“Never split the party!” is a common refrain in the tabletop RPG world. But I’m here to tell you that not only is it okay to split the party, sometimes? Sometimes the better plan, one that leads to a better and more satisfying game. Let’s dive in!
Background
The origin of this practice is muddy, but in my experience, the fear of splitting the party comes from two places. The first is a perceived difficulty in running two scenes at once. The second is usually rooted in tactical timidity, the idea that “weaker” characters will be quickly and easily picked off if they stray from the safety of numbers. However, particularly in sci-fi and modern type games, splitting up often makes better sense and lets characters and players shine more brightly.
Tactical Thoughts
The first thing to remember when the party splits is tactical reality. A lot of games, mine included, can really easily devolve into simplistic line battles where the toughest or most damage dealing win the fight. But that’s not fighting smart. And fighting smart is how players survive split parties and how GMs get to have fun planning.
On the player’s side, it’s all about tactical grouping and planning. And I don’t mean “leave the support role characters behind”, I mean put people where they benefit the mission the most. Personally, I like breaking the party into tactical teams with specific missions for the job at hand. And the key here is “job at hand”, these don’t have to be permanent groupings. They match the known/perceived needs of the task at hand.
On the player and GM’s side, you need to avoid the stand up, squared up fight model when things go wrong. Hide. Take cover. Retreat. Use distraction devices or decoys. Have traps set or the ability to set traps quickly. The point of this is that “killing all the enemies” is not the only end result of combat. Or even the most desirable. It’s potentially the most dangerous course of action that can be taken. So both sides need to play it smart.
Running the Scenes
There’s two methods I combine to do this, the first is Live Interaction, the second is Combat Integration. This works for simultaneous actions.
Live Interaction is the non-combat phase of things. The party has split into the tactical teamings they think will work the best, and the job has kicked off. And as I’m describing things to one group, I describe to the other group too. It’s easiest if one group is static, but it’s doable if both are moving at once. The trick is to move back and forth quickly to keep the tempo going. So as a GM, you need to have your notes and event triggers laid out; I can’t stress this enough, this is not fun to improv! On the player side, use the brief pauses in your scene to plan your next moves and adapt to the changing situation. It’s all about the character-to-character interaction here. The other thing is communication between the teams. And if communication is limited for whatever reason (jamming, detection threats etc…) then it’s about timing. A cheesy example of this comes from the “Would You Like Swing on a Star” heist in Hudson Hawk, where the two move in unison on different goals with a song as a timer to make it all work.
Combat Integration sounds hard, but it’s not. If you can keep track of a normal fight scene, you can do this. The only difference is spatial. First off, everyone still rolls initiative or takes their place in the initiative order. Then you run the fight or fights, or the fight and the activity. Players still take their turns and describe their actions, you just track the two developing scenarios. Move back and forth between them in initiative order.
Now, there’s one thing here that I don’t normally encourage. Secret information. If one group is dynamic while the other is stationary (like a surveillance task), just saying out loud what the second team is detecting/seeing kind of negates their presence except for maybe the odd skill roll. Have messages/instructions/stuff they see ready to pass to them so they can act on them. Encourage communication, but let them roll with it. I’m not 100% on why this works, but it seems to help a lot.
GM Stress
I won’t sugarcoat it, running a split-party session is challenging at the best of times. But with some teamwork and cooperation from the players, it’s very doable. The key as the GM is “don’t be That Guy™”. Meaning that you don’t set out to sabotage the players when they come up with a plan. That doesn’t mean take it easy on them, it means not making their plan a complete wash by countering everything because why not. There’s two times, generally, when the party will split. One is for a specific job, the other is a permanent grouping.
For the time they split for a specific job, lean into the RP, recce, and prep sessions as the players get their characters ready for the job. Then when they’re planning, once they confirm they’re splitting the party, let them know that you need to do more prep as a GM. This is a good thing. Finish the session with planning, and launch the job the next session. Have your notes and events/encounters already prepped, then carry on like I talked about above. The idea here is that you have sets of concurrently occurring fights/challenges for the teams to encounter to keep everything going and to give everyone a chance to shine.
In the situation where the party has permanent teams that operate apart, it’s actually easier. The reason being that in this scenario, things are usually set in terms of tasks/roles, and you can more easily plan for the events happening to and around the teams.
Player Cooperation
On the player side, recognize the effort the GM is putting in and don’t wildly change your plan between sessions. The other thing is that you need to stay engaged. There’s always a temptation to chat, doom scroll, open another window or any number of other things when it’s someone else’s turn. Stay engaged, stay in the moment happening in game. Something I’ve found useful is “chatter”. Simulate the communication happening between characters and teams. It helps to own the situation, and it deepens immersion.
Practice Makes Perfect
I can almost guarantee that the first time you try to pull this off, it’s going to be rocky. And that’s fine. Make sure the players know what’s up, and prep the ground before you launch. Layout the overview of the coming scene, or better yet, get the players to do it, like they’re doing a last check in game. Then launch. Move smoothly back and forth between the teams. I sometimes have a Beats Sheet for this, where I have my framework of the events and how they’re happening together so I don’t get lost. The main point here is that this takes practice, and the more you practice, the smoother and more thrilling it all gets.
Final Thoughts
Splitting the party is a tactic that absolutely works. From a GM perspective, it’s all about planning and getting good at running parallel scenes simultaneously. From the player perspective, it’s about knowing your character’s strengths, weaknesses, and how you can best leverage them in situations where they don’t necessarily have the cover they might be accustomed to. And remember, strong plans mean strong finishes!
