I think two thinks are prompting this post, the Burning Wheel write up, Preparations for Winter (which sounds cool. Picked up BW at the Strategist along with a bunch of other things) and the experience point system in Fates Worse than Death (which has some really absurd premises, but is chock full of really cool stuff I can put into my campaign).

I think folks worry too much about Not Splitting the Party. Oh, I see the logic for a GM to want to keep the party together, especially for dungeon crawls and military action type scenarios. But sometimes, it's Okay for PCs to be in different places.

Now, I don't actually mind how FWTD handles this. GMs are supposed to deduct experience from the total awarded if the party is split and Bad Stuff happens as a result. Like the deduction of points if PCs die, this seems designed to encourage good gaming manners. But one of the sample scenarios has a high likelihood of the PCs visiting a brothel, and at the end, the deductions for experience include splitting the party. Um.

Okay, I admit it. I have never been to any kind of brothel, least at all the sleazy one in the scenario set in 2080. But I'm having trouble buying that the establishment's proprietor will let the entire group in to see one girl. Or is the group supposed to ask for a large room with a whole lot of girls? 'Twasn't the impression I got from the scenario, but I'll reread it.

Regardless, it isn't the general idea of keeping the group together that's a problem, so much as the idea that this must be done at all costs. Especially in a game where there's a lot of "shipboard life" -- you know, where a lot of the important stuff really is the PCs doing whatever their normal business is -- it just doesn't make sense.

-Lisa

I'm running a modern-day campaign in which I've never successfully kept the party together for more than thirty minutes. They're all trained experts and so it just happens that their tactical plans all involve them pairing off to multitask on different problems.

In our last session, I stopped fighting it and ran separate extended flashbacks for each PC, and let the other players jump in troupe-style with supporting cast. It worked better than I'd have expected -- during one player's time in front of the camera, the other players were almost like an audience at an improv theatre, jumping in with suggestions and complications. In my case, I think it helped that the combined backstories added up to some revelations beyond what any single PC's tale explained.

It all depends on your group, though. Mine seems to be very comfortable with the give-and-take involved in running separate subplots, but I've been in groups where the players who weren't "on" wouldn't have stayed involved.

I suppose my point is that with splitting the party, like so many other aspects of "how to GM", you really have to be comfortable in your group's Social Contract and read your players to see what they want.

There have been several threads about this before.

Two things I've found extremely useful:

1. Switch back and forth as often and as quickly as you can. The main reason players don't like separating the party is because then there's a block of time when they're not in the scene. Cut back and forth at dramatic moments. This actually gets easier if one or more of the characters is in a combat. Then you can simply switch off at each combat round. Ten minute intervals can create tension and suspense where half-hour intervals will create boredom.

2. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT do anything to discourage the players' natural (although usually unconscious) inclination to engage in what Ron Edwards calls cheerleading. Cries of "Quiet! You're not there!" are only going to turn them off. As a GM, you want all your players involved and engaged, even if their characters aren't in the scene. And as players, the fact that the other guys are calling out "No, go the other way!" should be taken as a supreme compliment, because it means they're paying attention, and that as audience members, they care about your character.

-- Ben

Hello,

The core thread for most of the discussions about this issue seems to be Simultaneous multiple-scene play. I also provided quite a few terms and ideas for managing it in the last chapter of Sex & Sorcery.

Best,
Ron

Andrew Norris wrote: I'm running a modern-day campaign in which I've never successfully kept the party together for more than thirty minutes. They're all trained experts and so it just happens that their tactical plans all involve them pairing off to multitask on different problems.

In our last session, I stopped fighting it and ran separate extended flashbacks for each PC, and let the other players jump in troupe-style with supporting cast. It worked better than I'd have expected -- during one player's time in front of the camera, the other players were almost like an audience at an improv theatre, jumping in with suggestions and complications. In my case, I think it helped that the combined backstories added up to some revelations beyond what any single PC's tale explained.

It all depends on your group, though. Mine seems to be very comfortable with the give-and-take involved in running separate subplots, but I've been in groups where the players who weren't "on" wouldn't have stayed involved.

I suppose my point is that with splitting the party, like so many other aspects of "how to GM", you really have to be comfortable in your group's Social Contract and read your players to see what they want.

