Uh, let me try to summarize:B4cchus said:
1. There was much IC disagreement as to how to handle the encounter, to the point where I feared intra-party actions might break out. At that point, I required everyone to roll initiative and start handling this turn-by-turn as if you'd actually entered combat.
2. The party trickled over to the three soldiers like so many cattle wandering home to the barn. Not everyone was visible to, much less interacting with, the soldiers on the same turn.
3. Once the party arrived, the IC intra-party squabbling continued, to the point that one party member believes IC that another party member attacked him.
4. Magic affected the actions of several party members and NPCs...and that wore off after a few turns, changing the dynamic of the encounter.
5. A party member wandered off into the woods out of sight (splitting the group), and the NPC group split as well to deal with that. So, at that point, I was running two combats simo (out of visual range but still within earshot).
6. Two more party members split off to join the loner, so I (briefly) needed three groups: The "stay at the path" group, the "run off into the woods" group, and another to handle the two who started the turn with one group and left to join the other group by the end of the turn.
7. Hostilities broke out with one group. The other group had partial (but not complete!) knowledge of what was going on, and that provoked a bunch of stuff with the second group.
8. In the second group, there was a chain of readied actions that kicked off...at least 3 characters long.
9. In the second group, some of the participants took off in one direction, splitting that group a second time (I was back up to 3 groups at this point).
10. In the first group, some of the participants joined the second group, and some split off in pursuit of the third group, thus creating a fourth group.
11. As far as I can tell, the first group is no more, having either joined the second group or formed the fourth. The second group is moving in the opposite direction of the third group, and the fourth seems to be trying (without much luck) to join up with the third.
I guess this is the kind of thing that happens when parties run off into the woods and split up into several different groups all heading in different directions. :\
As a GM, I find this challenging to run, but I feel up to it so long as everyone else does. And my continual updates, labled with turn number and presenting everything each character is aware of in initiative order is just my way of keeping this all from degenerating into utter chaos. If you have any suggestions of how I might do this better, I'm all ears.
