How Would Your Favorite Game System Handle This?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This feels like the kind of scenario The Job was designed to model. I haven't had a chance to run it yet, just skim it, though.

 

[Reynard]

Truth. OP is a GM-conundrum to me, not a system issue. How does the GM divvy up the spotlight?

Couching it as a game design issue was intentional. It is obvious on its face that the GM can manage it regardless of the system if they are skilled and experienced enough. Even so it is a game design problem,too,but one that will have a solution.

 

[GMMichael]

To me the biggest challenge in split-party situations (assuming no comms) is preventing players from gaining - and then (ab)using - knowledge their characters wouldn't have. Thus the use of secret notes; I-as-DM am the only one who has to multi-task and the players are exactly as siloed as their characters.

Too high-risk for me. Yes, you can put the players in different rooms or write secret notes, and maintain player surprise/stress by doing so, but the effort and/or slowdown could derail some already tenuous player-attention. I'd rather let the players choose to suppress or pass on their player-knowledge and keep up the pace - provided there's not a game-critical secret at stake.

Couching it as a game design issue was intentional. It is obvious on its face that the GM can manage it regardless of the system if they are skilled and experienced enough. Even so it is a game design problem,too,but one that will have a solution.

Noted, and I did stop to consider the rules-handling of such a situation, even if I didn't post about it (yet). There's a game called Captain Sonar that puts each player in their own wheelhouse (well, battle-station), handling various aspects of a submarine. The division of labor is really good, and there's some interesting give-and-take between players that's worth checking out (and on which I can't elaborate; it's been a while since my last game). I can see that game running a heist with some rules-tweaks.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The Scenario: the classic "party heist" where one character is on over watch from a removed location, a stealthy character is meant to search for The Thing inside, while the face character keeps the Villain busy, with the Heavy uncomfortably shoved into a suit and ready for inevitable violence. Note that the genre does not matter: it could be cyberpunk, fantasy or modern espionage or anything else, as long as the structure and archetypes make sense.

How does your favorite game do this? How does it deal with nearly every character in the group essentially separated doing their own thing simultaneously? How do the rules interact with one character watching from afar and being the comms hub? How does it keep the Heavy engaged until violence starts? How does stealth work? Social interaction? What about being discovered by the guards or enemies or whatever? What happens if one character enters combat or conflict but the others don't?

Mechanically, HERO could handle this literally dozens if not hundreds of different ways, depending on genre, campaign, and individual character design.

If the players (and to a certain extent, the GM) didn’t account for the logistics of intentionally being separated, then things could go very badly very quickly. OTOH, the Heavy could be the situational equivalent to a tactical nuclear device, and essentially unconcerned with being solo for most of if not the entire combat.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I guess I’m a little surprised that handling a split group seems so unusual and hard to do for people. I thought we had moved a bit behind the traditional D&D don’t-split-the-party stage of game play. It’s probably more unusual for me to have a session where everyone is always together for every scene, even in fantasy games. For a modern or a spy game, it’s really rare.

I’m curious here — what makes it harder to run a scene where the characters are not physically together? I’m not interested in keeping player knowledge limited to their own character’s knowledge — curious about what else causes issues. Is it that combat in many systems is time intensive, so people fighting have more spotlight time than non-combatants? Is it trickiness in jumping between scenes? Lack of support for actions alone?

I ran Dracula Dossier for 40+ sessions, and I’d honestly say about half of the time at the table the characters were not in immediate contact with each other. Maybe running that campaign changed the way I play, but it has just never seemed a big issue. Just run people in their own scenes, making sure none dominate, and when the scenes wind down or something unexpected happens, ask the players if they had made plans to get back together or what they were off to do next.

Maybe it’s dependent on system. D&D4E, and PF to a fair extent, often have finely balanced combat encounters built in, so if you want to allow a split party, you need to adjust the combats on the fly. Is that the sort of thing that GMs who favor simulational style games dislike?

 

[dbm]

To the OP question, Savage Worlds’ Dramatic Task system is an excellent tool for situations like this.

I would probably run it as a four-step challenge, with the first round representing preparation, the second infiltration, the third achieving the specific aim (e.g. accessing a computer or safe) and the final round being exfiltration.

The great thing about a Dramatic Task is, barring failure while on a club action card, you only determine success or failure at the end of the task. This means they are inherently ‘fail forward’ and it’s the narrative descriptions and suitable skills that will change based on the levels of success or failure that happen at every stage of the process.

For example, if the party produce a whole stack of successes in the preparation phase then they have pulled off incredibly accurate reconnaissance and have a great load-out for what they are attempting, meaning that they need only a few more successes in subsequent stages. Conversely, if they get almost no successes during the first round they will need more at later steps, upping the pressure. To my mind this elegantly models the chain of successes / set backs that a party might experience during a raid or similar activity.

