provision that the characters involved can plausibly interact(face to face, over communication system, psychically, whatever).

So, when the party is split, the players, in character, are only interacting with the GM, not with each other.  In terms of ball passing, the ball is passed to the GM, GM passes to player, player to GM, GM to next player, etc.  You never get player to player ball passing because in game, they are prevented from interacting with each other.

Consider the various times that players deliberately set up lines for another player to drop the punchline via character.  The fun sorts of interactions that make for good entertainment.  The group is there to interact with each other as a group, not to interact with just one person, it seems natural that you'd want some in-game interaction to go with the out of game kibbitzing.

Just my 2 cents,

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Let's assume that what you want is a high level of player interaction, almost constant in terms of the characters being together, but not the artificiality of the "party" metagame structure (am I close?).

If so, then my suggestions are to have mechanics that encourage players staying together for in-game reasons. For example, play Hero Wars, with characters designed with relationship Abilities between the characters. That goes a long way.

The other obvous tactic is to have the game be about something that would rarely require splitting up. Most Mission style games do this. InSpectres, for example. Paranoia doubles up by not only making it about missions, but giving the characters a really strong reason to remain on the mission (not being turned into a thick yellow paste).

To a large extent these are just examples of the principles Chris (Lehric) is talking aobut above.

Mike

[Ben Morgan]

In my expeience, the problems I've seen with PCs splitting up has not come solely from the GM, but from all the players. The root of the problem seems to be one of timing and attention span.

In the group I was in previously, it was not uncommon that the party would split up, and the GM would focus on one group at a time, for what usually amounted to an hour or more at a time. During this time, anyone whose PC was not currently active was basically not allowed to participate, because "You're not there!" It didn't help that the GM had no real concept of scene framing (or even the purpose of scenes in general), and "skipping ahead" was admanatly frowned upon. It was also not uncommon for inactive players to start picking up other books, firing up Diablo, taking a nap.

When I put my current group together, I decided that I didn't ever want any of those things to happen. I made it a point that when the group is not together, I keep very careful track of how long I'm taking with each subgroup. Five to ten minutes seems to be working a lot better. I also don't smack people down for shouting out suggestions OOC, because I'm an advocate of audience stance, and anything that enhances the group's enjoyment of the game is a Good Thing. I put all of these things in big letters across the top of all my game notes now.

In short, yes, this is a social contract issue.

-- Ben

[Bankuei]

Hi Ben,

You know, on that point, I just realized that if the major avenue of power for players is through characters, having all the characters in one spot limits what can be affected, but also, as you said, allows the players to have the ability to "get a turn" in the action, instead of sitting around, waiting for the GM to frame them into scene.

Chris

[M. J. Young]

Permit me to clarify this

It sounds like Multiverser doesn't do parties at all; so long as that's clear, nobody feels like a failure for not cooperating.

It would be more accurate to say that Multiverser doesn't care whether characters work together or not. If the players want to form a party, the game supports that; if they want to ignore each other, the game supports that. At times (when the players are brought into the same world) it tends to support working together (scriff sense which alerts them to the presence and direction of each other; advantages of learning from each other; effects of being on the same time line). At other times it makes working together more difficult, such as being thrown into different worlds--but even here, the game has mechanics in place by which the player characters can decide to stay together, as long as they're willing to say, "if he dies, I go with him". So you can do the party thing if you want; most players, in my experience, tend away from that. They like having autonomy.

Focusing toward Matt's question, well, in the scheme of things it suggests that you really like character interaction. It also suggests that your usual referees aren't up to the task of providing interesting character interaction with multiple non-player characters. I have no problem with players giving suggestions to other players when their characters aren't in the same scene, as long as it's not in a situation in which coordination of character actions is an issue. That is, my caveat addresses those situations in which it will work if Bob does A and Bill does B, so Bob wants to tell Bill what to do even though Bob's character could not tell Bill's character. Even then, I'd sometimes allow it, but I think it's much more fun if Bill can figure out what it is that Bob wants him to do without a word about it. Otherwise, if Bob is only trying to help Bill play "better" in some sense, I've no problem with that.

But I'm on the same page as you about character interaction. I like that aspect of play.

In fact, in our earliest games, several players had two or more characters (because the gaming group started very small and the party had to be a bit larger than the group), and I became very fond of watching the interactions between characters run by the same player. I love character interactions when they happen. I love seeing characters become emotionally involved with other characters. I'm told its a simulationist exploration of character issue, and I think that might be right.

