Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9624512" data-attributes="member: 7031982">There were a lot of parts to the original question, but I'll focus on the part(s) about how to handle separated parties and compartmentalized knowledge.Here I've learned a lot from [USER=97077]@iserith[/USER], who unfortunately seems to no longer be part of this community (not surprising, considering the savagery of the responses to his contributions).&nbsp; In a nutshell, I make zero attempt to police players on this.&nbsp; If Character A gets into trouble, and Character B's player wants to go rushing to help, I don't have a problem with that.&nbsp; I could ask them to rationalize their decision, but I leave it up to them to offer that rationalization if they want to.The only real objection I ever hear to this approach is &quot;but that's metagaming!&quot;&nbsp; (Using the specific/narrow definition that it means conflating player knowledge with character knowledge).&nbsp; But if you don't really care about that, then it's not a problem.(Also, in my experience, some/much/most of the time Player B will roleplay ignorance and not go rushing off, anyway, even though they know that it would be totally kosher to do so.)A related objection would be something about the believability of the fiction.&nbsp; But in my opinion that's a pretty predictable, mechanistic definition of believable fiction.&nbsp; Unlikely coincidence appears in good fiction all the time.The last objection I can think of is that splitting the party is supposed to be a risky decision, not to be taken lightly.&nbsp; But there's no guarantee that Character B will actually get to Character A's location easily or quickly.&nbsp; And rushing there might cause even more complications.&nbsp; (E.g., now they are BOTH in solo combat!&nbsp; Yay!).&nbsp; I don't know exactly what those complications might be...it would depend on the scenario.&nbsp; But, yeah, splitting the party is still a meaningful decision.&nbsp; And really that's all I care about: players making meaningful decisions.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bill Zebub, post: 9624512, member: 7031982"] There were a lot of parts to the original question, but I'll focus on the part(s) about how to handle separated parties and compartmentalized knowledge. Here I've learned a lot from [USER=97077]@iserith[/USER], who unfortunately seems to no longer be part of this community (not surprising, considering the savagery of the responses to his contributions). In a nutshell, I make zero attempt to police players on this. If Character A gets into trouble, and Character B's player wants to go rushing to help, I don't have a problem with that. I could ask them to rationalize their decision, but I leave it up to them to offer that rationalization if they want to. The only real objection I ever hear to this approach is "but that's metagaming!" (Using the specific/narrow definition that it means conflating player knowledge with character knowledge). But if you don't really care about that, then it's not a problem. (Also, in my experience, some/much/most of the time Player B will roleplay ignorance and not go rushing off, anyway, even though they know that it would be totally kosher to do so.) A related objection would be something about the believability of the fiction. But in my opinion that's a pretty predictable, mechanistic definition of believable fiction. Unlikely coincidence appears in good fiction all the time. The last objection I can think of is that splitting the party is supposed to be a risky decision, not to be taken lightly. But there's no guarantee that Character B will actually [I]get[/I] to Character A's location easily or quickly. And rushing there might cause even more complications. (E.g., now they are BOTH in solo combat! Yay!). I don't know exactly what those complications might be...it would depend on the scenario. But, yeah, splitting the party is still a meaningful decision. And really that's all I care about: players making meaningful decisions. [/QUOTE]

Verification