I'm running a game where a party is going to be exploring a cave. They will be chased by a stone giant that they angered. They will get to a room in the cave that has a weak floor and when the giants step on the the floor, the floor collapses and falls on what is best described as a natural aqueduct system. These natural slides will split into many routes and based on some ability checks the players may not be able to stay together. Where some paths may lead to the underdark and the others may lead to a higher level in the cave.
Despite how dumb that sounds, What are some tips and tricks for me, the DM, to have sessions go smoothly with a split party. How do you keep the players engaged in the story despite not being part of the active group. How do you keep player metaknowledge from the inactive group impacting their decisions. How do you run combat encounters for one individual group while the other group is in a more non-combat scenario.
I'm just toying with the idea but I think it might be fun. However, I'm not sure it is worth the added complexity.
A good way to keep everyone engaged and avoid metagaming is to seperate each player. I would suggest grouping them if possible, like 2-2, or 2-2-1. If you play in person, use different rooms, if you play online, use seperate voice chatroom and rely on wisper rolls to DM when need be. Go to each group seperately and roleplay them but always try to not take too long try going back and forth between them more frequently to cut waiting time and keep them more engaged. I would try reunite them ASAP as while this can be fun for a time, it's tedious over a longer period and require more DM handling, as if you were running 2-3 mini campaign.
So you want to split your party and have the players not involved in a scene to still be engaged, AND you want them to also have no meta knowledge.
IDK man, when you split the party you turn who ever isn't in the room into a spectator, if you also don't want them to have meta knowledge then they can't even spectate and you have removed them from the game entirely.
I've seen this work successfully, it's quite fun if you can pull it off. To prevent metagaming you just have to ensure that you give the teams separate challenges that don't in any way depend on each other. As long as both teams have independent encounters, then everyone can listen in full-time and the players can know everything that occurred to both teams under the assumption that the characters talk to each other afterwards.
To prevent boredom, keep it fast paced, switching often between the teams. If you pull this off properly, the active team will make quicker decisions than normal knowing that the focus could shift off them at any moment, and the inactive team will be at least semi paying attention knowing that the focus could shift back to them at any moment.
As far as combat in a split party, I would avoid this at all costs unless you have each team engaged in separate combats that you're rapid-fire switching between. DnD combat takes forever and is fairly boring even if you are involved in it, so I'd advise never having only some of the party in combat while others have to sit there for hours with nothing to do
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I'm running a game where a party is going to be exploring a cave. They will be chased by a stone giant that they angered. They will get to a room in the cave that has a weak floor and when the giants step on the the floor, the floor collapses and falls on what is best described as a natural aqueduct system. These natural slides will split into many routes and based on some ability checks the players may not be able to stay together. Where some paths may lead to the underdark and the others may lead to a higher level in the cave.
Despite how dumb that sounds, What are some tips and tricks for me, the DM, to have sessions go smoothly with a split party. How do you keep the players engaged in the story despite not being part of the active group. How do you keep player metaknowledge from the inactive group impacting their decisions. How do you run combat encounters for one individual group while the other group is in a more non-combat scenario.
I'm just toying with the idea but I think it might be fun. However, I'm not sure it is worth the added complexity.
A good way to keep everyone engaged and avoid metagaming is to seperate each player. I would suggest grouping them if possible, like 2-2, or 2-2-1. If you play in person, use different rooms, if you play online, use seperate voice chatroom and rely on wisper rolls to DM when need be. Go to each group seperately and roleplay them but always try to not take too long try going back and forth between them more frequently to cut waiting time and keep them more engaged. I would try reunite them ASAP as while this can be fun for a time, it's tedious over a longer period and require more DM handling, as if you were running 2-3 mini campaign.
So you want to split your party and have the players not involved in a scene to still be engaged, AND you want them to also have no meta knowledge.
IDK man, when you split the party you turn who ever isn't in the room into a spectator, if you also don't want them to have meta knowledge then they can't even spectate and you have removed them from the game entirely.
I've seen this work successfully, it's quite fun if you can pull it off. To prevent metagaming you just have to ensure that you give the teams separate challenges that don't in any way depend on each other. As long as both teams have independent encounters, then everyone can listen in full-time and the players can know everything that occurred to both teams under the assumption that the characters talk to each other afterwards.
To prevent boredom, keep it fast paced, switching often between the teams. If you pull this off properly, the active team will make quicker decisions than normal knowing that the focus could shift off them at any moment, and the inactive team will be at least semi paying attention knowing that the focus could shift back to them at any moment.
As far as combat in a split party, I would avoid this at all costs unless you have each team engaged in separate combats that you're rapid-fire switching between. DnD combat takes forever and is fairly boring even if you are involved in it, so I'd advise never having only some of the party in combat while others have to sit there for hours with nothing to do