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<blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9624241" data-attributes="member: 75787">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&amp;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&amp;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?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gorgon Zee, post: 9624241, member: 75787"] 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? [/QUOTE]

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