Splitting the party is something that every GM will have to deal with at some point. Sometimes it’s a pain in the butt, sometimes it goes smoothly — and there are 5 main ways that you can handle it.
Let’s discuss all of them: 2 lousy approaches, 1 neutral approach and 2 good ones.
Splitting the Players – Lousy Approach #1
When half of the party heads down one fork in the road, and the rest of the PCs take the other path, you physically split up the group: Half the players leave the room, the others stay at the gaming table.
This is a terrible way to handle splitting the party.
In my experience, it always takes longer than you think it will, and boy does it kill the game’s momentum — especially for the players that aren’t actually playing.
Sometimes it seems like the only thing to do, though — like in games with a lot of intra-party conflict and intrigue (Vampire, for example). For me, part of the pleasure of gaming is in separating player knowledge from character knowledge, and I trust my players to do this. I’ve learned that even when splitting the players up sounds reasonable, it’s not the way to go.
The Exception: There’s always an exception, right? Splitting the players can be a great way to build tension and sustain a sense of mystery (“What were they doing in there?) — but only in small doses. Use with care.
Cut Back and Forth Occasionally – Lousy Approach #2
I’ve seen this so often that I think of it as the default approach (and it’s very easy to fall into — I’ve done more than my share of it!): Keep everyone at the table, and cut back and forth between the two groups of players periodically.
And that’s really the problem with this method — the “periodically” part. Many players get bored when they’re not involved in the action (understandably so), and even if everyone stays interested this approach can still be a big momentum-killer.
(The trick is to cut back and forth much more often, and that’s our fourth approach.)
Just Don’t Do It- The Neutral Approach
One way to handle splitting the party is to never split the party. I view this as a neutral approach because you’re really just sidestepping the issue, but at the same time it does work quite well.
The best way I’ve found to handle this is to make it a social contract issue: Before the campaign begins, discuss it with your players.
Explain that splitting the party is often really frustrating for everyone, and that you won’t put the PCs in situations where it’s the most advantageous thing to do. In return, ask them to avoid splitting the party unless it’s absolutely necessary. In my experience, this works like a charm.
You could also just make it a hard-and-fast rule, but that’s too dictatorial for my GMing style — I prefer dialogue to ruling with an iron fist. (Your mileage may vary, of course — and in a convention game, this might not be a bad idea at all).
Cut, Cut, Cut – Good Approach #1
No matter how hard you try to avoid splitting the party, it’s going to happen — so what do you do?
Cut early, and cut often.
Handle a minute or two of what one sub-group is doing (with the other players still at the table), and then cut away to the other group. Another couple of minutes later, cut back. Repeat until the party is back together.
Think of this as the two minute rule — when in doubt, cut every two minutes.
This keeps everyone engaged, you won’t lose momentum, each sub-group gets time to think about what to do next (and enjoy watching the other players) and no one will be tempted to go get snacks, start watching TV, etc.
Try to cut on mini-cliffhangers, too — this works wonders for keeping things moving.
Get a Sidekick – Good Approach #2
The fourth approach is to bring in a co-GM — someone who can take over GMing the other half of the party. That way no one gets bored, and as long as the two GMs communicate regularly the game should stay on track nicely.
I’ve never tried this myself, but there’s some great advice on the topic in this thread: How do you run a two-GM game?
Other Approaches
Several TT readers pointed out methods of dealing with a split party that I didn’t think of, or that I folded into the “big 5” (thanks, everyone!).
The No-Cut Variant: Lebkin prefers to keep everyone at the table, but handle each sub-group’s activities all at once — no cutting involved. He recommends this technique for short separations, and notes that it has its downsides. (I think of this as a variation on #2, above.)
Troupe Play: Crazy Jerome brought up Ars Magica’s approach: Every player has more than one PC, and splitting the party is very much the norm, not an exception. This comes back to social contracts and expectations — Ars is built explicitly for this kind of play — but it definitely stands on its own.
Run Two Sessions: Got an extremely long split on your hands, but you don’t want to sidestep it? Alan Scott recommends running two completely separate sessions, one for each sub-group — this is a pretty nifty idea.
Have I missed anything else? What do you do when the party splits up in your game?
There is a sixth approach that you didn’t cover:
Keep everyone at the table, but run each group seperately till they regroup.
Example: One player falls down a pit, seperating him from the rest of the party. The split group is forced to move seperately, reuniting further down.
You run the person in the pit through a few solo encounters, moving till he reaches the reunite point. He steps into a battle already in progress. This is where you leave him, and go back to the main party.
You progress them in a similar manner, working them toward the reunite point. Here they encounter a superior foe (at least superior to their diminished numbers). Then you bring in the seperated party member, allowing an exciting climax.
Of course, the downside is keeping the party interested. The key is for the action to be exciting and dramatic, especially for the seperated character. You can also lesson any rules you have about offering advice to other players. In a sense, it can become the party running the seperated character, rather than one player.
I have found this method to be quite useful. For me, it keeps better pace and is less confusing than cutting back and forth between two groups. It works best with short seperations and know reconnection points.
Hi, lebkin:
I think the reason he didn’t mention that approach is that it’s basically an extreme version of “Lousy Approach #2” — which isn’t really a good thing, I think. It may be less confusing, but you run the severe risk of players getting bored when they’re not involved in the game.
