You’re probably still processing all that social action shit I dumped on you. It was dense; it was complicated. Take your time with it. But, above all, practice!
Speaking of…
If you’re looking for a decent way to practice your social parsing chops away from the table, take a suggestion from Frienemy of the Site and editor of the Quick and Dirty Dungeon Unofficial Angry Community Magazine, NoxAeturnus. He suggests parsing lines of dialogue from movies and shows while you watch. That’s a great idea though it does not replace actual practicing at actual games. And I advise you to be picky-choosy about what you watching given ninety percent of modern writers — especially those working for streaming services — can’t write for shit.
Anyway…
You need time to process and I’ve got a plane to catch. I’ve got some family business back in New York. So, let’s make today’s session quick and casual. One of you hit me with a question about the Action Queue and the Action Clock and answering it will let me talk about an advanced True Game Mastery skill that’s an absolute frigging game changer.
So, let’s talk about…
The Art of the Cutaway
Hello, bozos. I’m giving over today’s lesson to answer a question sent in by Aspiring True Game Master Sloth. The question hearkens back to all the crap I taught you a few months ago about Action Queues and Action Clocks. Remember that? Well, you’d damned well better because it’s a pretty fundamental encounter running tool since everyone’s using everyone all at once. Sloth’s question also pertains to the current topic du the jour, Social Actions. See, Sloth spotted a plot hole.
See, the Action Queue is how True Game Masters handle Everyone Doing Everything All At Once. It’s all about keeping a turn order outside combat. And it relies heavily on strict adherence to the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle. But, as I taught last week, when the Social Actions start, that Cycle goes out the window faster than a player who asks to play a gnome bard at my table. And that leaves you, the True Game Master, keeping up with chaos.
“But what do you do,” asked Sloth, “when you’ve got some characters steeped in social conflict while others are, at the same time, doing non-social things?”
How do you manage all the action when, say, two characters are distracting an NPC while two others are searching his office?
Well that, my clever little dumbasses, is when you must show your mastery of The Art of the Cutaway.
Meanwhile…
The Art of the Cutaway is not an advanced Game Mastering skill. Most Mere Game Executors eventually tumble onto it — out of pure necessity if nothing else. You can’t really run a game without it. But, in the hands of a True Game Master — one who mastered the Art of the Cutaway — it’s the difference between a pretty good game and an experience everyone remembers forever.
And that ain’t hyperbole. My longest-running group — we played regularly together for a decade — still remembers one session above all others and the Art of the Cutaway was at the heart of that climax.
But I digress…
The Art of the Cutaway doesn’t seem like much though. It’s just a Game Master saying shit like, “Ardrick, Cabe, and Danae are victorious over the goblins! Meanwhile… back at Octagon Alley, Beryllia enters the Ruptured Retort…” Which is really just a fancy way of saying, “Now, let’s shift the action over here for a bit.”
Bouncing Back and Forth
Enough About Spotlight Time
Spotlight Time refers to the amount of time each player’s character spends in the role of principal character. How much play time a player gets to take — or receive — actions. And too many Game Masters — and many selfish players — are utterly fucking obsessed with it.
Let me be clear: every player deserves a roughly equal opportunity to participate in the game. But that doesn’t mean every player’s going to get an exactly equal share of game minutes in the spotlight every session. Hell, not every player wants the same number of game minutes. So if you’re using this Cutaway shit to ensure exactly equal spotlight time — and if you’re counting minutes to do it — you’re doing it wrong.
Understand, this Spotlight Time thing isn’t a problem until it is. Until a player says, “I feel sidelined; this isn’t fun,” you’re managing shit fine. So don’t obsess. Second, some players are Spotlight Hogs who will take every minute you give them and then take more.
In the end, absolutely every player at a roleplaying game table must be able to wait quietly and patiently for their turn — and remain attentive — for a minimum of fifteen minutes a pop. Taking turns is something people learn in kindergarten. If you have a player who can’t pay quiet attention for fifteen minutes while not on camera, you have a problem player.
Obviously, whenever you’re dealing with a split party, you’re going to need Cutaways. When half the party’s fighting through the guard ogres while the other half is sneaking into the camp by the back way, Cutaways let you switch between them. In fact, the most basic kind of Cutaway is just a transition from the end of one scene to the start of another.
