D&D General DMs, how do you handle 'split party' situations?

[Swarmkeeper]

Does everything have to be a mystery? Yes, performing such a maneuver would be logistically harder. There are no win-win deals.

In my opinion, the sacrifice of one specific (but interesting!) possibility is worth increased information bandwith, cutting on time for recapping and redescribing what happened to the other players, and increased ability to make informed tactical decisions.

Agree with this. In a game where the party is seeking a goal cooperatively, I see no reason for players to obfuscate exploratory information for the sake of mystery or character agency or whatever. There are plenty of chances for characters to butt heads explicitly during social interaction, if that’s what the group wants.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I’ve been having a difficult time with this as a player. Having made a sneaky skill oriented character, he’s often wanting to sneak ahead and get intel. Sometimes the dm will say, “okay, let’s play this out” and I’ll shy away from it. Most on the meta level because I don’t want to waste other player’s time as I take the spotlight. It’s actually impacted my ability to play this character properly.

 

[TiQuinn]

If you're giving those who stay behind the scout's intel before the PCs would have it anyway, why bother with the scouting mission?

You're also denying the scout's player the agency to not tell the party everything, or to forget stuff, or to otherwise make errors in reporting be they intentional or otherwise.

Plenty of players are able to distinguish player knowledge from PC knowledge and personally, I find having players leave the table to be disruptive to the point of derailing the game any time that we attempted it in the past. Verisimilitude wasn’t worth the effort in that case.

 

[payn]

Plenty of players are able to distinguish player knowledge from PC knowledge and personally, I find having players leave the table to be disruptive to the point of derailing the game any time that we attempted it in the past. Verisimilitude wasn’t worth the effort in that case.

I actually find it more challenging and thus more rewarding when the entire party is present and has to act accordingly in character around such instances. I agree its disruptive and shows a lack of trust if you feel players cant be trusted with meta knowledge. Fortunately, not something ive had to worry about for decades.

 

[TiQuinn]

I actually find it more challenging and thus more rewarding when the entire party is present and has to act accordingly in character around such instances. I agree its disruptive and shows a lack of trust if you feel players cant be trusted with meta knowledge. Fortunately, not something ive had to worry about for decades.

Yeah, the attempts at keeping groups separated was something we did when we were kids and didn’t know how that’d impact the flow of the game.