Split up PC's

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

If it’s something that won’t take a long time we’ll pull someone off to “the room of DOOM” (aka my bedroom) and go through what happens in there.

[eyes widen!]

[Kalzazz]

Never Split the Party!

Heh, last game I played in, we were going to a Gun Store of Doom to commission some Awesome Ammo of Doom

The party had a mostly human, handsome, charming, gunsmith guy and also my character, the magical flying pony

So thinking it is better for the 'qualified to go into gun stores without courting social disaster' other PC to go undertake this challenge without my character providing 'assistance'

So 'Luna goes to catch a movie "See you guys later!"'

Luna goes to catch a movie resulted in 30 dead, untold others scarred for life, police and Federal intervention, and general chaos

Going to the gunstore? No fuss, no muss, the ammo of awesomeness handily created

[Godogma]

If your issue is the party not willing to work together you simply make sure that the players make characters that can work together/aren't antagonizing to each others' characters. That solves the issue of having to split the party up due to the characters wanting to kill each other off.

If the problem requiring the split is player conflicts make the choice to get rid of the most disruptive player to the group and be done with it before it utterly destroys the group. The campaign is the least of your worries, generally if the group gets annoyed enough and sees that you as the GM aren't going to do anything about the disruptive player your whole group is going to implode.

I've seen it happen many times.

[Aneirin]

The way to do it, is to make sure the PC's are interesting. If the PC's are all making hard fearless people, then they may not want a horror campaign. If they are making weaker people, perhaps dissacoaited, this can in fact work in benefit of a horror campaign.

Think of a zombie flick, a bunch of different people, different backgrounds, some who may try to kill each other at some point, and many other horror films.

Very few horror films I can think of focus on one person, they have a group, often with a divergent group of people, and you should use this to your advantage, not try to get rid of it.

As for splitting the group because you don't like other players knowing what other players know, unfortunately this will make it exceptionally difficult to GM. Either trust your players, learn to not care about metagmaing, or construct the campaign so it isn't dependent on only one person knowing something.

I would always reccoment sticking with GURPs (simply because I like it and would hate to see someone leave it, just go with GURP's lite for simplicity...or what ever you feel will work best for you even if it may be another system), even if going for beer and pretzels gaming. It just may need a different approach to GM'ing (one of the biggest problems can be GM expectations, expectations of wonder and bewilderment, unfortunately through trying to accomplish this you sound like your players are getting annoyed an inpatient, so it may be best to learn to accept you may not quite gt the wonder and excitement you want, but at least can have players who are enjoying themselves, unless I am over-estimating how fed up they are getting waiting for their turn and not knowing what other players are even getting up to and not being involved in the story at all)

Originally Posted by Toboo

Wow I didn't expect all these helpful answers so quickly. Just to clear things up them being split up, is my doing at this point due to the fact the It's a horror campaign, and it's hard get the feeling of horror when you got a team of 5 guys, now when were talking about a chubby black man and a 16 year old girl, that's a different story. One thing I'm thinking is having them play a simpler RPG(not hard to find an RPG simpler than GURPS) with a GM being rotated around as needed, the adventures would be nonsensical and the players would be ridiculous but it would just be a small thing to keep them interested, as well in the roleplaying/tabletop mood. I saw a free RPG by the name of Broken Urthe, it even has a big ruined city generator complete with the contents of every building and randomly generated loot and monsters, I was thinking I could let them romp around the city, possibly facing monsters so weak the players completely destroy it, or so powerful it would squash the players like bugs, kinda like a rougelike I guess, does anyone know if broken urthe is any good though.
EDIT: also when it comes to not having players not know things other players do, I don't enjoy that because I'm afraid of them meta gaming(because I know they won't) it's the effect it has on the players of them actually wondering in real life what the other players know that they don't.

[Dammann]

A thing I've experimented with is having the absent PCs' players control the opposition. If there is going to be combat, the split session tends to last for a long time. This has the side benefit of giving everyone more familiarity with the combat rules, which makes for faster fights down the road. The first time I did this, the players who ran "the bad guys" saw tons of opportunities that their own PCs would have had to help. They seemed to feel a greater affinity for their own characters' abilities, despite those characters being somewhere else. Of course, my game is pretty combat heavy, which might not translate to a horror game very well.

[jahn]

When this happens to me I

1. keep the spotlight short, five minutes max, before moving to the next group.

2. always break before anything significant happens. "You open the door and see, oh my God!" (go to next group)

3. don't allow dead time. If I have to look up a rule, make it up instead. If the spotlight group starts discussing things amongst themselves move on to the next group. This gets a bit tiring because the GM has no downtime during a session.

4. don't worry so much about keeping timelines in sync. Some groups will be in a fight while others research. You're going to have to hand wave time differences when the groups get back together.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by jahn

When this happens to me I

1. keep the spotlight short, five minutes max, before moving to the next group.

2. always break before anything significant happens. "You open the door and see, oh my God!" (go to next group)

3. don't allow dead time. If I have to look up a rule, make it up instead. If the spotlight group starts discussing things amongst themselves move on to the next group. This gets a bit tiring because the GM has no downtime during a session.

4. don't worry so much about keeping timelines in sync. Some groups will be in a fight while others research. You're going to have to hand wave time differences when the groups get back together.

Lot of useful avice but this was a nice summary of waht I think are some of the best and easy to implement solutions.
Worked for me many times.

[D10]

I have recently been talking to a friend of mine who also GMs to try to have 2 gms, aside from facilitating roleplaying, combat, and etc... it can lead you to just GM to more people at once in separate situations

[Peter Knutsen]

Maybe try to engineer a culture in which it is seen as worthwhile entertainment to spectate on the other party subset?

That is, when Albert and Brian go into the abandoned house to investigate it, while Christina and Daniel stay outside to keep watch, Christina and Daniel's players find it intrinsically enjoyable to spectate on what Albert and Brian do in there, while of course still maintaiing a strict 100% firewall in terms of what their characters know.

[Godogma]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Maybe try to engineer a culture in which it is seen as worthwhile entertainment to spectate on the other party subset?

That is, when Albert and Brian go into the abandoned house to investigate it, while Christina and Daniel stay outside to keep watch, Christina and Daniel's players find it intrinsically enjoyable to spectate on what Albert and Brian do in there, while of course still maintaiing a strict 100% firewall in terms of what their characters know.

Some people can't do that - irregardless of their best intentions. Also, that's a brief thing; from the sounds of what he's talking about there are whole sessions where certain characters get either minimal or no screen time.