Don't Split the Party

On August 4, 2013, I explained a few basic concepts about role-playing. Essentially, I said that a group of players get together, each one controlling one or more characters, and their characters get together to form an adventuring party. Since there are multiple adventures all working together on the same team, each character can afford to specialize in what they do. There are characters that specialize in healing, characters that do melee combat, character that focus on dealing lots of damage to the team's opponents, characters that provide useful, sometimes essential, magical effects, and characters who play a support role, basically just making everyone else better at what they do.

Because each member of the party is usually specialized in what they do, they can all run into a lot of trouble if they split away from each other in the middle of an adventure. The wizards won't be equipped to deal with the monsters the fighters usually protect them from, the fighters won't last long in combat without the healers keeping their health up, and the healers might be able to survive a fight against some monsters for a long time, but they had so little attack power that it's really just a matter of time until they run out of healing spells and the monsters finally finish them. Since every member of the party relies on every other member, they sometimes go to great lengths to make sure they stay together - while they're on an adventure, anyway.

Like an other adventurers, we typically need to stick together and help each other out, too. We each have different talents and skills. None of us could accomplish alone what we can all accomplish together. We need each other for help and support, so it's really unwise for any of us to distance ourselves from each other. And it's selfish, too. People count on us to help them, and we often need their help, too. We need to be there for them when they need us just as much as we sometimes need them. It's important for us to stick together, to be there for each other, to ask for help when we need it, and to willingly give help when asked.

Life is an adventure. In some ways, it's often a perilous one. If any of us are going to make it through this, we're going to have to do it together.