Say Ardrick, Cabe, and Danae are investigating a lead at a farm and get ambushed by goblins there. Meanwhile, Beryllia hangs back to cut a tavern-room deal with a shady magical practitioner. Once Team Combat’s left the last goblin dying in a pool of green blood, Beth can play her solo scene trading spell formulae with Headmaster Bulbus Bubblebutt.
The Cutaway is just a transition. It’s just you — the Game Master — saying, “And now, we’re going to follow this action over here for a bit.”
As I said, most Game Masters figure out pretty quickly they’ve got to do something to shift the focus — and the camera — when the party splits. And many eventually realize they don’t have to wait until a scene’s over to do the Cutaway.
Imagine the party’s hobnobbing at the duke’s ball when Cabe splits off to pull a little second-story burglary work. Cabe’s got to evade some guards, pick a lock, search a room, and then escape. You can play the whole Shindig Scene for an hour then cut to Cabe and play the whole Burglary Scene for another hour, but it’s better to bounce back and forth between the two.
So, first Cabe evades the guards in the upstairs hall. Then Ardrick pumps Duchess Vociferra for information. Then Cabe picks the lock on the study door. Then Danae charms Captain Boslington. Then Beryllia gets into an argument with Henly Wigglebotham and Ardrick has to drag her away. Then Cabe searches the study. And so on…
Most Scenes — by my correct definition — comprise multiple actions and encounters. So it’s easy to let one character or group finish one task and then Cutaway to another character or group in another Scene and another task or encounter.
The point is, whenever you shift your game’s focus from one scene or group or situation to another, you’re Cutting Away. You
wait until a Scene’s over to Cutaway or you can interweave two — or even more — Scenes.
Not Just for Party Splitting
It’s like this…
Smooth-brained Game Executors adhere strictly to the crappy, “Don’t split the party adage.” And their games suck.
Little-brained Game Executors let their parties split, but run each Scene to completion before Cutting Away.
Big-brained Game Executors and Neophyte True Game Masters interweave multiple Scenes by Cutting back and forth as tasks and actions play out.
Galaxy-brained True Game Masters — Masters of a Thousands Cuts — realize that everything is a Cutaway and so a Cutaway can go anywhere.
However amazing your Game Mastering chops, you can’t resolve more than one action at a time. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an attack, a sneak attempt, or a single line of dialogue, you can’t have more than one actor doing anything. Or rather, you can’t have more than one action on camera. Two healers can treat a person, four characters can hold a battering ram, but you still can’t show more than one action resolution at a time.
Every time you end an action — every time you Describe the Outcome and then Invite the Next Principle Player’s Character to Act — you’re Cutting Away. You’re pointing the game’s camera somewhere. It doesn’t matter where or when that next action is. It could be in the same room or a different room or in a different Scene or on a different continent or in a different timeline.
After every action, you can Cut Anywhere in Time or Space.
Bonkers though it sounds, you could theoretically run four completely different games in four different settings using four different systems at the same time. You can resolve a D&D action in Oerth for Adam, then a Fate action for Beth in the Dresden-verse, then a Starfinder action for Chris on Outpost Zed, and then a Call of Cthulhu action for Danielle at Miskatonic University.
You wouldn’t — especially for Beth — but you could.
And that, Sloth, is what you do when Ardrick and Danae are talking to Captain Cully at the crime scene while Cabe searches for clues and Beryllia translates the runic note the killer left behind. You do the same thing you’d do if they were in three different rooms or three different Scenes or three different games. You Cut.
Messy Action Clumps
The Antidote to “Don’t Split the Party”
“Don’t split the party.”
That’s what they say, right? Well they are stupid. There are lots of good reasons to split the party. And the best reason is because it makes the game better. Games with split parties — run by a True Game Master who’s mastered the Art of the Cutaway — are more dynamic, engaging, tense, and interesting than games where the party can’t even split up to take a crap. Players in such games actually get more spotlight time and are better able to pursue the occasional personal sidequest than when they’re forced to tag along on every task even when they’ve got nothing useful to contribute.
