There Is Only the Adventurer Class

[Foxwarrior]

Ah, but then people are likely to pick which endpoint appeals most to them, and any two people who pick the same endpoint will have the same no longer unique character.

[Korwin]

3.X D&D is a decent example of role protection in theory, while being a fairly terrible one in practice. The idea is that the various classes match to something like: primary combatant; healer; support combatant/skill monkey; ranged blaster/magic monkey.

In practice that doesn't happen because the classes are terribly unbalanced and above a very low level point the standard tactical combat assumptions around which the game was built break down and full casters proceed to acquire all possible roles.

In other words, it sounds like D&D has in theory good role protection.
But in practice it does not deliver. If it even could deliver is another open question.

2e AD&D actually had much better role protection that 3.X does, largely because certain classes had essential abilities that other classes simply were not allowed to have - like thief skills.

And this raises the question if (A)D&D style role protection is even desirable in theory.
Do we really want only one character in the group who is able to sneak, or should the whole party be able to do that?
(In practice, often nobody in the party is able to sneak, because nobody wants to be the one who is away alone and found out if sneaking.)
Do we really want only one character who is able to talk to NPC's, or should the whole party be able to do that?

I get the goal of different/diverse characters in the party, I don't think the role protection as done by D&D is an good solution (even in theory) to that.

[Jason]

Do we really want only one character in the group who is able to sneak, or should the whole party be able to do that?
(In practice, often nobody in the party is able to sneak, because nobody wants to be the one who is away alone and found out if sneaking.)
Do we really want only one character who is able to talk to NPC's, or should the whole party be able to do that?

The question boils down to a few factors:

1) Is the task short or long?
If it's a task done in a few moments (like lockpicking), there is no need for more than one character at a time to be proficient with it. It doesn't bog down the game, while serving as a unique characteristic for the acting character.
If the task takes several actions over a prolonged period of time (like the matrix in shadowrun) then the entire group should be able to participate (or the concept scrapped/reworked as a whole)

2) Is the task relevant for group activities?
If it is a task, that a group needs to undertake in unity (like sneaking past a dragon or sailing a boat), then each character should be able to participate and each group member should have access to the relevant skills. A way to circumvent the bored clone syndrome would be to provide different sub-tasks to accomplish like steering the ship, setting the sails, manning the cannons, navigating the course or even coordinating via command. It's easy to fall into a trap here, though, where some tasks are more fun than others (like gunnery vs. sail setting). In the end, in prolongued group activities, each player should have the ability to contribute in a way that is fun for them.
In short group activities (like sneaking past a guard or climbing over a wall), it doesn't matter as much, of everyone uses the same skill (see point 1)

I get the goal of different/diverse characters in the party, I don't think the role protection as done by D&D is an good solution (even in theory) to that.

I think D&D does a horrbile job of it.

[Korwin]

So an better role protection System would be:
- everyone has an different role in an fight.
- everyone has an different role in an social Encounter
- everyone has an way to sneak
- etc.

Every class needs an entry for those situations,
there shall be no class, whose roll (protection) is, can't participate in this situation.

[Jason]

So an better role protection System would be:
- everyone has an different role in an fight.
- everyone has an different role in an social Encounter
- everyone has an way to sneak
- etc.

Every class needs an entry for those situations,
there shall be no class, whose roll (protection) is, can't participate in this situation.

I'd pretty much agree with that, although I can't see a lot of variations for sneaking. They either notice you, or they dont, so in my book it boils down to:

- Invisibility
- Stealth
- Camouflage
- Illusion

Out of which Invisibility and illusion can pretty much be considered the same.

[Harshax]

I'd pretty much agree with that, although I can't see a lot of variations for sneaking. They either notice you, or they dont, so in my book it boils down to:

- Invisibility
- Stealth
- Camouflage
- Illusion

Out of which Invisibility and illusion can pretty much be considered the same.