I've tried switching back and forth often. This sometimes works well. It also sometimes leaves players frustrated, as they feel that they barely get a scene started when I cut, and have no time to work up a good momentum. So, I try to make sure people have enough time for momentum without leaving anyone on hold for too long.

-Lisa

What a lot of the above posters are trying to get at is that some of the frustration that players are feeling can be mitigated by making them more satisfied as audience members. That is, successful play of this sort involves making every player interested in what's happening to the other player's characters too. That way they don't mind not being in a scene so much, because they're enjoying watching the other plots develop.

There are a few techniques that help. First, make sure that every player completely understands what's going on. This is completely the opposite of most styles where the idea is to make sure that a player only knows what their character knows. Instead, each player should have an audience's omniscinet view of the action.

Another good idea is to have all character generation occur as a group. Then have players comment on each other's characters. Nobody gets to make any character that not everybody is interested in. Again, this violates an unstated rule of most groups that you're allowed to make up whatever character you like.

Using techniques like this, you'll find that players don't mind the down time (in fact, they may relish it a bit). If they still want to be active, then ideas like Neil's are good. One good use for a player who wants to be a sort of "mini-GM" is to allow them to be the Atmosphere GM for the scene. Their job is to just put in details about the setting that make it more "there" and add to the feel of the scene as they see it. Basically if there's anything that you're too busy to do, or just don't feel like doing, ask somebody else to help.

Mike

I'm in RDU Neil's group. I'm a player in his games and I GM for him (where, last ep, the party of 3 was split into various, changing combos of 2,1 or 1,1,1 at times). That night worked, IMO. But I really tried not to spend TOO much time with one character... really tried to keep the focus popping from character to character as the flow would allow. Obviously, cutting in the middle of dialogue is a no-no. Finding that appropriate place to stop is a judgement call.

In Neil's recent trials on having the party split, that was frustrating for me... not because of Neil's judgement calls on when to switch... but because my PC is a bit isolated. I was looking forward to having the other players draw my PC out. That particular PC interaction with NPCs ... I just haven't found the voice, the interest in NPCs that other PCs I run DO have.

I don't mind splitting up the party if the table all has the same "rhythym". As a GM. As a player though, my demands are a bit higher... If one player is eating up an 1/2 hour while I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs... i'm gonna get bored. I hate being bored.

So, the idea of quick cutting works for me. Combat is easy in this respect. If 4 players are all in combat and they are all in different places, the combat structure mechanically gives an easy way for the GM to insert a rhythym. The Metronome of intiative, actions and NPC reactions is in place.

But what I've seen in the "split party" situations is that certain players are "on". They've got ideas. They need GM input to accept or deny those courses of action. Other players are not as on... maybe they are tired, maybe they are just not getting fed situations that spark their PC... but they are not contributing as much at that moment... where if the party was all together, they might come alive. Dunno, that is where it all gets tricky.

Not as easy when 4 players are in 4 different locations dealing with different NPCs. That is a tough thing for GMs to switch focus, hats etc to facilitate the quick cut.

I've got some comments that may come down to quibbles, I'm not sure. But here goes.

Often the best time to cut between scenes is right in the middle of dialog or a fight. Because then people pay more attention to the intervening action waiting for their important action to come up. I'm talking about cliffhangers, essentially.

GM: Then Natasha says, "And the baby is yours, Fredrick." And cut to Bob...

Yes, leave the player open mouthed. In addition to the player waiting for their turn to come back up again, it allows them time to think about their response. This is very anti-Actor stance, yes; what you're hoping for is that whey you come back, the player will have thought of the ultimate retort.

Player: "Um, but darling, I've had a vasectomy..."

You get a lot of great moments with this. It shouldn't be overused, but when done properly, it's quite effective.


On the matter of "On" players, I find that having the party all together doesn't do anything particularly to ensure that the players will be "on". I find that just as often the player will be doing just what you describe, often making you wonder why they're even in the scene. Haven't you at least once had a player say, "Why's my character here, again?"

When that happens, you know that it's time that you get that player off on his own persuing his characters goals until such time as the characters paths should intersect again.

