So I did something awesome in my last session by accident. I had a space race with one pc attending and going for the grand prize. While the other pcs attempted a daring brake in. It resulted in some cool cross cutting between a space "battle" and the action on the ground. It was all very star warsey. and my players thought I planned it.

But I thought some of you guys might have done it on purpose. And I wanna try to incorporate it again.

So any tips?

The concept of multi-scene action is certainly a hallmark of the Star Wars movies. When executed correctly this can make for some fun but you want to plan ahead of time how you want the scenes to play out. Be flexible to change as PCs tend to make left turn decisions; however, the more you can prep ahead of time the less stat generating you have to do while juggling two scenes.

I would recommend not trying to do this every game. Inevitably you will have one PC-group play their scene out before the other group is done and then someone's stuck sitting around. It's challenging to splitscreen one PC in combat actions while other PCs are moving in non-combat time. So I'd say play this card for big action-oriented concluding scenes, especially where some PCs are more vehicle based and some more ground based.

I did this some with the climactic ending to my party's raid on their former Hutt master. While the pirate group they allied with was taking care of most of the minions, my PCs chased after the slime trail the Hutt had left. A few PCs who couldn't make it one week were assigned to guard the ship (which came in handy later), while the 4 remaining PCs raced through the palace. They found the secret passage out the back, but it split in two, which split the party again.

I ended up running the one group on their own, as it was nearly the end of our session time, for the group that took the wrong path and ended up in the krayt dragon pit (which they delivered to Bargos in a previous adventure). They defeated the monster, but the strong one was unconscience, and they were more-or-less trapped.

The next week, the other 2 started out trying to stop the Hutt's ship from taking off from the hidden cliffside hanger. Within a few rounds, the pilot PC was on the transport with the Hutt as it was about to either take off or plummet (due to crazy PC rolls), the medic PC was stuck in the hanger and went off to help those trapped underground, and the ones back at the ship were called in for air support. The next few rounds went back and forth between gunfight on the Hutt's ship, and the PC ship chasing after it. As that resolved due to some ingenius maneuvering and coercion by the pilot, the scene cut back to how the group underground were going to lockpick or blast their way out of the cave. This then played out as the PCs on ships made their way back to the palace.

This was not at all how I planned it to go, with 3 groups of PCs in somewhat different spots, but it worked out beautifully and all the players said it was an appropriately epic ending to their initial several-month story arc.

So I did something awesome in my last session by accident. I had a space race with one pc attending and going for the grand prize. While the other pcs attempted a daring brake in. It resulted in some cool cross cutting between a space "battle" and the action on the ground. It was all very star warsey. and my players thought I planned it.

But I thought some of you guys might have done it on purpose. And I wanna try to incorporate it again.

So any tips?

NICE! Any time you can pull off something awesome and still maintain the illusion of "I meant to do that," it's a great night of gaming

My advice is just a bit of an echo, really.

1) Just let it happen, don't try and force it. It will come up again, but make sure that you aren't pushing it on the PCs.

2) Present occasions where the party is benefitted by splitting up to do different things. Let your players make the choice to split the party after being given obvious reasons to do so.

- a space encounter where half the party is in snubfighters and the other half is aboard a capital ship or space station

- a competition as a cover for a covert operation, like your race/break-in encounter

- two-pronged assault/infiltration on a large installation...perhaps one team is coming from underwater or secret tunnels, and the other is coming from ground or sky.

- drawn-out defense of an installation by one group while the other group sneaks past the siege to go and convince local tribe members to come to their aid.

- same scenario but later: the group at home base is defending against an assault, and their reinforcements are waylaid by local fauna or some other complication.

- two enemy parties are about to meet at a pre-arranged time. Your PC team intends to hijack both meetings at the same time, complete them, and then send each enemy party away thinking they had met with each other and not actually with your PCs.

Etc.

I actually do this often when my players are mingling at a role playing encounter. Or it is a skill test encounter. Usually a few question, maybe a social skill roll, and then cut. This prevents a player from getting bored when they are not involved

Seems like a much better idea then saying to half your group they need to go take a break for an hour.

I don't recall ever doing this myself on purpose, but think it might be important for both halves to complete what they are doing close to the same time. If not, you are back to my sentence up above, just cut down to a 1/2 hour. Preventing this could mean adjusting the time of each short session to shorter or longer so one side catches up. Or, if you planned ahead then whatever the two groups are doing may lead to them uniting at the end. As in if one group is in a firefight while the other group is racing through obstacles to come to their rescue, there wouldn't be an issue of who completes their task first.

Practical advice: Don't make the scenes too long or too short for each group. For example cutting every round is usually too often. Every 3-4 rounds is about right (in my experience).

I haven't had a situation as iconic as that, but there have been times that I've gone back and forth between groups.

I think part of the reason it works is that the game is so narrative driven, and "rounds" are more abstract. There isn't a huge focus on keeping it "in synch". Sometimes something happens in group 2 that would have an impact on something we already played out with group 1, and I have to "rewind" and either agree with the players on how that affects their scene, or narrate the changes. I refer to this as making a "Special Edition" change.