The sixth approach is one that we don’t see much, because the game has to support it: Play a game with good support for troupe play. Ars Magica is the obvious example, where split is the norm rather than the rule. Everyone is playing their own mage, running all over the countryside or spending months holed up somewhere. But there are plenty of interesting secondary characters for everyone else to play.
I’m not very experienced with it, but as I understand troupe play, you still want to be conscious of when to jump groups. #4 can still be a good choice, though you can get a lot closer to #2 without it being a lousy choice.
As someone who uses #3 (no splits) whenever possible, and #4 to the best of my ability otherwise, typical troupe play isn’t quite enough for me. Thus my interest in “players play all the monsters” as a design idea. Assuming one gets a good design for that, then splits are a feature, not a bug. I suppose this is bypassing the issue as well, though I consider it more a case of “party split judo” than a bypass.
One of the little tricks I’ve learned is to literally split the party at the table. Have them get up and move to the side or people their split with. This way, when I’m running one group, the other group can talk and still roleplay with each other while I’m handling the other situation.
Another way is when there are two seperate combats, run both simulataneiously on seperate battle maps.
The best way to handle it, if you find it becoming overwhelming, is to preplan. If you know your party is going to split the next session or there’s a high probability of this occuring, be prepared. Figure out the best times to cut, what minis go where and predraw out the maps you’ll use.
Currently, my party is split and I’ve been harder on them than usual this week to tell me what they plan on doing so I can be extra prepared.
I played in one game where a PC was kidnapped, and the DM brought in an NPC for him to play. That worked quite well – they player had plenty to do (his main PC was unconsious anyway) and was still working with the group. If the party has enough NPCs then this is a good solution. However, if the party splits 50-50, and each player is also playing another NPC, I think it would become cumbersome. You would not want to flip between them quickly, but run them to the point that you need resolution from the other group, then switch.
I didn’t do a good job explaining in my first comment, and I think my example just muddle it. Let me try again.
Normally, I take the neutral approach and don’t split the party. The only reason to split a group is if doing so creates an exciting and interesting situation. If the division isn’t exciting enough to capture the attention of the players of non-involved characters, you shouldn’t do it. You should also allow these players input into the action at hand, keeping them as part of the process, rather than having them sit quietly on the sidelines.
I had one game where a single character was divided from the party. As I ran her part of the story, the rest of the group was captivated by it. They’d offer advice, sit on the of their seats for dice rolls, stuff like that.
There’s another alternative, though it partakes of 2 & 4: don’t set up a party expectation in the first place. A lot of the Indie games expect you to “buy in” to other people’s characters as an audience from the start. They make it work by having all of the stories reflect one another– so that even when you’re not playing, you’ll be fasincated with other people’s takes on the problem your character’s facing.
For a party game, I think #3 and #4 go together very well– strong social discouragement from splitting the party– but when you do, cut quickly between groups so that no one mentally moves on to another activity.
Another option that didn’t get touched was to actually split the session. If the party splitting is predictable enough, then you could actually run entirely seperate sessions for group A and for group B. That only works if the party split lasts for about a session, though.
I’ve included the three new approaches/variants borught up in your comments — thank you! 🙂
lebkin: You explained things pretty well — well enough for me, anyway. Will has it right, though: I think of not cutting at all as an extreme variant of #2.
You did a good job of providing caveats, and with really short separations I can see how this might work.
Don: That’s a great trick, and I’ve never heard it before. Sweet! (I often feel like a broken record reading comments here — this community is full of so many ideas I’ve never heard before!)
xcorvis: “Want to play a goblin?” is how I always think of that trick, and it’s an excellent one — thanks for bringing it up!
Scott: Not having much indie RPG experience, that makes me go hmmm while scratching my head. I think I see what you’re getting at, though.
If you play over the Internet rather than a physical tabletop, the GM can use “whisper” features to run two separate PC groups simultaneously.
Everything is slower but the GM actually is running two groups at the same time. If the GM is particularly clever, he can even choreograph it so that only one group at a time needs his interaction. The other group is either discussing their next move, reading description or stating their actions.
This is one of the few times where online playing excels over tabletop playing.
A good trick is to conspire so one group doesn’t know where it is in relation to the other group. That way, the out-of-game knowledge is useless and nothing is really gained by the non-playing group watching or making suggestions to the playing group.
Good point, Dan — I hadn’t thought of online gaming in relation to splitting the party.
I use Cut/Cut/Cut requently in my urban campaign because by its very nature I’ve got PCs wandering all over the place. Usually I keep it to 5-10 minute blocks, though occasionally it takes longer when combat breaks out (but said combat is usually amusing for all involved, like when two party members decided to go shakedown the leader of the messengers guild, got in *way* over their heads, and ended up with their heads on pikes).
I also used the Sidekick method, which worked great, particularly when combats would break out and the PCs could vaguely hear what was going on at the other table, just enough to make them nervous and uneasy (“Did they say the frost giant just killed Falgar?”)
A cool variant I heard of (and really want to try) for Sidekick is dividing into two groups, and positioning them so they can’t hear each other. Then let them talk to one another via two way radios. Works great for Call of Cthulhu, and I expect it would do well in a modern or scifi setting as well (“Apone’s down! The sarge is down!”)