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GameMastery Guide / Player Characters / The Life of a Party / Party Composition

Splitting the Party

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 65
“Don’t split the party” is practically an RPG mantra. But sometimes players do it anyway, or a split is forced upon them by a sudden avalanche, a teleport spell gone awry, or the chance to sneak into the palace in a halfling-sized crate.

When you find yourself running multiple groups, it’s worth remembering why you’re at the front of the table: to give your friends a challenging, fun time, not to relentlessly enforce realism. You don’t want to utterly break everyone’s suspension of disbelief, but it’s not the end of the world if you engineer events for the party to be reunited sooner rather than later. Is it really so bad if the avalanche gets dug away quickly or the palace loading dock has a bunch of different-sized crates?

In these situations, the GM often needs to adjust the flow of the session to compensate and keep things both logical and fun. When faced with such a situation, you have several different tactics at your disposal.

Split Screen: Some GMs have little problem keeping track of the events of two small groups at once. If you’re comfortable with it, you can try to continue to run events as normal, dealing with each group while the other one is considering its next move so that neither side feels neglected. For instance, this might work well in a combat that spans two different rooms (or two simultaneous combats), and keeping both groups operating as part of the same initiative order during these periods can help ensure that no one is left out for an unfair period of time. In general, though, this is by far the most difficult way to handle a split party.

Jump Cuts: It’s natural to go back and forth between two groups, and that back-and-forth provides its own dramatic momentum, like a movie that cuts back and forth between two different scenes.

Decide in the moment when you want those “cuts” to occur, choosing them based on your sense of pacing. Don’t feel like you need to switch between team A and team B every round; that will leave everyone disjointed and bring play to a crawl. Nor should you fully resolve an encounter with team A, because then team B might as well go to the kitchen and have a pizza. Time those “cuts” between the groups for the big moments—the scouts see something fascinating, the rear guard brings down the ogre, and other natural turning points.

Deputize Your Players: If one group is doing a lot while the other group is waiting around, put the players in the less-active group to work for you. They can control a monster or an NPC guard. It’s not the end of the world if a player sees a stat block, and many players relish the vicarious thrill of attacking their friends.

Extra Scene: If the separation is sure to go on for an extended period, the group might arrange an extra session focusing on only the relevant characters. While a session that includes only some of the characters can sometimes help a campaign (for example, when multiple players know they’re going to be absent, or a subgroup wants to go off on a side quest), it can also leave certain players feeling left out of the action. In such cases, a more creative solution might be required. You might have the players whose characters are not being focused on create temporary characters, newly introduced to their companions, or else take control of important NPCs; this approach allows them to accompany their companions for the duration of their side adventure while still maintaining continuity with their existing characters. This method means no players get left out of an adventure, and the entire group remains in tune with all of the story’s events.

One Man Show: In cases where a lone character decides to run off on his own, the GM should do what she can to keep the game fun for the player, but by the same token shouldn’t feel that she needs to split game time evenly between the majority of the group and the party of one. If a player chooses to take his character away from the central narrative, receiving less of the GM’s attention might just be part of the price. Alternatively, a separate solo session or email narrative might be exactly what the player needs to satisfy his character goals without sacrificing any fun for the rest of the group.

Go With the Flow: When the two parties reunite, let it happen. Don’t worry that 10 minutes passed for one group and only 5 minutes passed for the other. It’s probably not worth it to award experience points differently—few people really care that they get 150 more XP than someone else, and making such distinctions is more likely to foment discord than prevent it.