[RPG] How to deal with a player “teleporting” to the action

problem-playersthe-dark-eyethe-dark-eye-4the-year-of-the-griffon

I have a rather large group playing Year of the Griffon, about 13 players in total, but with mixed attendance. Some just show up every 3rd or 4th session, others have left pretty much, so average we have 4 to 8 there. But I can live with and handle that – it's easier than handling 26 pupils after all. They routinely split up the party to pursue various parts of the three interwoven plots.

And here lies the problem: there is one player that does sometimes not state where he goes (or even goes somewhere entirely different) and when something interesting happens, he declares "Oh, by the way, I am right there and join the discussion/scene/spotlight." When the other players know he was pursuing something different, they usually call him out and he backpaddles.

This "I teleport to the action" is bothering me a little, and while I, as a GM, use some sort of this at times (e.g. officers/agents meeting is called by the commander), or use city-wide alarm to get people to meet up, this part of "I am where I smell action, even if I declared to be somewhere else earlier" seems to break the immersion for some of my players.

How to deal with a player "teleporting" to the action?

Best Answer

You have a much larger party size than any I've ever GM'd, but I have had a similar problem.

Occasionally the party would split into two groups. The party was eight players. Sometimes they did need to do two things at once or they'd be relaxing and be in two groups (I remember once five went to a spa and three to a bar -- the spa was attacked while the girls were in their skivvies and unarmed so they had to use their wits).

I initially had the same problem that you did, with a couple players trying to join in action that they weren't at.

I solved the problem by printing out business cards for each character, and to join a group the player had to put the character's card in one group or another.

If they wanted to swap, perhaps one of the people who went to the spa got bored with that and they went to the bar, they moved their card. This could not happen once the action started. Though if the characters heard about the action (hey, that spa on the news is where our friends are) they could start moving in that direction, but it usually took time to do this (teleport not being a thing in my worlds, normally). And of course the group from the bar would be outside the spa when they got their and have to fgure out a way to get in.

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