Over the last 30 years (sheesh!) of gaming, I have found that story telling often requires characters to work separately of each other, rather than operating as a single unit to achieve a goal.  For instance, in most dungeon crawls, the characters operate as a “fire team”, if you will, each bring some tactical advantage to the exploration, a fight, etc.  However, in an espionage game, it is not always advantageous to have 4-6 people attended an opera to make contact with an agent, or to sneak into a building to crack a safe…  You have a character or two doing one thing, while others are either waiting, or doing something else.

This can be tricky for a GM.  Some groups are adult enough to realize they aren’t going to get to monopolize time in a game session, or that their character might be a major player in that particular adventure.  As with movies or TV, the trick here is to cut back and forth between the characters, to heighten the drama, and give people play time.

In the case of the above:  the team needs to break into a building to steal something.  The team has one person with safecracking skills (’cause there’s always a thief character, I find), but the rest are mostly special forces types.  The thief, for stealh’s sake, as well as deniability, is operating alone in the high rise in question.  One of the team might be the wheelman, ready to make a getaway.  One might be doing countersurveillance, watching for security or police response so that they can warn the primary.  One might be handling the infil/exfiltration or the building — say with rappelling gear.  they are in charge of the ropes, making sure to belay the primary when they come out of the high rise window to scale down the building.  A common bit here would be the hacker taking over security systems to disguise the thief’s actions.

You cut back and forth between the people.  The thief goes in from the roof, say, rappelling down to the target floor window and cutting through to an unoccupied office.  The belaying man is handling the ropes, making sure the thief doesn’t overshoot, etc.  Maybe he has a close call with a bird; this effects the thief.  Once the thief is in, however, the belaying man is not really necessary.  One trick here is have them on radios to talk to each other, another — if they can’t communicate — is bump up the stress level.  Have the other characters get antsy as time goes on (it’ll play into the players’ desire to do something…)  Maybe someone decides to crash the party and check on the thief, alerting security in the process.

For the guys in the car or doing surveillance, throw them a few red herrings.  A stray guard or police car looks way too interested in the car parked in the alley.  How do they get out of it?  If the thief trips an alarm or is otherwise found out, how do they support the thief?

As with a movie, you cut back and forth between the primary (the thief) and the others.  One of the best ways to do this is bring up a problem.  The thief finds the safe isn’t the right one; they’re going to need more time.  Or a security feature is different than they expected.  If they’re using a hacker, they trip up and alert a sysadmin, so he’s busy disguising himself or fighting for control of the system, rather than protecting the thief.

There is a beat to these scenes in a movie.  The thief finds out there’s a problem or the hacker screws up.  Once they know there’s a problem, go to someone else on the team.  It gives the thief or hacker a moment to think through their problem, while giving the other people time.  Say a cop car stops to harass the wheelman — what does he do?  Cut to the over watch — does he aid the guy in the car, or hold his position?  Cut to: the hacker does what he needs to solve his particular problem.  Cut to: the thief can do their bit.  The safe is open…where’s the McGuffin their after?  The car guy talks his way out/kills the cop/gets pulled out of the car for an interview…does he make the cop suspicious, or pull some smooth talking?  Or does the over watch get his attention?

The trick is at each cut to leave the character in question with a heightened sense of danger. Each problem adds to the others’ problems.  If the thief succeeds but the hacker screws up, they might be identified.  If the getaway driver is arrested or forced to move on, does that mean the guy doing over watch is involved in a holding action when they are bugging out?  What if the belaying guy screws up and the thief, or he, is injured?  Each person’s problem is the team’s problem, but only one or two of them can do anything about it.  This heightens tension and makes everyone an important party of the action.

Another thing when having to split the attention, don’t overengineer the problems for the team.  You need to keep the pace up, so that everyone is interested in the action.