The stealth mini-game can involve a number of alternate ways to achieve success. Each is not suitable in all situations and when illustrated, provide perfect examples of unique ways to do the same activity:
Redirection/Distraction - This is when a PC does something to distract guards, allowing others to pass unnoticed. Usually this tactic prevents the PC from continuing on to the next objective, since the PC burns their own attempt to sneak so another may succeed, requiring them to find a completely alternate way around.
Disguse - This is when the PC is trying to hide in plain sight and fit into the crowd, without interacting with the antagonists.
Bluff - This is when the PC simply lies his way through an encounter. Again, another tactic that isn't suitable for every type of stealth objective. Bluff might add to the DC of the stealth attempt if the player is also trying to distract guards, so others can sneak past.
Hide in Shadows/Move Silently - Well covered by all your examples.

[Mechalich]

Regarding stealth, it shouldn't necessarily be that everyone has a way to sneak - because let's face it a huge quantity of character concepts for just about any game aren't going to be squeezed into the 'sneaky' space without some really serious cheese - but that characters who do sneak should have abilities tied to their sneakiness that can be used to benefit other characters directly. In D&D the character who has the power to make the rest of the party stealthy isn't the rogue, it's the wizard, and that massively reduces the utility of the rogue's stealthy abilities.

Being stealthy as a single character isn't that helpful unless the stealth related ability suite provides the ability for the entire party to pass all stealth-related challenges.

[Jason]

Being stealthy as a single character isn't that helpful unless the stealth related ability suite provides the ability for the entire party to pass all stealth-related challenges.

^That! There are a few tasks and actions that require an entire group to perform successfully. Climbing comes to mind, swimming to cross a river, jump to clear a chasm or the the aforementioned stealth. And that by no means exhausts the list of such actions.
Of course you can add supportive elements as character abilities, but in the end they will usually just serves as either a modifer for the task or a way to split the party by design. The latter should be avoided at all costs.

If the party wants to split up on their own, fine. But if the only way for a character to participate in the task challenge requires him to remain seperated afterwards, the system needs a major revision.

[Username17]

Regarding stealth, it shouldn't necessarily be that everyone has a way to sneak - because let's face it a huge quantity of character concepts for just about any game aren't going to be squeezed into the 'sneaky' space without some really serious cheese

Wrong. An RPG is constrained to be about small groups of protagonists. As such, it always has to be telling stories of small groups against the opposition. If the opposition can go up to "Dark Lord" (and in all genres, it can), then the protagonists will have to sneak sometimes. It's just not fucking optional.

If your character concept cannot sneak around to avoid the Dark Lord's patrols, then your character concept is one of those things like "embittered loner" or "most powerful character" that is simply not appropriate for a cooperative storytelling game. You need to steal the Silmarils, or escape the Death Star, or kill the Duke, or whatever. You need to sneak. It's not fucking optional.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

While turning this into a stealth thread is perhaps not the best idea...

Stealth cannot and should not be an exclusive and separate minigame. Like everything else it needs thorough integration to your main game. And like everything else with integration comes balance and opportunity. Stealth isn't a thing that one guy does on his own while others do nothing, it's one of the things that one guy (or more) does as part of combat, as part of infiltrating defenses and finding favorable positioning before combat starts, as part of setting up for attacks IN combat, as part of evading attacks etc...

And when whole groups of characters with unknown skill sets need to sneak there need to be ways that even an unskilled non-sneaker can reach some minimal level of competency. Contextual modifiers for choosing the right places to sneak in and the right ways to perform sneaking need to be good enough to pass muster, iterative probability needs to be accounted for or kulled.

The biggest obstacle of traditional systems (and to some extent traditional game play behaviors independent of the systems themselves) is that ultimately stealth success for a party is too often defined by the dead weight bumbling buffoons that due to long term character build factors cannot successfully sneak in almost any context rather than being defined by the quality of the stealth experts you bring and their ability to guide the group around detection threats.