I give a lot of the credit to my players for multiple scenes working. They remain engaged in the game even when the focus is on the other characters. If there's an allied NPC along with one of the groups, I usually let the other players run them.

Several times I've had two groups of PC's in different places, both doing some sort of encounter. Combat/Race. Negotian/Breaking into a building. What I like to do is have everyone roll initiative and run it as if it were one encounter. The "cuts" are when you shift between the two. It's still run as the same encounter though.

It works great, in my opinion although I've yet to do three encounters this way.

That's the sign of a great GM! Some wouldn't be able to pull something like that off even if it was planned and you had the creativity and skill to manage that well enough that your players had a blast AND thought it was something pre-arranged! Congrats man, you have some lucky players!

Several times I've had two groups of PC's in different places, both doing some sort of encounter. Combat/Race. Negotian/Breaking into a building. What I like to do is have everyone roll initiative and run it as if it were one encounter. The "cuts" are when you shift between the two. It's still run as the same encounter though.

It works great, in my opinion although I've yet to do three encounters this way.

yeah this is totally doable. In this game, social encounters and combat encounters can work almost identically, especially since each turn for PC can represent "up to a minute" of action, just have the scenes extend out for around that much time.

Example:

There is a fight scene , a torture scene , and a computer slicing scene . The fighter PC is trying to get to the captive "face" PC being tortured by the BBEG before he capitulates and gives up the information. The captive PC can use nearly any skill at his disposal: Discipline, Cool, Negotiation, Coerce, Charm, Deception, etc, to stave off the effects of torture. If he rolls enough failures, he will capitulate.

Meanwhile, the fighter PC is blasting her way through ranks of minions and finally faces off with the BBEG's henchman, where they smack each other's faces for a few turns.

While all this is going on, slicer PC is slicing into the station's defenses and setting up a clean getaway. The complication is that he had to first deal with an NPC slicer who was defending the system. He accomplishes this early with lots of success, and uses the rest of his time to do what he can to aid the other two PCs remotely.

If you want to add a fourth scene, you could do so (it might get a little confusing, but 24 pulls it off!) by having a pilot PC waiting around with a getaway vehicle, perhaps either having to make skill checks to "fly casual" or even having to shoot down enemy fighters before he can get to the extraction point.

The key here is to have your NPC initiative slots mesh well with your PC turns. Keep the scenes cohesive, when you can, by responding to the PC's turns immediately with their respective opponents' actions. Keep the current action in the current scene as much as possible , and in doing so you should be able to easily describe about a minute's worth of activity before focusing on the next PC.

oh man i do this type of thing all the time, especially with SW because i, too, see this type of "cross-cutting" as very fitting with the star wars feel... also, i have 7 players to wrangle, so this is often a nice way to give everyone a "job."

not sure what i can say for advice, other than what others have already said. i will say that i tend to start sessions in medias res very very often (maybe 3/4 of our sessions), and skip over all the housekeeping stuff, or relegate that stuff to emails in between sessions (like buying equipment and stuff like that). starting sessions in the middle (or beginning) of the action allows you as the GM to strong-arm the story in a certain direction, without it feeling too railroad-y for the players. so, if you're looking to "set up" a situation like this, i find this an easier approach).

example:

the group had stopped at a mobile black market ship (light corvette) for fuel and other seedy items like weapons. (this was determined at the end of the previous session. there was an email chain in between sessions handling the purchases, etc.) the session started with the crew all leaving the black market light corvette (they had been docked to it). several minutes later the engines sputtered and died and they were contacted by the pirate/merchant - he had sold them rigged fuel cells, designed to let them fly a few minutes then die. they were told they by the pirate that they needed to give him one of their fighters (ship) or their droid (a PC), or he would leave them stranded in open space. the group then were talking to each other, and realized two PCs were not on board...

*(sideswipe across screen to next scene)*

...one of the PCs had been sneaking around the pirate's light corvette, looking for interesting technology. another PC noticed him sneaking off and decided to follow. at the beginning of this scene they were ducked into an alcove, watching a handful of slaves being escorted down the hallway by armed guards (the campaign is like a slave liberation type thing). i explained that the reason why they had not contacted the rest of their party was that they didn't want to give away their physical location to the pirates (they were not supposed to be sneaking around his ship). actually, they didn't even know that their ship had already left without them. they decided to follow the guards to rescue the slaves...

word of caution: your players have to trust you for this to work. also, in order for them to not feel too strong-armed into all this, GM has to explain all the loose ends fairly clearly, and think fast to explain the questions the players have. additionally, to make all this work, i offered meta-game rewards for "going along with it." (i awarded the players who i said had been sneaking around the pirate ship 5 xp for acting in line with their motivations - i actually chose the characters that made most sense for the situation based on their motivations...)

the session went awesome, and the players made some really interesting and creative decisions. it was really fun as the GM because although i set up the scenerio, i had given NO thought to how they might get OUT of the mess. (the main crew lied to the pirate and told him they had set up a bomb on board his ship, as a safety precaution. thus, they needed to return to his ship to disable the "bomb" - really just collect the rest of their crew).