In your games, is the PC party always kept together?
Or do you run campaigns where the PCs are frequently all off in their own directions, or in smaller groups?
Quote from: RPGPundit;1038537In your games, is the PC party always kept together?
Or do you run campaigns where the PCs are frequently all off in their own directions, or in smaller groups?
In fantasy, splitting the party is very rare. In modern or science fiction games with advanced communications it is routine since the party members can keep in touch with one another.
I don't think I've ever played in a game where the party was split up for more than half a session.
In most games, I prefer that the PCs stick together. However, there are some exceptions.
In Amber Diceless I find that the PCs are routinely split up. Trumps help in keeping PCs connected. Also, there is Ars Magica - which might not count since the "party" changes from adventure to adventure.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1038537In your games, is the PC party always kept together?
No, unless it's a limited scenario or there's a good reason for them to do that.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1038537Or do you run campaigns where the PCs are frequently all off in their own directions, or in smaller groups?
Yes. They tend to have their own interests and goals, and/or rate/time/distance and locations of things and/or time required for tasks and/or NPCs/groups doing other things at the same time and/or not wanting to be recognized as a pack of dangerous armed people all tend to provide fairly frequent reasons not to pile around together all the time.
My rule of thumb on splitting the party up, is its fine, as long as it doesn't reach a point where I feel like I am running two or more campaigns at once in the same session. If my prep load starts to triple, to me that means this is not a functional party anymore. If it is splitting and coming back together, or splitting the feels part of a greater whole, I am fine with it. I would agree though with Jeff's observation about setting and communication. Basically the only issue for me is: does this create too much of a burden on my end to manage. If it doesn't, it isn't a problem from my point of view.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1038537In your games, is the PC party always kept together?
Or do you run campaigns where the PCs are frequently all off in their own directions, or in smaller groups?
No. The table as a whole is split up fairly regularly: cliques naturally form between players and these cliques invariably end up having their own goals to achieve alongside that of the table and the individual players' own. This leads to a situation where whole sessions may be spent with PCs not actually interacting with each other at all -- this is especially the case when I'm having to GM a scene or small set of scenes that revolve around a particularly PC or more.
As I host "large" (8-10 min players) games, it is quite common for PCs to split up and do their own things as it would be entirely unrealistic and inauthentic for everyone to be in every given scene. In the case of the bigger games I've run (where we're hitting 12+ players) things get very political, VERY quickly. Cliques start to turn into factions in and of their own right and by this point, I don't really have to do anything to keep them chugging along narrative-wise and gameplay-wise.
At this point, it is not just normal but BECOMES the norm to have players frequently swapping seats with each other to RP -- if they haven't already congregated in a certain area of the room or just have walked off just around the corner to do their own thing. The line between TT and LARP starts to blur a little here but it always comes back to the dice and for any major rolls, the players always come back to me to adjudicate them.
Ultimately, this is the healthiest, most authentic way an RPG campaign progresses and plays out: adages like "don't split the party" need to just die in hellfire for they serve no purpose other than to provide a crutch for shitty GM'ing (and I've never had GMs that I've mentored and who have learned through my "school of thought" -- as my players like to joke -- GM for any less than six players and they do just fine).
Generally speaking, my PC's are politically important individuals, so they often have conflicting ideas about what needs to be done and when. I've had several distinct instances of the party splitting. The first time, the two diplomacy focused PC's decided to go straight to the villains palace and try to talk him into exposing himself (didn't work, they almost got assassinated twice in this attempt), the other two PC's decided to investigate a murder, which ended in them playing a card game for the fate of the city's soul.
The second time the party minotaur had to go to a meeting of his secret society on the other end of the continent while the rest of the party defended a city from invasion.
The most recent events have half the party tries to parley with the leader of a fanatical group of Mongolian esque warriors who invaded their kingdom seeking to "destroy the great evil that was festering in their lands" while the other half travels to the far north of the continent to investigate a mysterious stone circle these warriors referred to as "the Home".
Amber/Lords of Olympus are obvious cases where most of the party can spend most of their time split up. I've had other campaigns, especially ones focused more on politics than on going into dungeons, where that was also the case.