[Mechalich]

Wrong. An RPG is constrained to be about small groups of protagonists. As such, it always has to be telling stories of small groups against the opposition. If the opposition can go up to "Dark Lord" (and in all genres, it can), then the protagonists will have to sneak sometimes. It's just not fucking optional.

If your character concept cannot sneak around to avoid the Dark Lord's patrols, then your character concept is one of those things like "embittered loner" or "most powerful character" that is simply not appropriate for a cooperative storytelling game. You need to steal the Silmarils, or escape the Death Star, or kill the Duke, or whatever. You need to sneak. It's not fucking optional.

-Username17

Stories about small groups against the opposition in which all members of said group are stealthy are quite rare, and tend to be Rainbow Six style stories where the group members are indeed carbon copy military personnel with 90+% of their skills in common and limited differentiation. If everyone has to be able to participate in not only stealth scenarios but also any other possible variant mission objective then those kind of characters become the one kind possible and you're suddenly playing Call of Duty. The more abilities you mandate for all characters the more limited the character development play space becomes. Now that's certainly a perfectly fine objective for some games. If you are making Rainbow Six the TTRPG then all possible builds do need to meet some minimal threshold for a whole bunch of skills - stealth, explosives use, marksmanship, athletics, first aid, etc. That's okay, but that's very narrow, and the 'everyone needs stealth' argument essential says that all designs must be narrow. I don't think that's true, though I'll readily agree that many game setups could benefit from a much narrowed design approach.

Characters absolutely do need options in RPGs to achieve objectives in the face of a much more potent enemy when straightforward force is not available. Stealth is one such option, but it is not the only option and it need not be available to all persons.

Take the Death Star escape example you gave. In that situation the only character who's sneaking is Obi-Wan (and he's doing it by going off by himself). Han, Luke, Chewie and the droids are all moving about openly, they are just engaged in deception. That example also gives a good example of how the stealth capabilities of one character can be extended over the whole party: Han's smuggling compartments can hide everyone, despite the complete lack of stealth skills by other members of the group. That's probably an example of how stealth ought to work - when necessary the stealthy character needs to be able to produce stealthy outcomes for those who are not.

The lone sneaky guy archetype doesn't work at tabletop not because of problems with sneaking, but because of problems with 'lone.' Don't split the party means that the things the rogue is supposed to do in game wreck the game, not even because they don't work, but because everyone else has gone to play smash brothers. So instead the stealth character needs some method to provide stealth options for the rest of the party. In some games this is something simple like extending your cloaking field to cover everyone else for a few critical seconds, other systems may be more complex.

[Username17]

Stories about small groups against the opposition in which all members of said group are stealthy are quite rare, and tend to be Rainbow Six style stories where the group members are indeed carbon copy military personnel with 90+% of their skills in common and limited differentiation.

First of all, you're wrong. Secondly, even if you were right, a Dungeon Exploration Party is very much a Rainbow Six style story.

An RPG is an ensemble cast story in which the entire ensemble pretty much stays in a group the entire story. That means that it's not like Star Trek where some characters stay behind on the ship while others go on away missions, nor is it like Star Gate where some characters stay at the base while others run around stabbing fools.

There are missions. Everyone goes on those missions. The fucking end. Everyone is one of the Fellowship, no one is a character who stays back at Rivendell. Everyone goes out into the woods and has to sneak past the Nazguls. Everyone goes into the dark castle, no one stays behind in the camp.

If you think you can find an example of an ensemble cast adventure story where one of the characters can't effectively sneak, I can fucking guaranty that the example doesn't apply to RPGs. There is simply no way to get around the basic requirement that every single member of every single RPG adventuring party has to be able to sneak. No way at all.

-Username17

[Mechalich]

Secondly, even if you were right, a Dungeon Exploration Party is very much a Rainbow Six style story.

Okay, sure, I'll agree with that. However not all, or even most, RPG stories are going to be structured that way.

