How Would Your Favorite Game System Handle This?

[Reynard]

Using Cortex Prime's Challenges mechanic (introduced in Tales of Xadia) might work well here. It's not quite the typical scenario used for the mechanic, but it still ought to work. It is explicitly is round-robin, which avoids too much downtime for each player. Each character in turn creates how they are overcoming the obstacle, so in this case participating in their aspect of the heist, working to tick down the challenge's pool (and on a failure, consequences are applied to the character). Once per round, the GM also gets to either bolster the pool or have the challenge do actively something against one of the characters. If a character gets taken out, there could be all sorts of consequences, including being captured (leading to a new set of goals later on in the adventure to rescue them/break out). If the challenge pool is depleted, the characters have pulled off their heist. All in all, it allows each character to be doing their own thing, focusing on their strengths and schtick, whittling down the challenge, all with ways to inject new complications/threats, neatly take out characters without disrupting the flow, and also while ensuring there's no long 'waiting around' for certain characters to finish up their things.

(I'll also have to revisit how Leverage did it!)

That sounds really interesting. Is Cortex readily available?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess I’m a little surprised that handling a split group seems so unusual and hard to do for people.

I don't find it difficult, per se (though that's not the same as finding it desirable); its the issue of the fact the separated characters are simultaneously interactive (in that what one of them does may and probably will effect others) and may not be working on the same time frame (i.e. what one needs to do may take up significantly more time in or out of game than the others). Complete independence just has the issue that someone can end up taking up a lot more time than someone else (which I don't think is great on social grounds and isn't always easy to address in a way the player doesn't find offputting) but is otherwise no more difficult than resolving any set of actions. But that's not what's going on here.

 

[Reynard]

I don't find it difficult, per se (though that's not the same as finding it desirable); its the issue of the fact the separated characters are simultaneously interactive (in that what one of them does may and probably will effect others) and may not be working on the same time frame (i.e. what one needs to do may take up significantly more time in or out of game than the others).

I am not sure I understand the complaint, as it relates to the example in the OP.

We have all seen heist movies. We know how they work.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I am not sure I understand the complaint, as it relates to the example in the OP.

We have all seen heist movies. We know how they work.

Yes. By media time. Where no one is going to ask why it took them so long to do X when someone else was spending so much time doing Y.

As I said the first time, if you find task-resolution rather than action resolution okay, this goes away, but not everyone wants that or we'd all be playing PbtA games.

 

[innerdude]

Ironsworn / Ironsworn: Starforged would handle this elegantly, simply, and dynamically as 1-3 "clocks", with success/failure running them up or down respectively.

The Heavy would have a myriad of things to do via the maneuver "Gain an advantage" or aiding fellow player rolls for moves, or any number of effective in-fiction suppositions. The party could attempt to finish the scene at any point they feel they want to risk their overall fortune achieved against a "seal the mission" test.

 

[Kannik]

That sounds really interesting. Is Cortex readily available?

It is! The core book can be bought from Cortex Tabletop Roleplaying Game | Dire Wolf Digital, and there's a great full rules primer for Tales of Xadia available here, which includes the Challenge rules. The ToX primer is also valuable as Cortex Prime itself is very much a toolbox of options that you choose and put together to best fit the campaign, and so ToX is a good example of what that looks like. (There are also a lot of other fan made example campaigns of all sorts of genres available at this database.)

I'm very much enamoured with the system, I'd be happy to expound more on it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Honestly, this kind of split the group up and let them each do their thing has become really common in my games over the past few years. The systems I've played the most during that time are derivatives of Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World, and the Resistance System (Spire and Heart).

I think it's mostly a comfort thing with the GM... getting used to doing this. It's not anywhere as difficult as many claim, but it can take some adjustment. You just have to remember that during much of standard D&D style play, you're rotating in turns anyway. So you just do that at a higher level, and even when it's not combat.

