Splitting the Party

[HoodedHero007]

Yes, I know the general rule is to never split the party, but I'd consider the circumstances to be extenuating.

I am currently Co-DMing a ship-based campaign along with a friend. We have a total of Seven players, and two possible campaigns planned out. I think that it would be more practical to split the party into a group of 3 and a group of 4, thereby minimizing DM disagreements and increasing encounter efficiency, allowing the roleplay and exploration elements to be more available. Thoughts?

[Maxilian]

I agree, even more as you guys have 2 DMs, also that would also give the players more chance to do stuff, to be the spotlight wihtout pushing one of them into the "i'm just here" stage

[Tiadoppler]

the general rule is to never split the party, but I'd consider the circumstances to be extenuating.

There are two main reasons for that guideline:

1) So that the PCs are not put under unnecessary threat (see: Defeat in Detail) by their opponents.

2) So that the DM is not stressed out by running two "campaigns" simultaneously at one table.


It sounds like you've got two DMs, so running two groups around shouldn't require too much multi-tasking on your part. The only question: is there a good way to split up your party of 7 so that both groups have a diverse skillset?

In one of my current campaigns, there are 4 players, and each player controls 2 PCs. It's quite frequent (and encouraged) for them to split up 4/4, taking one character from each player on one adventure, while the other character goes on a different mission (so I'd run group A's adventure on one week, then group B's adventure on the following week, then they reunite).

In my opinion, splitting the party is a D&D tradition. It sounds like you've got a good way of handling it, so go for it.

[MaxWilson]

Yes, I know the general rule is to never split the party, but I'd consider the circumstances to be extenuating.

I am currently Co-DMing a ship-based campaign along with a friend. We have a total of Seven players, and two possible campaigns planned out. I think that it would be more practical to split the party into a group of 3 and a group of 4, thereby minimizing DM disagreements and increasing encounter efficiency, allowing the roleplay and exploration elements to be more available. Thoughts?

Sounds great! Lots of fun potential there. I recommend reading the Alexandrian's series on pacing, especially this one: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/33791/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-pacing-part-5-advanced-techniques


SPLITTING THE PARTY

Let’s start with simultaneous scenes: Half the party leaves to explore the abandoned water tower while the other half of the party goes to question Jim Baxter, the farmer with an inexplicable supply of Nazi gold.

On two entirely separate occasions I’ve had a group I’ve been GMing for spontaneously announce that they weren’t going to split up because they didn’t want to make things tough for me. In both cases, I rapidly dissuaded them from their “good intentions”: The truth is, I love it when the PCs split up.

While it does take a little extra juggling to handle multiple sets of continuity, that slight cost is more than worth the fact that a split party gives you so many more options for effective pacing: The trick is that you no longer have to wait for the end of a scene. Instead, you can cut back and forth between the simultaneous scenes.

Cut on an escalating bang. (The bang becomes a cliffhanger: “The door is suddenly blown open with plastic explosives! Colonel Kurtz steps through the mangled wreckage… Meanwhile, on the other side of town—“)
Cut on the choice. (Remember that everything in a roleplaying game is a conversation of meaningful choices. When a doozy of a choice comes along, cut to the other group.)
Cut on the roll of dice. (Leaving the outcome in suspense. But the other thing you’re eliminating is the mechanical pause in which the dice are rolled and modifiers are added. All of that is happening while something exciting is happening to the other groups. And when they get to an action check—BAM! You cut back to the first group, collect the result, and move the action forward.)
Or, from a purely practical standpoint, cut at any point where a player needs to look up a rule or perform a complex calculation or read through a handout. There may not have been a cliffhanger or a moment of suspense to emphasize, but you’re still eliminating dead air at the gaming table.
The end result is that effective cuts between simultaneous scenes allow you to easily tighten your pacing, heighten moments of suspense, and emphasize key choices.

*snip more good stuff*


With two DMs, you have even more options, including the option to float PCs between different DM tables based on what is happening in play, to have one DM act as referee and content generator while the other acts solely as monster advocate (roleplaying the monsters in and out of combat), to have DMs play different "factions" of monsters so that the PCs can play the monsters off against each other (difficult to do when one DM knows what's really going on with both sets of monsters), etc.

[BLC1975]

Matt Colville just dropped a Splitting the Party video on youtube if that's your kind of bag?

[WeaselGuy]

One of my old 3.5 campaigns, one of our first missions we ended up killing an Otyugh, and reclaiming the buildings that it was nesting in. We opened up our own little Scooby Doo esque company called "Otyugh Slayers INC", motto "We Split the Party".

I'm almost certain we all died, more than once, in that campaign, but we always managed to have at least 1 person live long enough to recruit more adventurer's to the business. I seem to recall playing a game in that same universe, but in 5e, so many years in the future, where OSI was one of the top name adventurer's guilds. It was a nice touch by our DM.