"Splitting the Party"

In a lot of game systems, "splitting the party" is considered a bad thing, setting the group up for a painful encounter. In Vampire - and most other WoD games - it is just how the game is played, given the nature of the world. Let's talk about why that is and how to handle the challenges inherent in doing so frequently. I'm concentrating on Vampire here as far as flavour, but the techniques here should work with any game.

Why Split the Party?

In Vampire, the Coterie are often thrown together - oddly matched folks brought together by circumstance, by orders, by survival. The player characters are not together by choice, and they likely don't fully trust each other. Further, they have relationships with other characters that are private - their Sires, their mortal touchstones, other remnants of their mortal lives, allies, contacts, rivals, enemies. Bringing everyone along to have a touching conversation with the romantic partner who you now must keep at a distance just doesn't work. You as a Nosferatu skulking through the Warrens with a Toreador, a Brujah, and a Ventrue in tow just because you need to have a conversation with your sire is silly. Player Characters need their private scenes. The Coterie may divide and conquer, may have chats between just two of its members, any combination of characters is possible and likely.

This is largely a game of relationships, societies, politics, hunts, stalkings, escapes, rivalries, romance, obsession, and hunger - we (probably) aren't adventurers going through a dungeon (not that there's anything wrong with that - D&D is fun, too). We expect to live our unlives and that means time apart.

The Problems with Splitting the Party

When doing a scenes that do not involve the entire Coterie, there are a number of challenges. You have players who might be bored when not involved; there will be all sorts of interesting information that players will be hearing that their characters don't know; there will need to be balancing to make sure every character gets a chance to shine; and there may be players that struggle with character agency, either in general or for that session.

Bored Players

We need to keep the players not directly involved paying attention. The game suffers when folks are not engaged, even when they aren't directly involved. Some tricks we use to keep people involved:

• Make it an expectation - this was part of the very first set of conversations I had about this game, part of the original package of documents I created for it (see Introducing a Chronicle to look at my introduction documents). Talk to players - let them know they will have more fun if they get invested in each others' stories too
• Game chat channels - we play online, talking via Discord. When a smaller group is in the spotlight, we'll get relevant memes and side commentary in that chat channel from those not involved. That may not work for everyone, but it really lets me know that folks are following the conversation and what's happening. I'd be interested to know if someone tries something similar with in person play.
• Bribe them - I expect players to take notes and one of the ways I encourage that is by having someone give the session summary at the beginning of the next session. A good summary gets a 2xp bonus - and a good session includes all the activity for all the characters
• Keep it short - get that spotlight moment to a beat or a moment, keep the light on it for a few breaths to let it shine, then jump to another player or set of players. Alternatively, switch on a cliffhanger, that can be fun, too. 20-25 minutes is probably the outer limit for any one focus on a subgroup, but bouncing back and forth between a number of player subgroups can work well
• Talk to your players - characters can bring other characters when it is plausible, even if it isn't fully realistic - hopefully they like playing together, so they can be empowered to make opportunities to do so

With these techniques, we can hopefully keep our players inspired to pay attention even when the spotlight isn't on them.

Out of Character Information

First, definitions:

• In Character - things a character knows or does
• Out of Character - things a player knows or does that their character may not

This one, to me, is simple. The World of Darkness is a game for mature players. We have an early conversation to lay out the expectation that Out of Character information is only used to make the game better for everyone, never to gain an In Character advantage. There are tons of things that players will know - there's nothing that prevents them from learning the Lore of the world or reading books or finding out advantages in other ways.

So, pay attention, challenge on motivations when characters do things when it seems not to match up with character information, and talk to your players about this expectation.

Balancing Character Spotlights

Sometimes this is difficult - it is a normal night for some players and the culmination of an arc for others. This is where you earn your stripes as a Storyteller - use the normality of another character's moments as a contrasting element. Flip from extreme danger to extreme banality - this can be very fun. Add a mysterious thing to that normality after a few flips back and forth - maybe the Malkavian gets a premonition; maybe someone seems to have been following the Ventrue's limo, but no, they are gone now; maybe the animals seem spooked where the Gangrel is hunting. Some hint of something that will come to fruition later, get that subgroup's players thinking and invested. You don't have to (and probably shouldn't) try to match the energies, but definitely give some spark to every player's scene.

Remember that things need to balance out for characters over time - you can give a little extra time at the end of a story arc for one player, and have other players get their time to shine in a later session. You still can't have folks sitting not doing things for an hour, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one extra spotlight moment for a given player, or lingering a bit longer when a scene is really working. Just make sure that this doesn't happen for the same player character all the time.

Reduced Agency

Sometimes you go to a player whose character didn't get brought along by another subgroup, ask what their character would be doing at that moment and they just don't have an answer. Or that answer is not very high energy and they seem uncertain about what they want for their character at that moment. There's two approaches here:

Something based on the plots and plans I have - I ask my players for the motivations, plans, plots, wishes, desires, habits of their characters. I have some notes for things that can happen to various characters - texts from touchstones, plots that SPCs are dragging them into. Often I'll pluck something from there - they want to know more about the Anarchs in the city? Well, turns out an Anarch wants to know about them. What a coincidence, they are getting approached. 

Something fundamental to the nature of the game - Do they need to feed? Actually play out a full feeding scene, give them a chance to hunt, linger over the actual monstrosity that is Kindred. Can they be tempted? Ventrue pushing to be Prince considers them a tool of the current Prince and wants to sow discord, offers a deal to this character for some information. Can some element of mundane life complicate their existence? Low resources Brujah finds a note saying they need to go down to the property office at noon tomorrow to sign a lease extension. 

This is tricky for Storytellers - the World of Darkness are collaborative storytelling games and this player is pushing more of that work towards you. Have conversations with them and prep for this situation. I keep some generic situations in my plot document that I have at the ready to spring on a character that needs some motivation. Weird occult happenings, annoying mundane things, strange mysteries. The World of Darkness is limitless in its weirdness, so you can improv something and figure out what it means later.

Getting the Group Back Together

The game should be a mix of spotlights on individual characters, small subgroups doing things together, and the entire Coterie all together. The same tricks you use to give folks things to do apart work just as well for things to do together. Hopefully, the Coterie feels stronger as a group, so "main plot" (whatever that means in a World of Darkness game) advancements happen often with the group all together. They became a Coterie for some reason, after all. 

Give them missions from the Prince/Baron/Pack Priest that they need everyone together to do. Host an Elysium and make it clear that the entire Kindred population is expected to attend. Give fragments of information to each that they will need to work together to combine and make sense of.

And work with the players, too, to have this balance. Again, this is a collaborative, storytelling experience - they have work to do here, too, to make sure everyone gets time to shine and everyone gets back together too.