Splitting the Party

I love it when the party splits in my Play-by-Post (PbP) games. For example, one of my favourite things is to send pairs of PCs on concurrent missions. When you're in a smaller group you are forced more to interact with each other and you can explore the dynamic between those two characters.

I find that for the most part, running these concurrent scenes is easier in PbP than at the table. But, one thing that is harder in PbP imho is getting the party to merge back up at the same time. I find myself doing gymnastics getting both scenes to end roughly at the same time. I don't want to have one or more groups of players waiting for another group to finish up.

I've experimented with some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff where the next scene starts while the other scene is finishing up. I've also tried to more aggressively balance the action by interjecting additional problems to slow down the faster group in an attempt to making them finish up at the same time as the slower group. But I'm wondering: what have you all tried?

How do you get your split parties to merge back up at the same time?

I like splitting the party and it works super well in pbp, much easier than irl. I also like getting them back together, though, but the option of staying dynamic is fun. Granted, I don't play a lot of D&D style games where the group has to be prepared for combat all the time.
I was running a Smallville game on here for a long time a while back and we spent at least half that game not with all PCs in one scene together but with two or three scenes running at the same time.

It does cost more time for the GM though, to have to write four posts rather than one for individual scenes 😄

In the fiction, the easiest way I have found to put the parties back together is to have the separated parties not communicate (cell phones make this much harder:) and then not define the time too closely, then we can simply say they end at the same time, or that it is now a few hours later when they get back together, whichever fits the fiction.
When events in one stream affect events in the other (even just though character communication) things get tricky. Keep them properly separated if they separate.

In terms of real world timing, there is no good way to ensure this. Someone will always have to wait for the other scene to finish up. At the table this can be a bit easier, in PbP it can be very hard to judge how long a scene will take, so adding a 'quick filler scene' to the early-ender is dangerous.

Also an enormous fan of breaking the party up as required. It can require some finesse to extend some scenes, and I've seen players hurry to wrap something up if it's clear that the others are waiting on them. Over on rpol.net, and with systemless PbP games in generally, I've noticed a tradition for having several threads / scenes going at once. So starting the 'get back together' thread before finishing all the individual stuff. I'm not a fan of that generally, but I've seen it used effectively from time to time.

Like Bowl, though, I'm not running D&D or games like it where there are expectations around everyone mustering to prepare for some big combat or the like -- so the groups sometimes stay separated for a long time.

Incidentally, dig your comment, Len, about the smaller groups fostering good roleplay. I've long preferred smaller PbP games (3-4 max), but in larger games, I really like the trick of breaking the group up so the scenes are more manageable and interactive between the PCs. I'd even go so far as to say I purposefully split them up if the larger group is proving unwieldy and hard to manage.

I find that usually, I manage fairly well to close out two threads at the same time to merge the characters together again. If I see that one thread is winding down, I make sure to draw the other to its end as well.
And I agree with vague about not defining the time frame too well. As long as the people in one thread don't only have a brief five minute conversation and in the other go on a weeklong road trip, I think people are willing to accept the convenience.

Other question: If you're split up, should the GM use Notes or let everyone see everything?
I can see the use of notes for horror or mystery type games but otside of those, I wouldn't employ them. It's more fun to see what the other group is up to in my opinion. But I'm also more of a "Writer" type RPer than an "Actor", so I don't care for the extra immersion of not having the info my character wouldn't.
I've had one game I was a player in where the GM split us up and then used Notes and then the scene I was in wrapped up while the others were still going so I was just looking at nothing but notes I couldn't read for weeks after that 😅 If the game hadn't been so much fun before that, I don't think I would have stuck with that for so long

'Using notes' or letting everyone follow along is up to the specific group, no?
If they can not be trusted to divorce their player knowledge of what is happening in the other scene from their character's action then a serration might need to be enforced, but I seldom find that to be required with my groups. If in PbP then it is simple enough to divide them, possibly by software permissions, separate games, or just by saying they should not read the other thread if they struggle to keep them separate (treat them like adults).
Playing live games means either doing the separate parties at different times, or jumping between them in real-time. If jumping, then trying to prevent one group from hearing what is happening just makes them sit around, bored. That does not seem like a good idea in general, there may be specific needs to such separation (horror stories, maybe) but mostly they can enjoy watching their friends play. Many, many spend ages watching other people play, I don't get it, but there are channels dedicated to Actual Play stuff, they can spend part of their session as audience for their friends as well.

I don't use notes for split parties (but I don't play many horror/mystery games either). The drama of watching everyone's scenes can be delicious for the players. I don't find metagaming comes up much. Most importantly, if players can read others' scenes they can get in on the act of winding down their scene if they see the others are wrapping up!

I sometimes keep it open, sometimes use notes, sometimes break out threads. It depends.

I had a scene where each character saw the NPC as something different. I used notes, but the problem was that everyone could see that I was using notes, so it didn't really work. It would have been nice if there'd been "notes which aren't shown as notes" feature.

As a player I prefer everything either open (because I trust myself to keep player knowledge separate from character knowledge), in separate threads, or in spoiler boxes (so anyone who wants to can reveal the other half of the story later when it can no longer unfairly influence their half).

As a GM I also love party splits because it then almost turns into two games or more. More to feed my addiction! And there's certainly a thrill in orchestrating the whole thing and eventually tying things together.

Neglected to comment on private notes -- in my own games, I never use them. Far prefer to have everyone see, and hopefully enjoy, everything. I'll use them if it's clear that's how things roll within a given group, and I do think there are some specific games that are really well served by them, especially those with PvP elements. The cinematic mode of Alien is a good example, where every PC has a secret agenda that changes or evolves as the acts progress.

Unless the splits have nothing to do with the shared storyline, so if we're doing some background scenes or a downtime/side-quest thing where each player is pursuing separate "personal" projects that don't impact the main narrative, I prefer to just have it all out in the open and preferably playing out contemporaneously (as contemporaneous as pbp can anyway) in the same thread.

For one, I want to have as few threads as possible to manage. But also as others have mentioned, it's fun in my experience for everyone to be in on everyone else's drama, and I like/want to trust my players to not metagame (and I'll be explicit about my investment in that trust if the narratives of the split are critical enough) or if they do metagame that it will only be in ways that make a better story.

I'll use notes and spoilers mostly to provide characters an opportunity to shine and/or RP. So to give them something special that will then be theirs to reveal or relay to the group in a way they choose. I don't think I'd ever use those tools for splits unless it was a very brief and uncomplicated split.

I'd either do it all together in one thread out in the open, or create different threads if the type of game really warranted that type of play.

I haven't had the chance to do a split party PbP game yet, but I am REALLY interested in doing it for various reasons.

In terms of Notes. I actually like the idea of Spoiler tags if being done in a shared thread, this could allow reading if other players want to but makes it to have to be intentional. Also compared to Notes, if a player wants to remain uninformed of the other party this could allow for a bigger "hand wave" moment when the other players are describing the events of what happens in game to the others. Which could save time in an already lengthy PbP method of playing.

I have yet to split the party in any of my games as when it happens it will likely be the players choice not mine, but I imagine if it matters I would block each group from seeing the other using the ACP then show it to the players once they rejoined so they could read it if they wanted.

I like the spoiler tag idea and might employ that in the future! Thanks for that

Agree! And this thread is an example of where "+1", "like" and other simple and positive emojis would be cool to see in place...

+1 or 👍. Whichever you'd prefer 😉

Btw, I'm also an rPol refugee.

Heeeey, welcome! Feature-rich over there, but man, when the new interface looked ten years old when it came out... nooope. And to be fair, I haven't played over there for years.