Getting the party together! DM needs help!

[gandwarf]

Hello everyone :smallsmile:

I'm new to the forum, as a member at least. Been reading, getting inspiration and answers from here for a long time. Anyway...

Currently running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, one of the PC's have been busy and missed a lot of sessions, he's playin' a paladin, so I asked him and he said he would've stayed at the temple. Since then the group moved on, travelling to another city, where one of them even teleported to a close by mountain side. The rest of the party is travelling by foot to the mountains.

So you see my problem... next session will start with each one in a different part of the world, and the paladin is playin' to, and I don't even know how to get him to cross paths with the group without pushing it too hard.

[hotflungwok]

The party left word at the temple where they were going right? Riiiiight?

[Man_Over_Game]

Hello everyone :smallsmile:

I'm new to the forum, as a member at least. Been reading, getting inspiration and answers from here for a long time. Anyway...

Currently running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, one of the PC's have been busy and missed a lot of sessions, he's playin' a paladin, so I asked him and he said he would've stayed at the temple. Since then the group moved on, travelling to another city, where one of them even teleported to a close by mountain side. The rest of the party is travelling by foot to the mountains.

So you see my problem... next session will start with each one in a different part of the world, and the paladin is playin' to, and I don't even know how to get him to cross paths with the group without pushing it too hard.

During the time that he was away, he was given a divine message to travel to a very specific mountain before a very specific time. In order to reach the mountain in time, he had to leave without letting his allies know of his mission.

Just shortly after he arrives, one of his allies teleports directly adjacent to him.





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Do not split the party whenever possible. This isn't just a balance concern, but a playtime logistics concern.

When you play with the team, everyone is getting 100% of playtime. Some might interject or be the star of the spotlight for a short amount of time, but everyone has a chance of doing something. Everything is impacting everyone, so everyone is a part of the story.

However, when you're interacting with a player who's separate from the team, you're only interacting with 20% of the team. When you're spending 1 minute of playtime with that player, every other player is getting 1 minute of irrelevance. Now 1 minute of playtime is 4 minutes of combined dawdling for the team. If it takes you 15 minutes to get that party member back with his team, you've wasted total of 1 hour of your players' time.

So...don't do that. Keep the party together, whatever the cost. Even if it breaks the narrative a little bit. The only reason you should ever split up the party is when the actions of one portion of the party directly and immediately have a reaction to the other side. When the DM is playing, everyone else should be too.

[DMThac0]

Splitting the party is a pain even in the best of situations, finding a way to mitigate that is always a good thing.

I like the idea Man_Over_Game suggested, an omen prompted the player to leave while the rest of the party was doing their thing. It's quick, cheap, and easy, without really breaking anything about timeline or story.

I once had to run a multitude of sessions where one player was on her own while the rest of the party was captured and detained in a prison camp. While it was fairly simple to jump back and forth between the solo player and the group, it was really a stretch to keep the tension and immersion going. I had the ability to swap focus during pivotal, or dramatic, moments during the game, but it's almost never seamless. In the end I pulled some DM fiat to make the journey of the solo player much faster than normal so I could get the group back together.

One or two sessions of a split party can be entertaining, but it's not something that should happen frequently...it's just draining on the DM and boring for the players who aren't participating.

[Segev]

I have a few thoughts, but their viability depends heavily on what you actually have as goals, here.

Why are they heading to the mountain? Is anything important supposed to happen on the way, or would all of them teleporting there have been fine? Do you have anything for the guy who teleported to do while he waits?


If there's something important happening at the mountain that you'd like the party to come help with, but that the teleporter could help with now, you could have everybody make some throw-away characters for the teleporter to join the party and go investigate. Make it deadly as heck. Pull no punches. The goal is for the teleporter to be the only survivor, and be the one who is recuperating at the rendevous point when the others arrive.

If there's something happening on the road there, have a tragically-dead group with one near-death survivor en route, and the means of their destruction be related to the important thing. Let the teleporter's player play the near-death survivor for the duration of this mission. As for the paladin, send him to either cross paths with the party or the teleporter via the above-suggested "set out to be here" orders from on high. Or pull him aside and have him claim that's the case while he plays a doppelganger that is out to thwart the other PCs, and whose defeat will give them needed clues (or whose victory will place them in a position to do something useful to the plot).