An RPG is an ensemble cast story in which the entire ensemble pretty much stays in a group the entire story. That means that it's not like Star Trek where some characters stay behind on the ship while others go on away missions, nor is it like Star Gate where some characters stay at the base while others run around stabbing fools.

Actually it totally can run like Star Trek were some characters stay behind on the ship - because it is totally to have, just like in Star Trek, characters who remain on the ship to be constantly aware of what is happening on the mission and to be in contact and contributing to that mission. Picard and Beverly Crusher only join away teams very rarely, but they were involved in the majority of those missions.

Telepresence is absolutely a thing you can do in certain types of games. It doesn't happen much in fantasy games because the tropes don't support it well, but it is a thing. Heck, science fiction games have gone to the point where you can play a character who doesn't have a physical body at all.

There are missions. Everyone goes on those missions. The fucking end. Everyone is one of the Fellowship, no one is a character who stays back at Rivendell. Everyone goes out into the woods and has to sneak past the Nazguls. Everyone goes into the dark castle, no one stays behind in the camp.

The Fellowship breaks up. The characters in the Fellowship don't all go on the same missions. The missions Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli go on do not involve much in the way of sneaking, and Gimli, at least, isn't much in the stealth department. Neither is Boromir, for that matter.

No one stays in Rivendell, but characters do, at various points, break up the group in new ways. Merry stays in Rohan while Pippin rides off with Gandalf.

Anyway, everyone goes on all the missions in TTRPG because you're not allowed to split the party - which is a metagame concern. 'Don't split the party' is among the biggest storytelling limitations on RPGs, to the point that pretty much anyone who writes a story based off RPG rules splits the party all the fucking time. OOTS titled a book Don't Split the Party, and yet still does it constantly. Ensemble stories where the entire main cast starts in one group and stays in that group throughout are incredibly rare, because storytelling rarely accommodates such strict limitations.

The problem with splitting the party is not even that it's not part of ensemble storytelling - ensemble doesn't mean everyone is participating equally all the time. It's that people generally suck and in particular are impatient and that asking someone to wait for more than about 5 minutes rips the game apart.

If you think you can find an example of an ensemble cast adventure story where one of the characters can't effectively sneak, I can fucking guaranty that the example doesn't apply to RPGs. There is simply no way to get around the basic requirement that every single member of every single RPG adventuring party has to be able to sneak. No way at all.

All games are going to have some combination of required core competencies and optional secondary specializations. The percentage of a character's abilities that are required versus optional is going to vary a lot.

The claim that sneaking is a required ability for all characters in 100% of all possible RPG scenarios is an extremely strong claim. Heck it is entirely possible to construct a universe in which stealth is irrelevant and therefore no one can sneak. Here's one of the top of my head: a group of space fighter pilots in a squadron that adheres to the Hard SF reality that there is no stealth in space.

Honestly, it is difficult to claim that any particular ability is required of all characters in all possible ensemble cast adventure stories. Social capability certainly isn't, combat certainly isn't. Education or knowledge certainly isn't.

If you want to say that some minimum of stealth capability is required of all characters in fantasy dungeon crawlers, that's something I'd agree with. The primary required competency presented for D&D is combat capability, but the idea that an 'adventurer' character requires a considerably larger set of core abilities - including but not limited to stealth - than D&D rules require a character to take is absolutely one I agree with.

[maglag]

There are missions. Everyone goes on those missions. The fucking end. Everyone is one of the Fellowship, no one is a character who stays back at Rivendell. Everyone goes out into the woods and has to sneak past the Nazguls. Everyone goes into the dark castle, no one stays behind in the camp.

The Fellowship breaks up. The characters in the Fellowship don't all go on the same missions. The missions Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli go on do not involve much in the way of sneaking, and Gimli, at least, isn't much in the stealth department. Neither is Boromir, for that matter.

Mines of Moria. Everyody had to be stealthy there.

Then it's one of the hobbits, not the armored dwarf or human fighter that ends up screwing a stealth check.

