Bored on gaming day

[SweeneyTodd]

Ouch. I feel for you. I've been in games where the "We'll be back in an hour" turned into a full day IC and a full session OOC where one player sat guarding the boat.

We have characters split up all the time, to the point where there's rarely a "party" at all. But since that's a known factor, as GM I work my butt off to make sure everybody's up to something interesting.

We usually cut from scene to scene every 15 minutes or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. We don't have much in the way of tactics or puzzles, with conflict being more character-based, so that probably helps. (I did once run a split scene where for every combat round, we did a minute or two of conversation elsewhere. Because the conversation was about finding out what the creature was that the other folks were fighting, and revelations from one made the others go "Aha!", it was pretty cool. Hard to pace, though.)

I usually try to make sure all the scenes are interesting enough that they're not boring for the audience, so people alternate between throwing in ideas and enjoying the scene with being the focus of attention. It works for us, but man, it never "just happens". So I always make sure if we're going to be split up that everybody has something interesting to do.

 

[Nomad4life]

I had an adventure a few years back where the party’s cleric got himself involved in a personal side quest. For RP reasons, the character decided to go alone. I told the rest of the party that they could take a break/smoke/find food/whatever if they wanted to while the cleric’s player and I played out the scene. However, the other players decided to hang around because the story was interesting.



When the cleric got to the good ol’ violent part of his side-quest, one of the players on the sideline kind of surprised me by asked if he could PLAY AS one of the antagonists for the scene; as soon as he did, the rest all joined in as well, wanting to play against the cleric as the various villains and henchmen of the story. I’d never heard of anything like that, but remembering that this is a game where everyone was supposed to have fun, I shrugged and said “sure, why the Hell not?” I had no idea how this was going to play out, so it was sort of a gamble.



It paid off big time. The cleric fought against his own players, who were controlling the NPC antagonists for the scene. This turned out to be one of the COOLEST things we have ever done! Everyone had such a good time, and a load was taken off of me by not having to control multiple NPCs. I was pretty much just a referee as the players duked it out.



Years go by, and although we have trouble remembering what the rest of that adventure was about, everyone remembers that one scene, as the dice flew alongside “friendly” streams of profanity.



We haven’t had another chance since then to employ this tactic for giving “sidelined” players something to do… But if done correctly it can be a memorable experience.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I totally agree with you about giving NPCs over to sidelined players. I've got to the point where I do this all the time -- if a player expresses any interest in how a NPC should act, I'll try to hand them over.

 

[Elf Witch]

This has happened to me too. Several sessions ago we were on a boat and were attacked by a Kracken we beat it off the ship and the paladin/cleric cast water breathing and freedom of movement on himself and the monk. They along with the druid who turned into a water elemental went after it. That took the rest of the session. Then they stayed below looting the caves after they killed it and that took the entire next session. The player who plays our scout and myself were very annoyed by the end of it all. We both felt why did we bother coming to the session.

 

[farscapesg1]

Splitting the group up is inevitable in our games (especially with our anti-social elven ranger that likes to run off and get the rest of our group into trouble).

However, I will take a slight offense at the complaints about bringing in new characters. When I first met the group, my wife and I both showed up to game but the current players never got to a spot that made it realistic for us to be introduced. We were fine with that.

I hate being in a game and having new characters introduced when they don't make sense. If your character dies, you may have to spend the rest of the session waiting for a good time to bring a new character in. Have a problem with that? Then you should have taken better care of your last character

 

[SprigganTWG]

Slap them all for meta gaming and tell them to do what they think is best, the next person can decide what to do... make it like speed chess!

Our table rule is that you cant coach other players on their actions. You can say one sentence in-character during your round, of course, but telling others what to do isn't allowed. There are two reasons for this:

1) In-game it isn't really possible if the PCs don't have some kind of telepathic link

2) It makes the game a lot less fun for those less proficient in D&D tactics, because in essence their characters would be controlled by the louder and more tactically inclined players

While your suggestions make sense and are things I've thought of before they wouldn't work well with my group. The plotting of combat is a major part as to why my brother and some of the others play, frankly it's their favorite part next to plotting stragaties outside of combat. They know it bugs me, I've told them, and they've gotten better but I don't think I could expect them to completely drop something they enjoy.

 

[Numion]

While your suggestions make sense and are things I've thought of before they wouldn't work well with my group. The plotting of combat is a major part as to why my brother and some of the others play, frankly it's their favorite part next to plotting stragaties outside of combat. They know it bugs me, I've told them, and they've gotten better but I don't think I could expect them to completely drop something they enjoy.

Maybe I wasn't clear - we do allow in-game tactics discussion, but that is mostly impossible during combat, because you can utter one sentence per round, and can only be answered on everyones own turn. Between combats it's ok, of course, to have tactics discussions and planning. Our group just includes so tactically inept people that it's almost useless

Tactical planning before combat should actually speed up actual combat, when everyone knows their own goal and task within the combat. Theoretically.

 

[Dog Moon]

Originally posted by farscapesg1
I hate being in a game and having new characters introduced when they don't make sense. If your character dies, you may have to spend the rest of the session waiting for a good time to bring a new character in. Have a problem with that? Then you should have taken better care of your last character

It's not always your fault your character dies... DM apparently thought it would be cool to cast Delayed Blast Fireball on our party [We're 6th level]. It nearly annihilated the party and completely killed me. [Although he had to roll low to get 43 damage off that...] His excuse: He was trying to capture us and thought we had more hp...

Anyway, I was quickly raised and brought back in so I didn't have to worry about making a new character and waiting for the right time.

Well, Sunday night ended off decently. After a while, the rest of us began making various comments which were more distracting than anything else, though at least we were all involved. The single player thing finally ended and we continued on as a group.

 

[Dog Moon]

On another note, for those who have players 'play' NPCs during the times where only one PC is involved, how exactly does that work? Do you give the players a quick description, name, and anything they might need to know to 'play' the character correctly, or is this basically for non-important NPCs, like grunts?

I just ask mainly because most people have hidden agendas which would change how they respond to something as opposed to them not having that agenda/secret/etc. Do you let the player 'play' the character and occasionally change something the NPC would not have actually said, or perhaps use what the player says the make the NPC into something different than what he/she would normally do.

Obvious example: NPC is a 'Paladin.' Rather he is an Evil Rogue pretending to be a Paladin. Would this NPC remain in your hands instead of having a player 'play' him because of the lies/etc he would have to tell?