Experimental play: non-party structure

[SurfMonkey01]

I'm looking at starting an Eberron game with my group soon. We're about to indoctrinate two newbies, so I'm gonna have a 6-person group. And I was thinking, this would be a good time to try an experiment. I've been watching a lot of TV on DVD lately -- mostly Buffy, Stargate, and 24. This is something I've observed. Buffy and Stargate are designed in the traditional gaming mold, where the group (or party, if you will) spends most of the time together and occasionally heads off on their own. 24, however, almost never has more than half (at most) of the group together at a time. Yet the characters still obviously live in the same place and react to the same events. It's much more of an ensemble piece than a party tale. I think this is what I want to try. However, I'm iffy on the hows and whether or not it will really work. Especially since I want to run Forgotten Forge and Shadows of the Last War. I was thinking that I could branch them out and expand on them some, allowing for multiple paths to the same end goal. And then, once that point is reached, the characters will have met each other and we can see how things go from there. How does all of this sound? Does it make sense? Am I crazy? Will it work?

 

[Henry]

The thing you would have to watch out for most is making sure you switch back and forth between the sub-groups quickly enough and with dramatically appropriate timing so that none of the players get bored with merely watching the others act and react. In a toss-up, focus on the "quickly" over "dramatically appropriate." Letting someone sit for a half-hour while you finish up with a particularly thorough player is probably an attention-loser. My general rule when dealing with split parties is no more than ten to fifteen minutes before switching, TOPS.

But yes, it can work, and work very well.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

With 6 players? Ouch. Like Henry said, your biggest worry is going to be switching back and forth often enough and well enough to keep people from getting bored.

Or at least from getting too bored. At 6 players, I can almost guarantee that you're not going to be able to involve everyone equally even most of the time. Cross your fingers and hope that either the players who aren't involved in what's going on currently enjoy being an audience for it, or that they're able to amuse themselves quietly and non-disruptively while waiting for your attention to turn back to them. We've always described this as "the GM is running 7 games at once": one for each PC, and one for himself. It's a struggle, and you really need everyone to be understanding and helpful about it if it's going to work.

Another thing you'll want to worry about is timing. Not the (generally sound) fifteen-minute-rule suggested above, but how you're going to handle keeping PCs on the same timeline. Eventually, they're going to go off and do things that take different amounts of time and attention to complete, and then they're going to want to get back together to compare notes, and I assure you that a sizable number of them (possibly a majority, possibly including you) will have absolutely no idea what time it is in the game or what order things happened in or whether something important got missed. And probably one or two of them will suspect that they got screwed out of a few in-game hours here or there. Probably some of them will have been screwed out of a few hours, in fact.

And honestly, I don't know how to stop that from happening. You can try being really specific about how long things take and what time it is, and keep reminding people when you switch back and forth, and that might cut down some of the confusion and frustration. But mostly you're going to be relying on everyone's patience in order to keep the game running passably well, and it's going to be a lot harder than having all the PCs huddle up into a party so you can deal with them easily.

So, uh, good luck, and if you come across any really amazing strategies for getting it to work, please share 'em with the rest of us.

--
if your group isn't particularly patient or understanding, you may want to not try this
ryan

 

[adwyn]

As has been said, this is a very difficult thing to pull off. The only two ways I've ever seen it done well were when;

1) The group consisted of only three or four players who used multiple characters, no player ever had more than one at a time in play though.

2) The players not currently playing PC's got to play NPC's, usually ones who were working against the party. Great excitement, but be prepared for longer, deadlier encounters, especially if the NPC's are spellcasters.

3) During college one GM would run spy games with up to twelve players. Everyone was broken up into small groups of 2-3 that would take their homework into seperate rooms. GM then went from room to room, players studied when it wasn't their turn, GM manipulated the whole thing into a grand finale at the end of the night where everyone showed up for the big gunfight.

Remember, however you choose to go about it, keep good time records and be prepared to chuck them out the window when necessary.