The problem with splitting the party is not even that it's not part of ensemble storytelling - ensemble doesn't mean everyone is participating equally all the time. It's that people generally suck and in particular are impatient and that asking someone to wait for more than about 5 minutes rips the game apart.

When you're the DM, coordinating two different sets of enviroments/NPCs and constantly jumping between them every few minutes is drastically harder than focusing on one at a time.

And then what if one of the party splits gets into combat and the other doesn't? You're no longer talking about half the players waiting for 5 minutes, you're talking about waiting for 50.

Oots is a story, not a rpg. Rich can wait days/weeks/months before jumping between parallel plotlines. In an actual tabletop enviroment, that's not really possible.

[spongeknight]

There is simply no way to get around the basic requirement that every single member of every single RPG adventuring party has to be able to sneak. No way at all.

-Username17

What the actual fuck? The most popular RPG has spent thirty years and more than five editions not allowing the majority of its character archetypes to sneak, so this sentiment is just bizarre. The most popular version of D&D had, in its Player's Handbook, 4 classes that could always sneak (bard, monk, ranger, rogue), 3 classes that can sneak at mid levels (druid, sorcerer, wizard) and 4 classes that can never successfully sneak (barbarian, cleric, fighter, paladin). And that ratio only gets worse as splat books hit the table. We've been telling stories for longer than anyone on the Den has been alive without the ability of everyone to sneak, and that doesn't look to be changing anytime soon, so you're just flat wrong here. I mean, I wouldn't object to a game that gave every character archetype the ability to sneak, but it's demonstrably not necessary.

[Whipstitch]

What the actual fuck? The most popular RPG has spent thirty years and more than five editions not allowing the majority of its character archetypes to sneak, so this sentiment is just bizarre.

It's really not weird. Yes, you can demonstrably make a D&D party where most pcs are pretty hopeless when it comes to stealth. The real argument is simply whether that's a good thing or not and many Denners see it as a problem. As has been mentioned, players are often loathe to split the party and sending the rogue a meaningful distance ahead is frankly not all that useful given that it's an excellent way to get eaten by landsharks. So if you don't want stealthy tactics to be quietly marginalized then it's a good idea to make the generic adventurer competent enough at stealth that they can at least case the area when conditions are favorable--and they should be favorable pretty often if you have someone in the party throwing resources at improving their stealth abilities. At the minimum such an adventurer should be able to act as a tent pole that raises the overall competence of the group so that you can get up to shenanigans like Odysseus.

[Mechalich]

Mines of Moria. Everyody had to be stealthy there.

Then it's one of the hobbits, not the armored dwarf or human fighter that ends up screwing a stealth check.

If your standard for 'stealthy' is Boromir or Gimli in Moria, okay, but there's no evidence either of those characters, if you stated them up for D&D, would have points in move silently or hide. In fact, there's no real evidence for Pippin or Merry having them either.

Everyone being able to sneak presumably means that everyone has points in something stealth related marked on their character sheet.

When you're the DM, coordinating two different sets of enviroments/NPCs and constantly jumping between them every few minutes is drastically harder than focusing on one at a time.

And then what if one of the party splits gets into combat and the other doesn't? You're no longer talking about half the players waiting for 5 minutes, you're talking about waiting for 50.

Yeah, I know, and its a huge problem. I've dealt with split parties - it's doable in a modern setting if you finesse the communication difficulties to just assume everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing to the point of 'hear all, see all, make snarky comment on all.' Otherwise it's a mess and people get angry and may storm off.

The problem is, in almost any ensemble story you can imagine, events will occur where the obvious move is to split the group. Even when the people in the story are actual clones of each other (as in, for example, Orphan Black), this happens. I can't think of any ensemble story where the same group goes from start to finish without separating that isn't an on-rails video game, and even those tend to shift party members about from time to time (like in Xenosaga, where you keep getting stuck using Jr despite how annoying he is). Even extremely close knit groups like the Fantastic Four get split apart regularly.