Unfortunately, the old adage — and WotC leaning into it with their hilarious disclaimers — and a drastic overstatement of the dangers has left players feeling like they’re not allowed to do it. So you have groups that won’t split up in town to tackle multiple tasks at once, you have scouts and trailblazers and assassins who won’t scout or blaze trails or assassinate, and you have groups that won’t come in two different doors to hit the enemy from both sides.
And that just sucks.
Now, as much as I strive to show you all these clean, sharp, clear structures secretly underlying roleplaying games — campaigns made of adventures made of encounters made of actions made of declarations and determinations and descriptions — and as important as it is for you to see things in that light, the reality ain’t always so cut and dry. Roleplaying games are analog things. They’re continuous. Actions and scenes and adventures flow into each other. The structure is there; but it’s a hazy pattern you need to stand well back to see. And you rarely get to stand well back because you’re running it from the inside.
My point is that sometimes, characters take strings of actions that lead seamlessly into one another. Consider Cabe opening a chest, for example. He approaches the chest; the GM describes it. Then he searches it for traps and the GM resolves that. Then Cabe tests the lid and the GM explains that it’s locked. So he picks the lock and the GM asks Chris to make a roll. Then he opens the chest and the GM tells him what he sees on top of the pile. And then, Cabe starts digging through the treasure and counting the coins.
The same is true of a conversation. A conversation is a string of Social Actions with a lot of non-action pleasantries and conversational nothings sprinkled liberally throughout.
Once you’re a Master of a Thousand Cuts — once you know Everything is a Cutaway — and once you recognize you can Cutaway to anything anytime you want, you recognize that you can Cut in the middle of complex tasks as easily as you can Cut when they’re done. Hypothetically, while Cabe is doing everything it takes to open a chest, you can interweave Ardrick’s conversation and whatever the hell Beryllia and Danae are up to. And vice versa.
Hell, you can even Cut in the middle of an action. This is precisely what building an Action Queue or Action Clock is all about. Seriously. I taught you how to insert Cutaways into individual actions already.
“Adam, declare your action! Okay, got it… but before I tell you how it turns out, let’s cut to Beth and see what Beryllia is doing in the meanwhile.”
Am I harping on this shit? Maybe. But I want you all to see — not just you, Sloth — that you already know how to do this shit. You’re already doing it. And whatever limits you think you’re laboring under are limits you’ve imposed on yourself. Inviting the Principal Character to Act is just a kind of a Cutaway. It doesn’t matter who you invite to act when or where they are or what game they’re playing.
You just have to say, “Meanwhile…”
Meanwhile…
The Art of the Cutaway is a game changer. Cutaways lead to more dynamic, more exciting play experiences. Moreover, they give the players more options to engage with the world. Cutaways let the players divide their resources between tasks or just tackle obstacles from several sides at once. It’s basically film editing — which is one of the three most important parts of film-making — except you have to do it in real-time and on the fly and you have no idea what’s coming next or what the end result’s supposed to look like.
As complex as that seems, I’ve already taught you how to do it. I taught you how to interrupt actions to build Action Queues and I taught you how to invite the principal character to act. All you need to know is that anyone, anywhere, in any timeline can be the next principal character and that you can hold an incomplete action on the queue as long as you want.
At this point, you just need to practice bouncing around. So hold actions on pause and “Meanwhile,” your way around the game. Split complex tasks up and interweave other actions. Suddenly halt conversations with a, “… but before you can respond to that, let’s see what Danae is up to over there.” And push your players to split up more. Give them too much to do and not enough time to do it.
But…
… as I wrap up, I find myself reflecting that there’s more to the Art of the Cutaway than just knowing that the feather is just a feather and the magic was in you all along. So, whereas I intended this to be a quick officer-hours-type lesson, I feel like I’m selling it short.
So, as I’m hurtled through the air by chemical propellants in a Tylenol-shaped steel tube trying desperately not to think of the ten thousand tiny mechanical, electrical, and human errors that can send me hurtling 30,000 feet to the ground to die in a fiery conflagration, I’ll have a notebook on my lap and see if I can’t come back with a more solid on lesson on how to Master the Thousand Cuts.
And now this trip’s a win-win for me. Either I survive, or I don’t have to figure out how to follow this shit up. And I don’t want to pray for.
