Do the DM and the other players make the downtime interesting to see? Do I feel like our part is taking too much focus or play time away from other players? If yes to the former and no to the latter, then yes. If any other combo of answers, then maybe not.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
My DM did this, years ago, and it was tons of fun!
To prevent boredom for those not currently in a scene, and to prevent the players from gaining unnecessary OOC knowledge, we scheduled separate, solo sessions for each player. So when I did my scene with the DM, it was just me and him. (Caveat: this was back in college, when our schedules were much more flexible.) Each session was very very roleplay-heavy; they were primarily opportunities for us to develop our characters and test their moral strength, rather than do a typical dungeon crawl. For example, in my session I was approached by the primary antagonist, whose child I was carrying (long story) and he attempted to persuade me to the dark side as his official consort. The conflict was entirely mental/emotional for my character - I think I rolled dice maybe twice the entire session - but it was one of the more intense and memorable sessions I've ever done. My hands were literally shaking by the end of it.
I'll admit to being a player that gets on the phone while the party is separated. Why? Without it I tend to meta game too much and sometimes it gets hard to keep track of what my character isn't supposed to know. I take notes, but I still know stuff. Makes it a lot easier for me to role play in character when we meet up again. If they learned something important and I walk into a trap without warning from my teammates, it is a surprise and actually happens a lot as they were "weren't you listening?!" Well, no, that's metagaming and my character wouldn't know even if I was. lol
Not saying it's bad or good, but players who aren't pertinent to a part of the story are not engaged players. For our Adventurer's League campaign, I hate when we get separated in the party and is really the main time I care. Mainly because the place we meet at charges each player $5 for the evening. I bring my wife and brother in law, so am paying $15 a week to play this campaign. And, if we each only get 5-10 minutes of interaction in the session, I feel cheated out of the experience. And, that's something the DM has to be mindful of. On a whole, there are times the party HAS to split and there isn't much choice. But, I try to keep those situations to a minimum in my own campaigns as much as possible. Like others have commented, when you straight up tell them to split up, it feels like a trap to kill off players and you want to avoid any sort of DM vs Player mindset.
My opinion is, leave it as it is, but be prepared for them to do it all together and be ready to tailor the encounters for such a situation. Players don't typically like being railroaded, especially when they are acting in character to do what they would do in the given situation...in a dungeon, would the voice of God deter adventurers from staying together? Just saying....convincing them to split if not forced isn't going to be easy.
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Would I enjoy it?
Depends.
Do the DM and the other players make the downtime interesting to see? Do I feel like our part is taking too much focus or play time away from other players? If yes to the former and no to the latter, then yes. If any other combo of answers, then maybe not.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
My DM did this, years ago, and it was tons of fun!
To prevent boredom for those not currently in a scene, and to prevent the players from gaining unnecessary OOC knowledge, we scheduled separate, solo sessions for each player. So when I did my scene with the DM, it was just me and him. (Caveat: this was back in college, when our schedules were much more flexible.) Each session was very very roleplay-heavy; they were primarily opportunities for us to develop our characters and test their moral strength, rather than do a typical dungeon crawl. For example, in my session I was approached by the primary antagonist, whose child I was carrying (long story) and he attempted to persuade me to the dark side as his official consort. The conflict was entirely mental/emotional for my character - I think I rolled dice maybe twice the entire session - but it was one of the more intense and memorable sessions I've ever done. My hands were literally shaking by the end of it.
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
I would find it a very interesting situation to the players.
I'll admit to being a player that gets on the phone while the party is separated. Why? Without it I tend to meta game too much and sometimes it gets hard to keep track of what my character isn't supposed to know. I take notes, but I still know stuff. Makes it a lot easier for me to role play in character when we meet up again. If they learned something important and I walk into a trap without warning from my teammates, it is a surprise and actually happens a lot as they were "weren't you listening?!" Well, no, that's metagaming and my character wouldn't know even if I was. lol
Not saying it's bad or good, but players who aren't pertinent to a part of the story are not engaged players. For our Adventurer's League campaign, I hate when we get separated in the party and is really the main time I care. Mainly because the place we meet at charges each player $5 for the evening. I bring my wife and brother in law, so am paying $15 a week to play this campaign. And, if we each only get 5-10 minutes of interaction in the session, I feel cheated out of the experience. And, that's something the DM has to be mindful of. On a whole, there are times the party HAS to split and there isn't much choice. But, I try to keep those situations to a minimum in my own campaigns as much as possible. Like others have commented, when you straight up tell them to split up, it feels like a trap to kill off players and you want to avoid any sort of DM vs Player mindset.
My opinion is, leave it as it is, but be prepared for them to do it all together and be ready to tailor the encounters for such a situation. Players don't typically like being railroaded, especially when they are acting in character to do what they would do in the given situation...in a dungeon, would the voice of God deter adventurers from staying together? Just saying....convincing them to split if not forced isn't going to be easy.