 

[mmadsen]

24, however, almost never has more than half (at most) of the group together at a time. Yet the characters still obviously live in the same place and react to the same events. It's much more of an ensemble piece than a party tale. I think this is what I want to try. [...] I was thinking that I could branch them out and expand on them some, allowing for multiple paths to the same end goal. And then, once that point is reached, the characters will have met each other and we can see how things go from there. How does all of this sound? Does it make sense? Am I crazy? Will it work?

If you have six live players at the table, you'd better plan to have something for all six to do. If you want to have two separate parties running through concurrent plot threads, then either run the game troupe style -- where the same player is playing characters in each party -- or run with two different groups of players who aren't around the same table at the same time.

 

[DrNilesCrane]

I'm looking at starting an Eberron game with my group soon. We're about to indoctrinate two newbies, so I'm gonna have a 6-person group...

Just my two cents... If you have two brand new players to gaming (not just to the group), they need to have fun, be involved, and be comfortable with the experience or you won't seem them around on Week 2.

Of course, they *might* find watching the action interesting, but I'd bet most newbies would have a better time playing than watching (and it's usually a better way to teach as well), and as DM if your attention is split more than usual with running the party as multiple groups, that's less attention you can spend on the new players making sure they are having a good time and will be coming back to the gaming table next week.

 

[takyris]

Here's an idea, for what it's worth. This would work better in a more drama-minded RP group, a group whose members are former drama or improv folks than number-crunchers. It is also fairly important that the group be firmly out of the "Beat the DM" mindset.

Make decent NPC cards -- like you'd make for yourself in a game you prepped, only on index cards, and with a few important stats, like:

"Guard Number One: Slow-witted but methodical, loves to quote rules, generally annoying, even to the other guard. If PCs are nice, no help whatsoever. If PCs are rude, will bring up "Wizard guy who was here yesterday" as an example of people who "Have made right preparations to get invited." Wizard is red-robed man with gold skullcap.

Sense Motive +6, Opposes Intimidate with +4 check."

Then, when the PCs in that scene come to the door of the building, you say, "You see a pair of guards standing before the door. They're wearing the royal colors and well-polished breastplates and holding halberds. One of them is thin and has a big mustache, while the other is fairly hefty and looks sort of dazed." As the players think about options briefly, you toss the cards to players who aren't in the scene. They get to play the NPCs.

(Of course, players doing something big out-of-game, like levelling their character or recalculating encumbrance after making a bunch of purchases, should do that instead. This is just to keep 'em from getting bored.)

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I don't know if it's an option in your case, but one of my favorite styles of gaming is dual-DM... and that meshes beautifully with dual-party.

I initially tested dual-DMing waters because of my inability to do convincing female voices. One recruited 'gamer gal' with a gift for accents to rival my own later and I had my NPCs voiced and played to perfection. Of course, while she started out as a sort of 'assistant DM,' her NPC lasses soon took on greater importance to the campaign... This ended up being great fun, as we had groups of baddies with sometimes conflicting goals who fought each other as well as the party.

Eventually, we also ran multiple parties simultaneously, where she would DM for half the group while I did the others. We even tried an entire PvP campaign where I was the head of the 'baddies' for the group I DMed and the employer of the group she DMed, and vice versa. Unfortunately, that one petered out before we could reach the climacting finale and see whose party would secure final victory.

If you have another experienced DM in the group, you might want to try this out.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I ran this by my group once--they weren't interested. I was thinking it would be neat to try a game where instead of assuming that everyone was going to instantly bond and form a party, everyone was free to do what their character would really do. So, if the rogue hears about the paladin's quest and says, "stuff it, I want something more lucrative" he can leave, his player brings in another character (or selects an appropriate character from the group of adventurers in the area) and plays that character with the paladin's player. The next week, we focus on what another player's character is doing at the time--maybe continuing the paladin's story arc, and maybe going back to the rogue's story arc (if we're focussing on the rogue's player at the time). Other players pick NPCs to play alongside the rogue's player for that session. And so on. I don't know if it really would have worked but it's the kind of thing I think would be interesting to try.