A Quick Update and Postscript
Pursuant to my last update, I left town last week and flew home to deal with some personal and family shit. I’d written most of this lesson before I left and had intended to finish it up and post it while I was in New York. Several technical and personal problems got in the way. So, spoiler alert, I did not die in a fiery conflagration. I am alive and back at Angry Games HQ. And I have two more partial articles in the chamber to make good on my promise that I’d give you a full pile of content for September. So expect two more articles to land in the next three days. I did get some work done on my trip.
While things did get derailed, the fact that I do have enough to get articles out by the end of the month means nothing is spilling into October so I can deliver an article every Tuesday in October starting with October 10.
Thanks for your patience. Sorry for the short update tacked on to the article. And sorry I’m unable to record Proofreadalouds for these. I am doing my best to get back on task. I remain committed to the goals I outlined in my last update.
Thanks again Angry for answering this question at length! The idea that Everything is a Cutaway really blew my mind, especially when you pointed out that we’ve ALREADY been doing it to set up action queues. I had a bad habit of prolonging dialogue and delaying other actions as a result because I got sucked into the flow of conversation(as an NPC, eugh) and started blurting stuff out instead of parsing social actions and cutting away to important actions when appropriate. This and the last article have really illuminated the matter.
Hi, Angry, thanks for this article, which made me think of a problem I’m currently facing during sessions in Town.
How would you handle, in this back and forth bouncing from player to player, the ones who want to conceal their social interaction from other players because of “backstory secrets” they would like to keep, as I said, secret. I’m not talking of players trying not to allow the others to “metagame” upon their characters, which is a no-problem actually, I’m talking of the pleasure players seek in showing their characters to the other players when they think it’s the right time, and which causes unsatisfaction when the revelations are done with the GM timing, and not at the character player will.
I already know you solved this problem forbidding complex backstories, which Is precisely the origins of the problem, but, given that I already allowed some complex backstories and that my campagn is on going, how would you handle this scenario in online games, where moving to a different chat while leaving the others waiting in the main one would be terribile in a pacing point of view and would also encourage the same kind of selfish play I would like to, instead, discourage.
It’s okay for players to have some minor secrets in their past that they’re waiting for the right time to reveal. But too many such secrets just aren’t right for a group-based game like this. A player who creates a secret for their character should create a secret they fully intend for the party to discover. And ideally, to discover early.
If a player wants to hold a secret, I will be cagey and circumspect and refer obliquely to it — I have a dwarf refugee in my current game who’s tragic backstory isn’t something he’s ready to share with the party — but the price for that is the player doesn’t get to play with it on camera. I am not going to pause the game and pull people into side rooms or do extensive scenes by private chat or passed note. That is tremendously disruptive to the game. And it is not in the spirit of a party-based team game.
In short: players do not have the option of hiding their scenes from the other players. If they can’t play their scenes in front of each other, they can’t have their scenes.
Thank you for your reply. I understand.
I think I’ll be clear about this point when we’ll start with the second arc of the campaign after this summer break.
Until now the rule was that everything that happened at the tablet was common knowledge. Let’s say, if someone necessary wants to justify it, that it’s a given, and it’s implicit, that characters share what happened during the day the first time the join to the party again.
I had, but I don’t want to have anymore, long private discussions or private extra-sessions to handle secret things, as it’s too much extra work for me, so I think that I will simply state that I’ve no intentions to handle anything privately.
I think what’s most important is to be clear with the players from the beginning, so everyone has the right expectations about the game and everyone knows what are his choices. I like your suggestion, because it leaves to the player the choice to keep the secret or to develop their story, so none can complain. I think I’ll try it. Thanks again.
I suspect that “Don’t Split the Party” became entrenched during the 3E era of balanced encounters. If every encounter is meant to be fair when faced by the whole party, then bringing less then half the party would be problematic.
The real problem is PCs looking for a fight behind every corner and wanting to bring their full combat prowess to bear, even if they are peacefully engaged in town mode.
“Don’t split the party” is older than dirt. It was more something Game Masters admonished their players about. It’s because it was a pain in the ass to run a game for a split party. Unless you were running a solo, side game. Which is something that also used to happen a lot more.