Being unable to split the group in a functional way is probably the single largest limitation in TTRPG storytelling capabilities, and the OOTS reference was mostly to show that even stories that are attempting to emulate the TTRPG experience extremely closely end up violating this reality constantly to make their story work. The Dragonlance and FR novels do the same thing.

Personally I see there being a real debate between how much a system needs to bow down before this metagame concern. The majority of the most popular TTRPGs were designed with the explicit assumption that the party will be split when necessary (D&D and oWoD both tell GMs to do this at points in their GMing sections). That's a huge disconnect from how actual play really occurs.

Splitting the party should be minimized, but it can't be eliminated. One way to help insure minimization is to insure that core competencies are met by everyone in the party. If you're skulking through dungeons or ruins or whatever, then stealth absolutely qualifies, while something like Knowledge (Law), absolutely doesn't. On the other hand, if you're playing Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright the RPG then every character needs some legalese under their belt and stealth is pretty irrelevant.

[maglag]

Mines of Moria. Everyody had to be stealthy there.

Then it's one of the hobbits, not the armored dwarf or human fighter that ends up screwing a stealth check.

If your standard for 'stealthy' is Boromir or Gimli in Moria, okay, but there's no evidence either of those characters, if you stated them up for D&D, would have points in move silently or hide. In fact, there's no real evidence for Pippin or Merry having them either.

Everyone being able to sneak presumably means that everyone has points in something stealth related marked on their character sheet.

Merry and Pippin are halflings hobbits. That makes them naturally super stealthy as far as LotR is concerned, that's the main point of their race.

An earlier example is when they manage to sneak in and eavesdrop the motherfucking council at Rivendel. Top level NPCs, including some of the main named elves of the setting, discussing the future of their races, yet Merry and Pippin manage to remain close enough to hear without being heard until they reveal themselves.

Also ironically it's a strong exaple towards "don't split the party!". Quest to save the world, only the best allowed to form a small elite party, with the human ranger king, human prince, dwarf and elven champions, the ring bearer, a veteran wizard, and two countryside simpleton hobbits. Why? Because the two simpeton hobbits were part of the initial party.

Splitting the party should be minimized, but it can't be eliminated. One way to help insure minimization is to insure that core competencies are met by everyone in the party. If you're skulking through dungeons or ruins or whatever, then stealth absolutely qualifies, while something like Knowledge (Law), absolutely doesn't. On the other hand, if you're playing Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright the RPG then every character needs some legalese under their belt and stealth is pretty irrelevant.

I believe it's pretty safe to say that when we're talking RPG here we're talking about adventurers who go into dangerous situations and must use wits and violence to win glory and fortune.

If nothing else, Ace Attorney the Role Playing Game would kinda suck because the only role you're allowed to play to matter is a lawyer.

[Blade]

Even if there was a requirement for stealth (assuming that there's no way you can bluff past or use a distraction, which is already showing that your RPG has a stealth-focus), you can have non-stealthy characters as long as you have a way to turn them silent and invisible (such as invisibility potions/spells).

[Username17]

Actually it totally can run like Star Trek were some characters stay behind on the ship - because it is totally to have, just like in Star Trek, characters who remain on the ship to be constantly aware of what is happening on the mission and to be in contact and contributing to that mission. Picard and Beverly Crusher only join away teams very rarely, but they were involved in the majority of those missions.

You are wrong because in an RPG you do not split the party.

You could tell a science fiction or urban fantasy story where one of the ensemble protagonists stayed back in a lab researching a problem while some other characters snuck into an enemy facility. Indeed, such things exist, from Star Gate to Hell Boy. It's a common trope in mediums which are not RPGs.

But traditional Role Playing Games do not and can not work like that. Because you don't split the party. In order to have characters stay behind in the lab, you need to be doing some Troupe Play thing where the player playing Crusher plays some of the red shirts when the action is focused on the away team. Crusher staying behind is completely incompatible with the standard one player, one character model of RPGs.