And, as before, don't worry, they'll intersect again. If you don't see to it, the players will.

Mike

Couple thoughts for you,

Some time back, I posted a long thing on soap operas and RPG's, the point being how you can run a whole lot of interconnected stuff simultaneously. I'm also in the process of some strong rethinking of this, and will be back soon on it.

Fang Langford, in one of his posts on his game Scattershot, discussed something in a thread called "Part II"; look for the little section entitled When Can I Catch a Break?, where he talks about cutting to the meat of a scene and cutting away, so as not to lose too much blood.

Another thing you might try, if scenes aren't all action-packed, is to dole out the NPC's pretty widely. That is, if it's Phil's scene, Sarah doesn't have to just twiddle her thumbs while Brian The GM runs everything; Brian can hand a good NPC to Sarah, so she has lots to do (and can also make the situation much more complicated and fun). This is mentioned in the Soap thing, but should be stressed.

Lean on the r-maps, as well: the more different characters are bound by blood and/or sex (there's a precious few other things that should be added, one of them being hate, but that's another thread) the more interested in others' scenes the players become.

Finally, I do think it's nice to have some group work going on as well, so that everything doesn't simply atomize. There are games in which such atomization is deliberate and strongly supported systemically, but apart from those it may be wise to keep tabs on the group as and when possible without Force.

Chris Lehrich

I run a Buffy game right now that involves a lot of individual scenes. I've found that it helps that the players are comfortable playing pc to pc conversations "off camera." In other words, they have conversations with other PCs away from the GM. As the GM, I only ask that they let me know of any important revelations or if they have questions. The group has a really good dynamic where the PC interactions are very common and enjoyable, so the players who are not "on camera" have a lot of fun discussing the plot and their reactions to everything in character.

I agree that it's not usually good to have a player twiddling thumbs for 20 minutes. I hate doing that myself.

Having players talk in character to each other helps, but is not a panacea. It can lead to a vicious cycle: GM isn't focusing on Players A and B, so they game with each other. GM sees them gaming with each other and thinks, "Good, they're covered," and doesn't cut back to them.

As I said, my main point is that I think it's silly to decide to keep the party together at all costs, not that keeping the party together much of the time is in any way a bad thing.

Cutting in the middle of dialogue or a fight can work, if this is done at the dramatically appropriate time. The "I'm pregnant" moment. But I've ocassionally gotten complaints, IMO, justified, for cutting too much, at points where there was no momentum, no good dramatic pause, because my sense of timing was just off.

Having players play NPCs can work. Mm, maybe I should try that more.

It does depend. Some players are happy not being "on" much of the time. Some read happily until they are "on", and consider the day a success. And it can be hard to tell whether a player falls into that category, or is reading because bored. The same player can fall into different categories at different times.

At a recent session of Matthew Steven's Two Fisted Tales, I spent the first 20 minutes of so of the game happily working on my zine for Alarums and Excursions. If he'd cut to me, yes, I would have put it down and roleplayed, but I was glad to have the chance to finish writing a paragrph on my pda. I had ample opportunity to roleplay in the session, and I chewed the scenery with the best of them, deliberately blowing luck cards for something absurd. (My pc had a paranoid fear that the guy he was talking to was a master of disguise villain.)

Also, at least half of that 20 minutes involved the GM doing 1-on-1 stuff with the quietest player. Said player was actually talking. This is a rare enough event that I really wouldn't have wanted to interrupt. I am not exaggerating here. He had created a new PC, and this one seems to be clicking nicely.

So, the GM was doing nothing wrong. And, to be fair, I was actually participating in the scene: As a Strange Creature broke its theoretically unbreakable cage, I made sound effects. "OH my gawd, bullets won't stop it!"

Matt made the right call at the right time. At another time, it might have been the wrong call. It's context dependent.

In the same session, Josh reminded me that my PC really should contact his PC so she could get to where the adventure was. Time to bring the party together again. So, we did, and there was a terrific rooftop chase after the monstrous mothman.

To which I contributed zilch, being in the bathroom for most of it. Ah well. I suggested that we rule my character was in shock for the two rounds of combat I missed, which seemed rather likely, under the circumstances. But everyone else whaled on the mothman.