"Let's split up!"

[Mike Miller]

As a DM, you don't want to hear those words. Aside from the whole, putting half the group on the sidelines, it weakens the remaining people. This is mostly me relating a story but also me wondering to no one in particular what to do next.

My party of 6 PCs inadvertently split up. Without a long backstory, four of them decided independently to use an artifact and two refused. The four all teleported away and met up. The remaining two simply refuse to use the artifact. The two have a sort of monitor that allows them to view the other side, but time has passed and now there is no guarantee they can meet up with the party. They don't quite have the means to communicate between groups either.

Next session is tonight and I expect big things to happen for those who teleported away. It will be even more complicated if the two don't join them.... But I sort of don't want to DM fiat the two to join the group. It is a tough call. I want the party together and I want the party to all participate. However, they watched the four teleport away and didn't follow, so it is on them. Ugh, I feel like it would be a silly handwave to get the two with the rest but there won't be much for them to do by themselves.

Maybe I can make a little plot thing for the two to resolve on their own...

[Ashiel]

As a DM, you don't want to hear those words. Aside from the whole, putting half the group on the sidelines, it weakens the remaining people. This is mostly me relating a story but also me wondering to no one in particular what to do next.

My party of 6 PCs inadvertently split up. Without a long backstory, four of them decided independently to use an artifact and two refused. The four all teleported away and met up. The remaining two simply refuse to use the artifact. The two have a sort of monitor that allows them to view the other side, but time has passed and now there is no guarantee they can meet up with the party. They don't quite have the means to communicate between groups either.

Next session is tonight and I expect big things to happen for those who teleported away. It will be even more complicated if the two don't join them.... But I sort of don't want to DM fiat the two to join the group. It is a tough call. I want the party together and I want the party to all participate. However, they watched the four teleport away and didn't follow, so it is on them. Ugh, I feel like it would be a silly handwave to get the two with the rest but there won't be much for them to do by themselves.

Maybe I can make a little plot thing for the two to resolve on their own...
Is there anything they could be doing at the same time?

You could run two separate encounters and explorations at the same time and resolve things with turns. If one group gets into combat while the other is traveling around, put them all on the initiative track and include the explorers actions among the turn-takers. Maybe rather than trying to force them back together, you could embrace their temporary separation and let them do something neat at the same time which could let you seed some incentives to go back to the others or vice-versa.

EDIT: Sometimes when players split up (or even when not), even when not in combat, it might be a nice idea to get a sort of order of operations if your players are doing things. Just ask around the table in turn what each person is doing, then resolve each thing in turn within reason. Can be quite nice for exploration as well.

[Mike Miller]

That is a good idea. The bigger problem is that this TEMPORARY split is potentially a multiple session break. There will be big things happening outside of their control in the far away teleport location. Once it starts, there is no stopping it and no rejoining.

That is what makes it such a sticky situation. Also, this is why I might need an entirely separate quest for the two to deal with for a bit if they don't teleport ASAP.

[Ashiel]

That is a good idea. The bigger problem is that this TEMPORARY split is potentially a multiple session break. There will be big things happening outside of their control in the far away teleport location. Once it starts, there is no stopping it and no rejoining.

That is what makes it such a sticky situation. Also, this is why I might need an entirely separate quest for the two to deal with for a bit if they don't teleport ASAP.

That doesn't have to be a problem if you don't want it to be. Encounters and such are super easy to scale, so if you're worried about one group being overwhelmed because the party was split ahead of time it doesn't have to go that way. As for a quest, you might just be able to ask them what they want to do in the meantime. Their feedback could probably spark your fire.

[mistermysterio]

If you have the time, you may want to run the groups in different sessions?

Have the larger group go first on day 1,

then the smaller group goes on day 2 and can see whatever happened to group 1 through their interaction with the artifact. If the smaller group eventually decide to use the artifact, end that session there and then have the next session with the whole group again, with the 2 late people showing up ... late. If there is a time difference between the last thing they saw and the last thing the larger group actually accomplished, you can blade the difference on the artifact (it did something wonky with the time and the smaller group lost some on the way)

[Bronk]

The two have a sort of monitor that allows them to view the other side, but time has passed and now there is no guarantee they can meet up with the party. They don't quite have the means to communicate between groups either.

