When They Always Split Up

What do you do when the party becomes the eight-pointed chaos symbol and splits up in every direction?

RPT GM Lessa asks:

If you can manage to keep your players together, tell me how. First thing my players do is split the party…

Now, Lessa is a very experienced GM and actually has this under control. But for other GMs out there in the same boat and want some tips, here are a few thoughts.

1. Compartmentalize

I actually like it when characters split up. As an old school GM, this gives my monsters advantage. A divided party is a weaker party.

But not all scenarios involve mechanics and tactics. Downtime activities, for example.

In either case, practice compartmentalizing your brain. Maybe there’s a better word for it, but this skill will help you greatly even in unified play.

What I do is create a mental picture of each character’s situation.

First, I envision the setting or context. Dank dungeon corridors with awful smells and unsettling sounds. A bustling marketplace with hawkers and haggling creating a wall of noise amongst a plethora of bright stall colours and smells of warmed bread. Or an octagonal room lit by glyph-covered doors on the walls and a rotating throne made of rusty swords in the center.

Second, I establish initiative order. I use a variety of methods depending on the situation. The goal here is to allow yourself to focus on one character and player at a time without the spotlight overlooking anyone when the setting responds.

Third, I picture the same scene through each character’s eyes as I cycle through initiative. They say if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The character sheet tells me what’s important to the character in terms of skills, feats, class, race, and so on. And gameplay has told me a lot about the character’s personality.

And that’s it. By putting myself in each character’s hobnailed boots and curly-toed slippers, I can create custom descriptions, NPC and monster responses, and location changes from each PC’s point of view.

And then, when the party splits up, I do exactly the same thing. It’s the same operation. The cognitive load is slightly increased from having to picture two or more contexts or scenes. But our brains are image machines and gain muscle in this area with practice.

2. Add It to the Social Contract

RPT GM Kodia Tomekeeper makes a great suggestion:

I made sure we talked about it in our session zero about how hard it is on GMs and that there are times when it’s absolutely fine and appropriate but it has to be weighed with their fun as well as the game master’s fun.

If there’s something you don’t want players doing in sessions, communicate it out. Make space for discussion if players have questions or want clarifications.

I do this in almost every Session 0 these days. Guys, I’ve prepped a starting adventure and play area to test the waters and get your feedback after the session. Please bite the hook this time, and then in future sessions you can do what you like as I’ll have prepared things based on your feedback.

3. GM Tactics

This might be the part you’ve been waiting for. What in-game GM Moves can we make to keep the party together?

We can brandish ye olde carrot and stick to make the party want to stay together.

Carrots

  • First-come-first-serve treasure rules. Allow players to grab loot you designed for others. Hey, I wanted that! Yup, looks go on me, eh?
  • Look for team bonuses. If your game system has teamwork rules, remind players, and especially, have foes wield them to demonstrate.
    • Aid Another (D&D), Hope (Daggerheart), Stress (Blades in the Dark).
    • Buff spells, useful gear, solutions via potions and scrolls.
    • Areas of Effect like holy auras and bard songs.
    • Multi-step challenges requiring a larger menu of skills.

Sticks

  • Limit resources like light and healing. When the cleric goes off to check out that weird shrine and everyone else comes with, you know it’s working.
  • Do not fudge the monsters. If there’s d8 goblins in the area and the edge lord rogue ventures in, make eight perception checks in public. When players learn encounters are deadly, they’ll team up.
  • Apply social pressure. Splitting up applies to parley and trick actions too. Morale for foes changes when facing off against two characters versus five, even if the PCs just want to talk.
  • Separate your clues. And enforce what characters know. When split, Little Phingers won’t know about the password Ignitus just puzzled out, the warning about never wearing red that Templeton was just given, and the map Sir Valiant just discovered.

Whether characters band together for survival or split up to cover more ground, our job remains the same. Present the world honestly, master our mechanics, and play to find out what happens.

I hope you have a great weekend and can get some gaming done!

Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!

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