Is that what you're seeking?

--M. J. Young

[Brian Leybourne]

I think some games permit/encourage character separation more than others as well.

If you're playing D&D, in general you tend to move about in a party.

If you're playing Amber, in general characters tend to split off and do their own thing, getting back together now and then and splitting off again.

That's IME anyway. Of course, it's easier in Amber because although characters might be a million universes separated from each other, they're only a trump call away (and because time differs from shadow to shadow you don't have to stress too much about how long one person has been out of contact with another when one calls the other).

So it's a social contract, but it's also influenced by the game and the style of game the players want.

Brian.

[damion]

I think this is partly a player proactivity/protagonism issue, basicly, how much can a player do that is important to the story without the GM's gaze?

If players have bought in, their characthers can talk among them selves and I've seen important
results come out of this, also for games with high planning/bookkeeping players can perform those functions while the group is split.

At a system level this basicly means minimal GM involvement should be needed to resolve actions that arn't 'in focus'.  Thus 'out-of-focus' players can do stuff, and then grab the GM's attention for a simple resolution.
This is partially a social contract thing, i.e trust and partially a system thing.  A DnD 20th level fighter can't say,  go rough up the guy who harrassed his sister, without GM focus because this involves the combat system(and many die rolls).

[John Kim]

Since Jack has made the point about when such punishment is not reasonable, here's an example of the opposite end.  The party decides, in a Star Trek-like game, that we're all beaming down to the surface to go do X.  During the discussion of the plan, one player/PC held out for doing Y instead.  So when we all beam down, that PC leaps out of the transporter before he can be beamed down, and then goes off and does his own thing.  The GM now has to try to run two quite different games, and the player has now also set up a competition: who can win first?  Furthermore, by doing this he has undermined the whole point of the discussion (which had taken some time and some heat) and made clear that he wants to do whatever he likes regardless of anyone else -- at a player level.  This behavior should have been punished...  

Hey, wait, that's me.  :-)  Well, at least, it sounds like things which my characters have sometimes done.  I have been seen as a difficult player at times because my character will sometimes go off and do things with no regard for the meta-game consequences.  On the other hand, I think I am fairly tolerant of a number of meta-game issues like not being in the scene for a while.  

As an anecdote on this, there was a point in a Victorian campaign where my character (a brutish inspector named Grimmond) was absolutely furious with another PC -- whom he believed was endandering everyone with his magical babbling.  Anyhow, he punched out Hayward and then dragged him along tied up.  The funny thing is, that I and Hayward's player Jim seemed to be pretty OK with this -- while some of the other players were much more upset.  

I think the lesson is that you just really need to consider the allowed/expected PC interactions as part of your social contract.  

I think this is partly a player proactivity/protagonism issue, basicly, how much can a player do that is important to the story without the GM's gaze?

If players have bought in, their characthers can talk among them selves and I've seen important results come out of this, also for games with high planning/bookkeeping players can perform those functions while the group is split.  

It seems to me that there are a number of other issues at work here.  

1) How intense is the game expected to be?  

It is actually not a priori bad if everyone is not constantly focussed on the game.  Most players regard it as a horrendous failure if someone reads a book or such during the game, but in principle there is nothing inherently wrong with this.  My current group is actually less focussed than some past ones, in that we will regularly take breaks, chat, joke, and so forth.  I don't take it as a sign of failure that we have some out-of-game talk, though I certainly had concerns about it earlier in the campaign.  I've gotten used to it more.  One factor may be that we have learned to live with my 3-year-old son occaisionally wandering in.  He's usually pretty good, but

2) How interested are the players in watching each others' actions?

Some players don't mind so much not having input for stretches, as long as the action is interesting, and I get my turn in.  There are some things which help with this -- it helps if everyones actions are interrelated some (so there are lessons for player A in what player B is doing), and of course if the events themselves are entertaining.  

My campaign has actually been shifting away from unified group action to more alternating action.  For example, there was the scene from last session where Hallgerd went to hit on the Earl's brother Hring basically in front of his wife.  I don't think anyone much minded that this was just Liz and the GM for a little while.  On the other hand, I do try to get in at least 2 or 3 players on a given scene.  

3) Do the players have input besides their character?  

For example, in my campaign we are using Whimsy Cards.  This means that a player can have input onto the storyline even though their PC isn't present.