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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8356996" data-attributes="member: 29398">Which as written sounds like an exercise in herding cats. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />My issue there - and it happens in my game all the time as well - is that when one player/PC is doing its own thing it often means at the table that no-one else is doing anything.  There's only one of me, and I don't multi-task all that well.Also, in-game time and timing is very important to me; and if the possibility exists of characters bumping into each other while doing their own thing I need to keep very close track of who is where, when.  Doable, sure, but it can be a nuisance sometimes.The covering-weak-spots piece also applies to exploration, which seems a generally downplayed element in some non-D&D systems.Sure, I get this.  However unless the players do a fair bit of metagame co-operating this could - and in my case probably would - very quickly become cat-herding; with each character doing its own thing in exclusion of (or even in direct opposition to) what the others were doing.I'm not talking about balance within the party.  Of the various posters on these boards I'm probably close to the bottom of the list of who cares most about in-party balance. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />What I'm more talking about is two things:--- at-the-table (or "spotlight") balance, not so much in terms of actual spotlight time but in terms of which character's goals etc. get resolved first and which have to wait, in concerns that one player's PCs end up consistently getting resolved first (or at all) while others do not.  In other words, I'd prefer not to allow GM favouritism to rear its ugly head.--- trying to find ways of getting the party/group to stay together in the fiction, such that I'm running one 5-or-6 character party most of the time rather than 5 or 6 one-character parties.  Having them split up now and then is fine; having them always splitting up makes me wonder why we're all at the same table....even more so as I'm adamant that if someone's character goes off and does its own thing the other players not know what's being done (or said) until-unless there's an in-fiction means of their characters getting that info (usually, by the "away" PC returning and reporting).</blockquote>

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