Obviously, player engagement can be a thing, but I've found that the games I've been playing have helped with that. The ways in which they do so is by working quickly, being more focused on conflict resolution than task resolution, and having a general resolution system. So if the stealth character runs into a guard dog, taking the dog out (or throwing a steak at it, or calming it down, or whatever) we don't have to break into the combat mini-game... roll for initiative and then drop into turns that we have to play out in their entirety because they're mere seconds long. Instead, the dog is handled with a single roll, and then we see what the new situation is, and we move on from there.

I think what also helps is for players to become interested in the other players' characters. So when they're not in the scene, they're still interested in what's happening. This is mostly system neutral, but there are elements that a system may have to help here. There may be ways players can still contribute when they're not in a scene, as well.

I don't think any system can fully solve this issue... but they can certainly help out.

 

[aramis erak]

That sounds really interesting. Is Cortex readily available?

Depends... Cortex Classic games, no. Those are a different game system with shared history and terminology. (BSG, Serenity, Sovereign Stone, some others.)
Cortex Plus games (Firefly, Marvel Heroic RP, Smallville, Leverage, Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide) No, but much of their distinctive rules are available in the Cortex Prime rulebook's many "build your game" options.

The Cortex Prime rules are readily available... in both PDF and Dead Tree. They semi-hide the download link in the "Cortex Handbook" tab, in the header under the "PDF" link...
The CP rulebook is a construction set, with one in-the-book setting, "Hammerheads"... a pretty clear knockoff of Thunderbirds Are Go!

It's not "ready to run" - but it's also got a lot of options to tune with, and Hammerheads is a decent exemplar for how to use the book.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Depends... Cortex Classic games, no. Those are a different game system with shared history and terminology. (BSG, Serenity, Sovereign Stone, some others.)
Cortex Plus games (Firefly, Marvel Heroic RP, Smallville, Leverage, Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide) No, but much of their distinctive rules are available in the Cortex Prime rulebook's many "build your game" options.

The Cortex Prime rules are readily available... in both PDF and Dead Tree. They semi-hide the download link in the "Cortex Handbook" tab, in the header under the "PDF" link...
The CP rulebook is a construction set, with one in-the-book setting, "Hammerheads"... a pretty clear knockoff of Thunderbirds Are Go!

It's not "ready to run" - but it's also got a lot of options to tune with, and Hammerheads is a decent exemplar for how to use the book.

Did they never get around to making the add-on setting rules sets available? I was a backer so I got them, but after running a campaign I decided outside of a few selective campaign types it wasn't my jam after all, so I haven't paid attention beyond that (I know there was some controversy about what was and wasn't delivered and how Cam Banks handed it off to the current owner, but again, by that point I didn't much care).

 

[Gorgon Zee]

As I said the first time, if you find task-resolution rather than action resolution okay, this goes away, but not everyone wants that or we'd all be playing PbtA games.

Well, there are plenty of other task-focused games, but I'd also suggest that even in action-resolution games, there are typically mechanisms for converting actions -> tasks.

A good example is Skill Challenges. They form a mechanism for taking a desired task and allowing you to use actions to resolve it. Several people in this thread have suggested using a variation of skill challenges for the OPs set up, and all their suggestions seem workable and fun. My earlier suggestion (in FATE) of making the security system an aspect, with obstacles that need overcoming, is essentially the same thing.

One nice feature of this sort of system is that the GM can define the sort of obstacles in pretty lose terms (even in a highly gamist system like 4E) and the players can come up with creative ways to apply skills to use to overcome them. I might define an obstacle as "CCTV system" and expect some form of hacking to be used to overcome it, but a player might suggest:

• Preparedness + Flirting to have previously seduced a guard and extracted the security codes
• Photography to place a picture of the empty room in front of the camera
• Mechanics to switch a feed to one from a similar room
• Illusion spell to disguise the room

Always good to take some creative burden of the GM and encouyrage creativity in your players!