Have the group of 4 find a magic item that lets them communicate, perhaps with planar sending. They can talk to the group of 2 and either convince them to come through, or maybe send them on related helpful errands that you can set up.

Otherwise, just let them have some downtime, I guess, and they'll miss out on XP and other rewards.

[Mike Miller]

All good advice, thanks. The group of two spontaneously decided not to wait and teleported away, JUST in time. Very dramatic timing. I think that was for the best. I was definitely not looking forward to a split!

[Pelle]

Just tell them out of the game that if they don't want to join the rest of the team, they will probably be watching what the rest of the group is doing for the next hours without being able to participate. If the players are fine with that, it's on them if they are bored. Unless you can predict other stuff to engage them with of course. (For next time)

[Quarian Rex]

Or, you know, just avoid using no-save one-way teleport traps as a means to railroad the campaign?

There are a lot of ways to draw characters attention and they will go much further down the rabbit hole when they think that they still have the option to get out. If progress in the campaign hinges on the characters willingly stepping into a trap with no other reason than "the DM wants us to" you may need to rethink some aspects of your game.

[Mike Miller]

Or, you know, just avoid using no-save one-way teleport traps as a means to railroad the campaign?

There are a lot of ways to draw characters attention and they will go much further down the rabbit hole when they think that they still have the option to get out. If progress in the campaign hinges on the characters willingly stepping into a trap with no other reason than "the DM wants us to" you may need to rethink some aspects of your game.

For what it's worth, they didn't need to. It was just one avenue of progress.

The more amusing thing is there was a similar situation in a previous campaign where one PC activated a powerful artifact that they had little info on and the PC was teleported away to near disastrous results. They just don't learn! It will all work out

[Quarian Rex]

For what it's worth, they didn't need to. It was just one avenue of progress.

The more amusing thing is there was a similar situation in a previous campaign where one PC activated a powerful artifact that they had little info on and the PC was teleported away to near disastrous results. They just don't learn! It will all work out

Everything always works out, but how it works out is often more important. As a player you can alternately approach the game from a position of investment in your character and the game world (in which you try to have them act in a way consistent with someone who values their life and their goals) or you can just follow the GMs lead to see what happens without much regard for the why's and how's. In most games these positions are not mutually exclusive but when the GM starts gating the story with actions that characters with an ounce of self-preservation would have no reason to take then he is forcing the players to make a hard choice between those two positions, and there is usually no going back.

This means that a player either has to abandon investment in their character (no actual person would do this so they now get treated like disposable pawns instead of characters) or abandon plot hooks because he knows they are lobster traps of no return (they now have to start playing the DM instead of the game). Neither is a good situation.

The honest statement here is not "My party of 6 PCs inadvertently split up" it is "I deliberately split my party". If your plan is to have the players do X, you also have to know what happens if the players don't do X, because players. That is the entire point of being a DM.

[BowStreetRunner]

There are so many different ways to handle this sort of thing, I wanted to share my own experience as a DM handling a party that went off in four different directions at one point in the story.

Basically, the party of four were all splitting up with each undertaking his own mission and then they would regroup afterward to finish the overall quest. Each acquired a group of 'companions' to help them on their journey - the details and circumstances were different for each side quest but essentially none of them went alone - they just took people with them other than the other PCs. For each side quest I then gave one of each of these NPCs to the other players to run, along with a set of individual goals for that NPC and the promise that if they achieved their NPC's goals then their PC would get bonus XP. (Basically, all four would get XP for each of the missions as if they had done them all together, but that was dependent upon the NPCs fulfilling their roles, which weren't always in perfect agreement with what the PC in the party would have liked. So to some extent dealing with the NPCs was part of the challenge as one might have a goal of something like 'making sure the encounter with the kobolds didn't end peacefully'.)

In the end we had one session dedicated to each side quest and then brought the PCs back together, at which point the NPCs went back to being just regular NPCs. It worked out really well, and each of the players running an NPC always seemed to especially enjoy the part where they got to make life difficult for the PC. Everyone had something to do even when their own PC wasn't involved, and that I think was the most important part.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If they're anything like me, they have several character ideas in their back pocket just waiting to see the table. Suggest that they can put some new, temporary characters together in the new location and swap back when they're in a position to regroup. Or not, if they so choose.