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Post by tavis on Jul 12, 2009 21:25:08 GMT -6
I know "don't split the party" is a gamer's mantra, but I'm wondering if it's less true the more old-school you get.
If the assumption is that each encounter is going to lead to a fight-to-the-death combat that's standardized to challenge the entire party, and if there aren't a lot of options for resolving potential conflicts without fighting (esp. true of 4E where spells like sleep / web can't end or forestall the combat in one shot) - then not having the full complement of PCs there for the fight is a big problem.
Likewise, if resolving individual PC actions requires lots of details and rules, then having some of the group go off and do its own thing can unduly disrupt the flow and split up spotlight time.
But thinking about my Caverns of Thracia game tonight:
- Many encounters are going to be either easy enough for one PC to handle alone (esp. a sleep-enabled wizard) or so hard that having the whole party there would just mean everyone dies; splitting the party can increase the risk of the PCs who engage in combat dying, but it can also be a hedge against a total party kill
- There are lots of options for avoiding combat, some of which (sneaking past invisibly) work better for part of the party than if everyone was trying it
- Minute-long combat rounds mean that some people can achieve meaningful objectives in other areas of the dungeon while others are fighting
- Bottleneck combat tactics mean that one or two people can hold a door such that other PCs might as well split off and do other things instead of waiting for one of the doorway fighters to drop & open up a space
- Fast and loose resolution means that it doesn't have to take a long time at the table to figure out what the guy who went the other way is doing
What do y'all think?
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Post by grodog on Jul 12, 2009 22:59:23 GMT -6
I think it depends on the size of your party: we have 8 PCs in our current game (which, coincidentally, began in Caverns of Thracia), and we do split up with some regularity. We also have a lot of redundancy in the full party (1 MU, 1 CLR, 1 MU/CLR, 1 MU/Thf, 1 Ftr/Thf, 1 PAL, 1 Thf, 1 RNG); in fact, at one point, we were playing as two separate groups since the 3 MUs ended up on the "wrong" side of a gate for about 3-4 months of real time....
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Post by tavis on Jul 13, 2009 15:21:11 GMT -6
That's a good point, grodog. I think it does fit into the schema I suggested, because I associate larger party sizes with more old-school styles of play. It's nice to have a poll collecting actual data to test that idea!
Caverns of Thracia rocks! Where did your party go from there?
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Post by kenmeister on Jul 14, 2009 9:53:20 GMT -6
Another major facet of old school play is that not everyone is the same level. A higher level character adventuring with lower level folk can probably sneak off safely.
Boy you guys are getting me stoked to run Caverns of Thracia. It'll probably be at least another 6 months before my group is ready for it. They first have to find the map to the Caverns.
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Post by grodog on Jul 14, 2009 21:16:36 GMT -6
That's a good point, grodog. I think it does fit into the schema I suggested, because I associate larger party sizes with more old-school styles of play. It's nice to have a poll collecting actual data to test that idea! Indeed  Caverns of Thracia rocks! Where did your party go from there? We played a few Goodman Games modules (retro-converted), as well as some homebrewed material too. Since I'm not DMing, I'm not actually sure which modules were which, save that we definitely played Aerie of the Crow God (we've since taken it over as our base of operations), not sure about following ones though. |
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Post by grodog on Jul 14, 2009 21:19:49 GMT -6
Boy you guys are getting me stoked to run Caverns of Thracia. It'll probably be at least another 6 months before my group is ready for it. They first have to find the map to the Caverns. I loved playing CoT---I'd never played it or read it/run it, so it was a wonderful treat for me I think we played for it for about 18 months of real time before moving on to other adventures (not that we finished the whole thing either!). Good, good stuff |
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Post by calithena on Jul 15, 2009 7:25:52 GMT -6
Tactics: thieves and lightly armored elves well in front of the rest of the party, as a scout group to get the jump on encounters. This is an exception to the 'don't split the party' idea, though the party isn't really split because the rear group is typically 120' back going the same way.
You know the one about the guy who had his character go a different way and the GM said "OK". For an hour the guy sat there not getting any play while the rest of the party kept delving. Finally the party found a dead body hacked to pieces and pissed on by orcs - the missing PC.
To me that's somewhat over the line as GM behavior - I would at least let the player roll it out when the orc gang came out - but it always makes me chuckle anyway.
I think parties do get split in good adventures sometimes and that actually the GM tempting them to split up to make challenges harder can be a fun part of play. The hard thing is managing the group when you have to cut scenes all the time. But it can be done.
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Post by tavis on Jul 15, 2009 10:52:36 GMT -6
They first have to find the map to the Caverns. After my party had been exploring the caverns for a while, I had a local patriarch who wanted to trade with them offer some maps of the caverns. I scanned (and removed the numbers from) the cut-away schematic of the Thracia levels, the similar schematic and the cavern-city map from Moldvay's B3: Lost City (which I figure is nearby), and also a player map I sketched for someone whose replacement PC was one of the Thracian tribesmen of the Dark One, plus that player's notes on the area based on our conversation. This last I justified using by deciding that the patriarch had sought out and interviewed the spirit of someone who had recently died in the caverns - which was, of course, that PC! I'd be happy to mail these image files to anyone who's interested. Good point about scouting ahead being a kind of splitting the party, calithena (to keep this kind of on track). I also like the story about the group that was so big that even without splitting the party the front of their marching order looped around, mistook the back of the marching order for a rival party, and attacked! Has anyone ever used "fog of war" to encourage one part of a split-up party to encourage / enable them to mistake their fellows for an enemy? I'd personally also consider that over the line as a GM, although it certainly might be realistic (and hilarious, for the DM at least). |
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Post by calithena on Jul 15, 2009 11:38:08 GMT -6
I actually think I have confused a party into attacking one another a few times in my years of gaming, but only on their own authority: I describe something through the fog and if someone says "Fireball!" or some nonsense without actually looking to see what's there first, well, he throws a fireball. This kind of thing winds up being a kind of test to see who's paying attention, which is OK in my book.
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Post by gkaralunas on Aug 30, 2009 5:13:09 GMT -6
In some of our adventures we had all alignments so some of our sessions got very interesting from LG to CE in one party!
I personally ran a LG Cleric & a CN Half-Orc Thief (Disguised as a MU, who had rings, wands & scrolls), her disguise was never discovered by the luke of the GODS (Dice). also she never attacked the LG Cleric since he was 30th Level plus while she was with the group, and her being only 10 Level, made for some interesting times.
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