I often think of Dramatic Tasks as a bit like montages in movies (to my mind, Savage Worlds is an excellent tool for running games that feel ‘cinematic’ in the sense of feeling like you are in a movie) and many times a heist would be run as montage of mini-scenes for the preparation, cutting between characters as they break in and try to achieve their goal, and get out again.

The GM can put as much or as little mandatory shape on the task as they want, in response to the player’s stated actions. So, for example, if the party have had very little success and they need to really score big to get out they might describe ‘going dynamic’ and fighting their way out. This would then allow them to use combat skills for the characters on the ground and maybe ranged cover or running interference from party members who are nearby but not immediately present. At the end, and based on the level of total successes achieved relative to the target, the party might have taken damage, have been identified by the people they were raiding, have the authorities actively pursuing them and so on.

It’s a very flexible tool for these kind of challenges and many others, too.

 

[aramis erak]

Note 1: This is a thread about game design and preferences. The point is to talk about the different ways that different RPGs resolve situations.

Note 2: "Favorite" in the subject line can also be interpreted as "preferred" and might come from a game you WISH existed. Again, the point here is to talk about how things get done in play, as enabled by the rules and the mechanics of the game.

The Scenario: the classic "party heist" where one character is on over watch from a removed location, a stealthy character is meant to search for The Thing inside, while the face character keeps the Villain busy, with the Heavy uncomfortably shoved into a suit and ready for inevitable violence. Note that the genre does not matter: it could be cyberpunk, fantasy or modern espionage or anything else, as long as the structure and archetypes make sense.

Setting matters a lot. In Traveller or STA, a big part of the heist is defeating the sensors.. in my preferred edition — MegaTraveller — using the conglomerate unit rules, I can use the average Dex attribute and the average intrusion skill for a single roll, or I can use core and each rolls separately for the sensors they are in reach of... if someone decides to hack the central computer, it's Int + Computer...

Meanwhile, in 2d20, in the tech based settings, there's one roll, helped by everyone in the group. Unless they go the hacking route, in which case, one rolls it. But in the fantasy version, Conan, it's just the assisted roll.

 

[payn]

I’m currently running a Traveller ‘goose 2E game. It’s all about the skills in this and how each PC decides how to approach the job. As GM I try to keep the spotlight and pace moving so roughly everyone is still getting to make choices and see them out. The latter part is just something a GM has to be mindful of which isn’t always easy.

 

[Committed Hero]

Gumshoe allows for a lot of Bill and Ted style rolls to justify previous preparation. That's especially helpful for the hacker, and mimics heist fiction where a solution can seem made up on the fly.

Incorporating the heavy is a little tougher. I don't thing I would run a scenario where someone is just waiting around for a fight. Then I think I would want to shoehorn one in where it might not make sense. Better to have that character doubled up, or with a secondary strength.

I don't worry about player vs character knowledge. That's probably a self-selection.

 

[Umbran]

The Scenario: the classic "party heist" where one character is on over watch from a removed location, a stealthy character is meant to search for The Thing inside, while the face character keeps the Villain busy, with the Heavy uncomfortably shoved into a suit and ready for inevitable violence.

So, are you trying to emulate the heist genre, or are you trying to do those four roles, specifically? Because they are not equivalent.

Note that the genre does not matter

Yes it does. Specifically, the "comms" character is remote because of the genre-specific trope of using centralized communications, and large amounts of centralized electronics to defeat/use the target's centralized electronic defenses that can be accessed remotely. It is mostly a 20th century Earth conceit, and may not be appropriate for other settings.

Shadowrun, for example, started with this trope, but dispensed with it as splitting the party was a problem, and wireless technology made it seem nonsensical. They made their electronics characters mobile, and brought them on-site for the heist.

How does your favorite game do this?

My first answer is that my favorite game for this is Leverage, a Cortex-based game, which is specifically designed for it.

How does it deal with nearly every character in the group essentially separated doing their own thing simultaneously? How do the rules interact with one character watching from afar and being the comms hub? How does it keep the Heavy engaged until violence starts? How does stealth work? Social interaction? What about being discovered by the guards or enemies or whatever? What happens if one character enters combat or conflict but the others don't?

It then seems to me that writing an answer to this is mostly writing the rulebook (or, a large chunk of it) for the game in question.

One of the most important tools for handling many of these issues is an element seen in the heist genre that isn't about "four roles in specific places". It is a more general genre element: the flashback. A character is faced with an unforeseen challenge, and tension rises as the audience fears this will result in failure or extreme difficulty. It is then shown to the audience that the crew foresaw the issue, and had formulated a solution for this previously, and everything is fine.

In media, this is a way to create and release tension for the audience. In an RPG, it is a way to allow characters not actually in a scene to retroactively have been relevant.

Another major way to answer the question is to not make any character be a one-note unitasker. If the Heavy is also a second-string Face, for example, the group gains flexibility.