splitting the party
Nov. 19th, 2018 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliSplitting the party is A LOT easier for the novelist than for the DM. A novelist can even use to move some pesky/superfluous characters off-stage to have their adventures summarized, if told at all.
BUT --
It's got to have a purpose. Something that happens because of it.
Not, of course, from the characters' point-of-view. Novel characters can see their companions drop down a trap door and blunder around in search of each other with no more plan than "find each other and get on with the task that was interrupted."
But if neither set of characters has something significant happen to them -- whether a fight or a discovery (a secret door? a treasure trove?) or character development as two quarrel about to what extent they should risk their own lives (or the mission) to find the lost ones or simply get panicky and anxious and aware of the danger -- it can work in an RPG, but not in a novel. Good thing a novelist, unlike a DM, can revise. 0:)
BUT --
It's got to have a purpose. Something that happens because of it.
Not, of course, from the characters' point-of-view. Novel characters can see their companions drop down a trap door and blunder around in search of each other with no more plan than "find each other and get on with the task that was interrupted."
But if neither set of characters has something significant happen to them -- whether a fight or a discovery (a secret door? a treasure trove?) or character development as two quarrel about to what extent they should risk their own lives (or the mission) to find the lost ones or simply get panicky and anxious and aware of the danger -- it can work in an RPG, but not in a novel. Good thing a novelist, unlike a DM, can revise. 0:)