This came up in another thread and I thought it might be useful here.

Many of us have dreaded hearing a group say 'we split up'. How do we jump back and forth, trying to keep both groups occupied and entertained? We see it in the movies all the time. Luke and Leia at the death stat chasm, Luke and Ben's one on one with Vader, etc.

Well, the beauty with the initiativr system we have is all you have to do is, if the party splits, set up the encounters for each group simultaneously. Once the groundwork is laid, roll initiative as per normal. When that player acts, the scene shifts to that group, back and forth.

While it may be tricky at first juggling between 'scenes', when you get it down you may find that players are more drawn into the game as they wait for there next turn.

Imagine a party that has equal parts fighter pilots and soldiers. The soldiers are on board a capital ship that the pilots are attacking. The soldiers have to perhaps get to the launch bay/escape pods before the pilots destroy the ship! The pilots can't let the ship jump to hyperspace so they must attack!

As stuff happens to either group you can react and relay immediately the outcome. If the pilots destroy the shield generators, the soldiers will know exactly what happened. No need to keep track of when something should be scripted to happen.

The key to this is to prepare the encounters for each group. If you can, have two scratch pads for each group (assumes equal split, adjust for more). I find that a swivel chair and card tables help immensely, as I just turn to that setup for each group.

Now this is probably common knowledge for many, but if you dread the party splitting, this may help. Think of the movies, and each player (group) is just being separated by a screen wipe - those transitions between characters on screen.

I am Ryoden and I support this message.

I've sent that suggestion before recently (and made it myself). I think it's a great idea. I'm not currently GMing but definitely going to suggest it to my GM (and not only in this system) just because it helps alleviate the automatic "oh god no" chorus that comes up when someone suggests splitting the party. Too often it's done poorly but at least in this system if you think of cinematic scene cutaways it can be really cool and keeps Team A engaged even when Team B is in combat.

With this system its definitely a lot easier to let the party split up. I've had it happen a few times with the current group I have. However I won't always adjust fights if it makes absolutely no sense for me to do so. I had a player decide to confront the crew from a ship that was in the middle of stealing a droid they were supposed to meet. He was cocky and opening fire on them. He was promptly shot up and left bleeding on the group. The crew stole his favorite gun. (He'll get the chance to get it back.)

"Dont Split The Party" has been a mantra since the earliest days of Dungeons and Dragons.

In that game system (and many others since then) it makes sense for two huge factors.

The first is that the strength of the party was dependent on the group as a whole. 1 fighter, 1 wizard, 1 rogue and 1 cleric added up to more than 4 individual characters. Those game systems are designed for just such a mix. This is the same reason that when beginning a game you so often heard the phrase "You need to play X class so we can have a balanced party".

The second reason is that the challenges of those games are/were specifically designed for a "balanced party". If the whole party is not present then the difficulty is that much harder. 1+1+1+1=5 so make the difficulty 5. If you take away a party member you get 1+1+1=3 and 5-1=4.

The goal of being a GM is making the the game fun and interesting. This is usually accomplished by making the story dramatic. The wire we walk is in making the drama challenging but not to the point of overpowering. The players should be scared for the lives of their characters. BUT they will stop having fun if their characters keep failing to reach their goals. Even more so if their characters die.

Because of this, many game systems come with a defined set of parameters to make the math I referenced above even out. They make sure every challenge can be quantified. "Three goblins and an Ogre are worth x so that is good for a level x party of four characters . In every system I have read the carefully designed parameters start to fall apart when you do not have a party of 4.

The problem that so often arose, was that the GM would spend hours doing the calculations to make each challenge the right level. But then, if the party split, they would either have to adjust the level on the fly (and maybe get the math wrong) or simply use the challenge as it was designed (Resulting in a much tougher challenge for the split party).

This system is different. This system forces the people playing out of the traditional game of numbers and into a game of abstract. It is so supportive of telling a story over running the numbers that it completely did away with the "formula" for a challenge level. The game is all about telling a story. The test of a story is how believable it is not how mathematically accurate it is. With this system you can easily let one group of characters break an npc out of a holding cell and not worry that you have another two characters isolated and slicing into the mainframe to pull up floor plans and turn off the trash compactors while you have another sneaking into the core of the facility to disable the tractor beam generators.

I would suggest to every GM, that the most important thing you need to know before rolling initiative is the answers to one question. If you know the answer you will not need to worry about the "level" of the challenge and can simply make it something that, because you are telling a story, is believable.

Where will the story go if the players lose?

Go ahead and make it really hard to bluff Jabba the Hutt. Make it just as hard to sneak their friend out of carbonite. Just know that if they fail you will move the story along and have them thrown into a Snarlack pit (With a chance to get away of course).

I remember the first time we split in D&D. It was in a demon lair and we were not happy. The DM forced it. I think one of us failed a fear check and ran off screaming or something. We ended up splitting up intentionally because we both liked it and seeing what our individual guys could do.