Don’t Split the Party! How and Why to Keep Your D&D Group Together

By Luke Hart

“Don’t split the party.”

If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons for any length of time, you’ve probably heard this phrase repeated again and again. It’s one of those pieces of tabletop wisdom that has become almost cliché. Players say it jokingly, dungeon masters say it with a warning tone, and veteran gamers treat it like an unwritten rule of the hobby.

But why does this advice exist in the first place?

Why has the idea of keeping the party together become such a cornerstone of tabletop RPG culture?

The truth is that while split parties can occasionally create memorable moments, they also introduce a lot of problems at the table. They can leave players bored, slow down the pacing of your game, increase the workload on the dungeon master, and create opportunities for metagaming that can undermine the integrity of the story.

That doesn’t mean split parties should never happen. In fact, sometimes they can produce incredible tension and exciting moments in a campaign. However, those moments tend to work best when they’re rare exceptions rather than the norm.

Most of the time, your game will run smoother—and be more fun for everyone involved—when the party stays together.

Let’s take a closer look at why.

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Split Parties Leave Players Sitting on the Sidelines

One of the biggest problems with splitting the party is that it often leaves some players doing nothing while others get to play.

I was in a game session recently where the dungeon master intentionally divided the group and gave each subgroup something different to do. On paper, that might sound like a cool idea. It seems dynamic. It seems cinematic. It even feels a little like scenes from fantasy movies where heroes split up to tackle different problems simultaneously.

But the reality at the table was very different.

One group started playing through their scene while the rest of us sat there waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

I spent about thirty minutes doing absolutely nothing while the other players interacted with NPCs and advanced the story. Now technically I wasn’t completely idle because we were playing online, so I muted the game and started working on some other things. But that only reinforces the point.

When the party splits, some players end up actively playing the game while others become spectators.

Think about team sports for a moment. I played football in high school, and there’s one thing every athlete knows: sitting on the bench is boring. Watching other people play while you’re stuck waiting for your turn isn’t nearly as fun as being in the action yourself.

The same thing happens at the D&D table.

When only part of the group is participating in a scene, the rest of the players often drift away from the game. Phones come out. Dice towers start getting built. Attention fades. And before long, the energy at the table begins to drop.

Now, it is technically possible to run split parties in a way that keeps everyone engaged. Skilled dungeon masters can bounce quickly between scenes and maintain tension across multiple storylines.

But that’s difficult to pull off.

More often than not, keeping the party together is simply the easiest way to make sure everyone stays involved in the game.

Split Parties Slow the Game Down

Whenever this topic comes up, someone inevitably says that splitting the party speeds things up. The logic usually goes something like this: if two groups are doing things simultaneously in the story, then the adventure will progress faster.

Unfortunately, that’s not how things actually work at the table.

In the fictional world of the game, events might be happening at the same time. But around the table there is still only one dungeon master. Every action, every decision, and every interaction has to pass through that single person.

So what ends up happening is that the DM runs a scene for one group while the other group sits there waiting. Then the DM switches to the second group while the first group waits.

And while one group is waiting, they’re not doing anything.

They’re just sitting there.

This constant jumping back and forth also creates something known as context switching, which is a concept studied in productivity research. When someone repeatedly switches between different tasks, the process becomes less efficient than if they simply focused on completing one task at a time.

Running split parties forces the dungeon master to constantly switch mental gears. They have to track what one group is doing, pause that scene, remember the state of everything happening there, shift their focus to another group, and then repeat the process over and over again.

That mental juggling slows things down.

So while events in the game world might feel like they’re moving quickly, the experience around the table often becomes slower and less engaging.

And slow games tend to become boring games.

Split Parties Create More Work for the Dungeon Master

Another major issue with split parties is that they significantly increase the amount of work the dungeon master has to do.

When the party stays together, the DM only needs to track one set of actions. Everyone is interacting with the same environment, the same NPCs, and the same encounters. The story moves forward in a unified direction.

But when the group splits up, the DM essentially has to run multiple mini-adventures at the same time.

Maybe one group is sneaking through a dungeon corridor while another group is gathering information in town. Perhaps one character is exploring the crypts beneath a temple while the rest of the party is distracting guards above.

