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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MonkeyBoy" data-source="post: 408577" data-attributes="member: 1229">Afternoon!Certainly the right kind of place <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />OK, so you have 2 rangers and a bard as PCs, and there's a Cleric NPC who is following around an NPC patron.I'll call them Ranger1 and Ranger2, with Ranger1 being the one who's wandered off immediately and Ranger2 being the new guy.I'm concluding from this that the 4 party members are in 4 places?(i.e. that neither ranger is near the NPC patron?)Problem 1; out of character knowledge used in character (or, psychic bards)Solution 1; this is bad roleplay, and should incur docked XP - be open about this, state that the player is using out of character knowledge in character, and that this is bad play, and therefore will take a (small) hit in XP. They're likely to bleat that "the ranger needs help", use this as an opportunity to point out that if the group worked as a team, this would not be an issue!If this seems harsh, you can cover by suggesting that the bard "suddenly realised how rash they'd been by splitting up" - ham this up and announce it loudly to give the players a none-too-subtle hint!Problem 2; party splits up.Solution 2; (solution 1 not withstanding) give in character incentives and reasons to come back together. maybe Ranger1 spies a bunch of orcs (being obviously more than he can take alone) making their way towards town. Maybe he will trail them, maybe try to get ahead to warn the town? (hopefully not do nothing, hopefully not attack outright!)The remaining characters can then be pulled together when the orcs attack the town. Once they're together, try pointing out how much better they'd do as a team...(its possible that having a big orc attack is counter productive to your game; take it only as an example of a means to regroup the PCs by DM "influence"...)If all that seems over complex as a means to get around your players, try talking to them, and discuss how this splitting up is making the game difficult to run, and stalling things.Its possible that the player of Ranger1 thinks he's cleverly playing the "loner type", in which case you need to either re-educate the player, or play to this.Finally, in the case where 1 PC leaves the group and wanders off alone (for the sake of it), my rule is this; I ask the loner what they're doing, and QUICKLY run through most of what they get up to. And I mean QUICK; no in character interraction, simple yes you can / no you can't answers, no real exiting developments.Then I go back to the main group, and do their stuff as normal, in detail. (be sure to account for the time the loner is away; no skimping and coming back to the group because they're doing more fun stuff)Then I quickly nip back to the loner, tie up the loose ends, and we regroup the party when it makes sense in the game.Now, its important that if the group decides to mostly go and do part A of a plan, and one person will go to do part B (agreed by the group) then you deal fairly with every party member. But there's no reason to either invent vast rafts of detail or squander the whole gaming group's time on one person who wants to go it alone for no good reason.</blockquote>

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