I'm a pretty new GM, but I've done a few sessions with my group and things seem to be going pretty well. The group consists of 4 people, and together they make a pretty good team and have all of their bases covered pretty well. I want to give a challenge to them (especially the ones that took droid and super-specialized in one or two things) and so I want to find a way to have them temporarily split up. Is this usually done by luring certain members away to deal with a different problem? Or is it done forcefully/narratively, and if so, how?

The best way is to give them two places to be at the same time. In the original triogy, the basic party was almost never together either due to different skill sets or motivations.

The best way to split the party is to make the players want to split the party. There are two easy ways (depending on how well your players roleplay their characters). One is to have their Motivations pull them in different directions at the same time. One player is a Gambler with the Greed motivation, while another is a Gunslinger with the Best in Field motivation. Wave a casino with a high-stakes game going on under the gambler's nose while at the same time have an NPC challenge the gunslinger to a fight in a completely different location.

Another is to have timed objectives. Say for example your players are chasing after a person or item, while another group is also after the same. They narrow down its location to one of two places, but they also know that their competitors have the same information. They can chose to go together to one location and gamble that their guess is right, or they can split up to cover both locations at once.

Also, if your players have experience with RPGs they may have been conditioned that splitting the party is a bad thing. It might be worth bringing it up at the table, just to let them know "by the way, splitting up in this system is a valid option, don't be afraid of it."

Over the years I've often heard "don't split the party" and it's apt if the GM has not prepared for it. The problem of reduced forces to solve a problem is perhaps the most visible, but equally the party that's not in the action is often sitting and doing little but checking their phones. So you have two battles to fight, and you can solve this a couple ways:

• Switch back and forth between the groups rapidly
• Combine initiatives between encounters wherein something must be accomplished in sync
• Have inactive players run some mook NPCs
• And finally: don't design your encounters so that they rely upon one thing to pass/fail, for example the skill of a character that happened to split into the other group.

Over the years I've often heard "don't split the party" and it's apt if the GM has not prepared for it.

Remember this is coming from the D20 heavy perspective of the majority of RPers. In that system splitting the party is a very bad idea simply because each Class is so specialized. Not only are they lashed to their functional areas, but D20 even limits those classes with skill caps and penalties for anything outside the classes defined role. If you're missing any one of the four core party roles, you're at a serious disadvantage unless the GM carefully designed the coming encounters to factor that shortfall in. Even not advancing a character within tolerance of a Dev presumed efficiency model would cause the party to mechanically start to break down.

In this system roles are as strictly defined, and making a more diverse character is far easier. So with only certain exceptions (usually the horribly Min/Maxed character) it's not as big a deal.Assuming most skill checks will be 2P, and most characters will have a minimum ability code of 2, the odds are within reasonable tolerances...

Over the years I've often heard "don't split the party" and it's apt if the GM has not prepared for it.

Remember this is coming from the D20 heavy perspective of the majority of RPers.

Can't argue that, but this spread into other systems early on, too. Just try to play a netrunner in CP2020, for example. It's critical to the success of most missions but you pretty much have to send everyone out for coffee while you ran the netrunner's part.

To this day when we sit down to play D&D, we all chant "Don't Split The Party" in monotone. Of course we still do and the problems you describe are still there.

I love how this system allows for split parties and for others to take on roles not defined within their character build.

The best way to split the party is to make the players want to split the party.

This. I think you have to set this up narratively -- why do the PCs need to be in two separate locations simultaneously? Use Motivations, Obligations and, especially Duty. If you're using Duty, this can come from the CO. Alternatively, it could be one character "getting leave" to go pursue his Motivation or Obligation (if he has one).

However, if you just want to split the party temporarily during an adventure, the easiest way to do that would be to a) explain how it happens (i.e. a "cutscene") and then b) flip a Destiny point. Pure GM fiat, with the understanding that you're not just dumping on someone, and that everything is still 'balanced" for this tangent. It's like in many other games where there is a narrative aspect and a narrative currency -- if this were some other system, you would give the character that you're splitting off a "hero point" or equivalent as recompense for the inconvenience.

Investigation can work remarkably well to split the party - particularly if 1) they have no reason to expect a fight and 2) they're under time pressure. It's the reason why police teams split up in real life, you can cover a lot more ground more quickly if your working in parallel.

We routinely split the party in our game, to the point it's become something of a team trope. One real advantage Star Wars has in this respect to D&D is comlinks. Your players can still communicate and talk to each other even if they're in different locations.

Easiest methods I find for splitting the party up if the characters having different goals or motivations, different specializations requiring assistance, and time sensitive narratives.

It's especially easy to split the party if you have specific objectives which need to be done in a sequence or synchronized. Most heist stories have something like this, and Star Wars films often do too.

There's the Princess on the detention level AND the tractor beam control which need to be manipulated, so you can split the party and do both at the same time!