Now the dungeon master must keep track of all those separate storylines simultaneously.

They have to remember where each group is, what they’re doing, what dangers they might encounter, and how events in one location might affect events somewhere else. On top of that, they need to constantly switch between these scenes in a way that keeps everyone engaged.

That level of mental multitasking can quickly become exhausting.

For the players, it’s not a big deal because each player only has to worry about their own character. But the dungeon master is responsible for keeping the entire world running smoothly.

So while split parties can be interesting, they also create a much heavier cognitive load for the person running the game.

Encounters Are Built for the Whole Party

Encounter balance is another reason why keeping the party together is usually a good idea.

This is especially true if you’re running published adventures. Most modules are designed with the assumption that the entire party will be present for encounters. The difficulty of monsters, traps, and challenges is balanced around that expectation.

You rarely see instructions in an adventure that say something like, “If only two characters enter this room, reduce the encounter difficulty.” The designers assume the group will face the challenges together.

Even in homebrew campaigns, dungeon masters typically design encounters with the full party in mind. That’s just the natural way most of us plan our games.

So when players split up and a smaller group—or even a single character—runs into one of those encounters, things can go very badly very quickly.

A lone wizard wandering into a room designed for five adventurers might suddenly find themselves staring down a monster they have no realistic chance of defeating.

And unless the DM is willing to dramatically alter the encounter on the fly, the outcome could be disastrous.

This is one of the simplest reasons why players eventually learn not to split up: the game itself often punishes that decision.

Split Parties Encourage Metagaming

There’s another issue that tends to show up whenever the party divides: metagaming.

Let’s say one group of characters explores a dungeon and gets into serious trouble. Meanwhile, the other group is somewhere else entirely.

But the players at the table heard what happened.

Suddenly, the second group decides—completely coincidentally—to head in that exact direction just in time to save the day.

Even when players try to avoid this behavior, it’s difficult to separate what the player knows from what the character knows. Over multiple sessions, it can become especially confusing to remember which scenes a character was actually present for.

Sometimes the metagaming is subtle and unintentional. Other times it’s blatant.

I once ran a game where the party split up and one group encountered a riddle. I specifically told the players whose characters were elsewhere not to help.

And then one of them blurted out the answer anyway.

The other group used it and solved the puzzle.

Situations like that are frustrating, but they’re also incredibly common when the party is divided.

Keeping the group together eliminates most of these problems. When everyone is present for the same scenes, there’s no confusion about what information each character should know.

How to Encourage Players to Stay Together

If keeping the party together usually leads to better sessions, the next question becomes obvious: how can dungeon masters encourage players to stick together?

There are several simple strategies that can help.

Design Encounters for the Full Party

One effective method is to design encounters assuming the entire group will be present—and then leave those encounters unchanged if someone decides to wander off alone.

I once ran an adventure in which the party needed to investigate crypts beneath a fortress. The players decided that four characters would distract the guards while the party’s wizard turned invisible and slipped into the crypts alone.

The distraction worked perfectly.

But when the wizard encountered a stone golem guardian by himself, things suddenly became very dangerous.

That encounter had been designed for the entire party, and I didn’t adjust it just because one character chose to explore alone. The wizard barely escaped with his life.

Moments like that naturally encourage players to stick together in the future.

Build Teamwork Into Character Backstories

Another helpful approach is to establish character motivations that encourage cooperation.

When I ask my players to create characters, I give them two requirements. First, their character must have a reason to go on adventures. Second, they must have a reason to stay with the group.

This prevents the classic “lone wolf” problem where someone creates an edgy character who constantly refuses to work with the party.

If a character has no reason to stick with the group, that’s not a storytelling opportunity—it’s a design problem that should be fixed before the campaign even begins.

Set Expectations During Session Zero

Perhaps the simplest solution is also the most effective: talk about it before the campaign starts.

During session zero, I tell my players that the expectation is that the party will generally stay together. Splitting up occasionally is fine, but the game is fundamentally designed to be a group experience.

Setting that expectation early prevents a lot of problems later.