For added fun, have him play both a legitimage "him" that's with one of the groups, and a doppelganger that's with the other, and let them assume that this is time-separated or ask questions to which you smile faintly or make noises about time differentials.

[TheYell]

Man Over Game has a simple approach to the problem.

I'd only alter it if you thought the paladin was going to have recurrent absences. Then I'd go deus ex machina.

Have a flight of angels surround each member of the party and shout "The appointed hour!" Then the whole party is teleported to a shrine or sacred grove on the way to their objective.

You can repeat that if the paladin is absent again.

And if you go that route, I'd deny the party the use of divinations about the future. They try it, they get an angel with a flaming sword telling them to walk the appointed path with Faith.

[gandwarf]

Or pull him aside and have him claim that's the case while he plays a doppelganger that is out to thwart the other PCs, and whose defeat will give them needed clues (or whose victory will place them in a position to do something useful to the plot).

For added fun, have him play both a legitimage "him" that's with one of the groups, and a doppelganger that's with the other, and let them assume that this is time-separated or ask questions to which you smile faintly or make noises about time differentials.

I love this.

thank you all for your suggestions. I think I figured out a few things for our next session, later I'll let you know what happend.

To give you all a few details about the campaign: one of the PC's is a genasi from the mountains, he just found out that his tribe has been attacked and is on his way to save his people (travelling by his side is the group's monk).
The PC who teleported to the mountains did it with the help of a NPC (who was supposed to help the whole party get there faster, but the rest of the party had 'trust issues' with this fellow NPC). While he was there he discovered that the tribe was attacked by mercenaries that're on the lookout for a genasi!
The mercenaries where hired by the big bad, he needs the genasi to finish his plans.

[Kardwill]

Another way to deal with an absent PC joining the party : Ask for the player's ideas. Why is he joining them now? How? What happened to bring him here?
2 brains are better than 1, and you'll have full player buy-in since it's his idea :)

[RNightstalker]

On a positive note, the party splitting up is a great way to divide and conquer...if they do it for you, maybe they'll learn...eventually, after rolling up 3-4, 10+ more characters, they'll get the hint. When it doubt, quote Jester: "You never, never, leave your wingman."

[Kaptin Keen]

'So ... you all meet up again at the mountain.'

There. Problem solved. You're welcome =)

[jintoya]

'So ... you all meet up again at the mountain.'

There. Problem solved. You're welcome =)

I mean, this is to immersion
What a hammer is to glass

But it is a good dirty fix and takes all of...2-3 seconds and is justified by a simple "time passed because it's better to keep the party together"
I doubt the players will feel too railroaded by something that streamlines their ability to continue playing.

[gandwarf]

I mean, this is to immersion
What a hammer is to glass

that's funny.

Well, thanks to some very good suggestions, the session went great!

The PC that plays the paladin in our group (and that missed a lot of sessions), arrived early and asked me to DM for him a quick 'solo warm up session' (he was really excited about playin' after a long time!)
... I improvised upon the last adventure he played, where he had to come back on a haunted house where they fought an evil cultist, and where there was a corrupted altar (that they didn't pay very much attention to the first time they went there) and he was able to finally free that place from all the evil, destroying the altar after fighting some small demons that found their way to that place!

Then, the priest at the temple received an omen. I made a cool scene where this priest NPC and the PC paladin set by a silver bonfire, and the priest told all about his vision. Then the paladin jump right into it, saying he would be honored to follow the omen. Worked perfeclty.

As the paladin travelled he found the party monk and the druid, they where already on their way to save the druid homeland, the village on the mountain - the same place the paladin was goin'! They concluded that there was a great evil responsible for the tormenting the little village.

The warlock that teleported to the top of the mountains found some survivors, that were actually a group of hags bound to the warlord of the "mercenaries", they chained him to a corrupted tree, creating a doppelganger - that was sent to lead the party to an ambush!

After travelling a while with the doppelganger the party found the survivors, and discovered that they were actually a coven of hags! And that their ally was a doppelganger! Epic battle! One of the hags is killed, and the rest escaped. Then they found the real warlock, freed him and discovered valuable information: the mercenaries are actually hobgoblins capturing slaves and organizing their forces to wage more war on the coast!

Thank you all for your help!

[denthor]

We use a "vapor bag" thay are there not active. Unless they in game say my character quits they are there.

Now if two or more are at the table go east west. It is agreed they can meet later.