-Username17

[Mechalich]

You are wrong because in an RPG you do not split the party.

Um, what? Are you actually claiming that splitting the party makes something not an RPG?

I have been a player in games where the party has split, both at GM instigated and player instigated splits. I have GM'd games where both such things have happened. In fact I don't think I have been in any long-term campaign where the party has not split up at least briefly at some point. At the very least, no game has perfect attendance and characters often sit out missions when their player isn't present.

Regardless, continual party cohesion is a tenant of RPG gameplay not RPG storytelling. There is absolutely nothing in the nature of the system that prevents it from happening - and in fact there are modules that explicitly instruct party-splitting to occur - it is not to be done because it creates problems out of game by forcing some of the players to wait and putting extra strain on the GM. Splitting the party is a thing you do not want to do when playing RPGs. It is something systems should be designed to minimize. But it is something that happens in actual RPG play, there are even cases where it actually improves gameplay flow like when the party splits up to run a couple of brief short scene encounters in different parts of the city or ship at the same time.

Honestly, I find the idea that RPGs can never split the party to be an incredibly unrealistic and unnecessary limitation on the storytelling capabilities of RPGs.

[Username17]

Um, what? Are you actually claiming that splitting the party makes something not an RPG?

No. I am saying that splitting the party is shit and that if your design calls for the party to be split on a regular basis that your design is shit.

For an example of this being shit, see: Shadowrun: Deckers.

So if you think you have a good example of an RPG where the party leaves people behind during stealth missions you are almost certainly wrong. Because RPGs which split the party suffer for it.

Obvious caveat: yes, if you're going to do some sort of troupe based play deal where players play different characters in different scenes it is entirely reasonable for players to have characters in their stables that can't sneak or can't enter dungeons or can't leave the water or in some other important ways can't accompany the rest of the team on important missions. But as long as the players get one character each, that shit is intolerable.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

It is something systems should be designed to minimize.

Actually in the case of my own work I designed my system to encourage party splits and facilitate the administration of splits. Sort of.

There is nothing inherently bad about splitting the party. Traditional RPGs just have very specific hurdles associated with their rules systems (and sometimes just with shitty inflexible game play conventions) that prevent it.
1) They have no reasons or rewards for splitting. Going on your own ONLY results in fighting the same encounters without assistance.
2) They overly reward ganging up and focus fire. So of course reducing the number of player targets and the number of players that can focus fire together on an enemy at once is MASSIVELY punished.
3) Lack of integration and compatibility of various "minigames" means that if split players are engaging in different TYPES of actions resolution becomes a big hand wavy mess of incompatible time scales and other inconsistent needlessly complex bullshit as everyone interacts with pointlessly different and exclusionary rules sets for no reason.

All of these things at least within some contexts and scales are obstacles that CAN be overcome with your rules set and even GMing technique IF you decide to. And you probably should.

[Mask_De_H]

Mechalich, you can say I like Bumblebee Man on a solipsist kick; that doesn't make your experiences total. Although if you wanna play it like that, I have seen, heard, ran and played in many games where party splits led to acrimony, boredom, player resentment and fucking off to get drunk.

It is possible to have a player character go off and do their own thing/series of things without completely disconnecting them from the rest of the party (the party split) if your resolution system for said things is fast enough.

[Occluded Sun]

LotR is a really awful example. The two hobbits are taken, even though it's explicitly noted that any rational examination concludes that they should be left behind, because the decisionmakers believe there's a guiding intelligence warping fate, and therefore they choose to ignore 'wisdom' and trust in the power of friendship.

And the breaking of stealth in Moria looks like a clear screwup. But like similar events in The Hobbit, good outcomes result that are only possible because of the particular way events went.

In short: Tolkien's stories include active divine intervention in a way that no GM could plausibly manage, and they're terrible models for RPG design.