evilbob
Explorer
TL;aint-gonna-read:
Anyone know of ANY co-op/RPG, story/character-drive game out there (even a board game) that can cater to 8-10 players? Or is it impossible that a game where at best you get 10% of the interaction time, everyone can remain engaged?
A brief history:
We've been gaming for over a decade, and over the last few years been fortunate enough to add friends and gotten much larger. We've also shifted over time from D&D (all versions) to Vampire the Masquerade to the D&D-lite splinters (Numenara, 13th Age, etc.) and have even made up our own entire game systems - but the gradual trend has been away from hard core, crunchy, time-consuming games (D&D, Pathfinder) and toward much more fast-paced, rules-lite games, partially to maximize engagement. In sum: our latest is a home-brew Powered by the Apocalypse game, which we love - and barely holds together with 8 or 9 folks. But even something where turns (we've resorted to turns) take seconds instead of 5-10 minutes, it's still difficult to keep that many people engaged, participating, and keeping up. Also: not everyone can come every time, so we have anywhere from 100% to 50% attendance from each person, although we rarely fall below 7 people. So flexibility is also helpful.
At this point it seems like an insurmountable logistics problem: how do you even hold a 10-person work meeting and keep them engaged and contributing the entire time? Is it something that can happen? Or are we working against a natural group limit of human beings?
We've already thought of:
We like games like Cards Against Humanity, which has no upper bound on player limit - they are great fun but aren't really about anything; we want more than what I would (not derisively) call a party game. We fell into Zombicide for a long while, and that was great: it easily goes up to 8 people. But it has run its course. We're not interested in slimming down the group. Also we're not into vs. games (co-op or DM-led tabletop RPG preferred).
Another suggestion we haven't tried yet is trying having 2 people play a single character: we could match people who don't often show up on the same night, which solves some attendance and story issues, and it gives the natural, constant side-conversations a channel, instead of letting them conflagrate spontaneously. But it has its own drawbacks, not the least of which is characters that seem to have split personalities (although baking that into character creation could be a great seed for a campaign!) and people can fall behind even more easily.
So I am also trying to crowdsource a solution: does anyone know of a game that still works with 8-10 people? Just about everything I've seen is built to run with 3-6 players, and I'm wondering if this may be for a larger reason than simply marketing.
Quick edit: In case this wasn't clear, something like the Pathfinder card game or Gloomhaven is not going to work for our group either; too crunchy. (There's nothing wrong with these games or anything else I've listed! They're just not something that matches our group.)
Anyone know of ANY co-op/RPG, story/character-drive game out there (even a board game) that can cater to 8-10 players? Or is it impossible that a game where at best you get 10% of the interaction time, everyone can remain engaged?
A brief history:
We've been gaming for over a decade, and over the last few years been fortunate enough to add friends and gotten much larger. We've also shifted over time from D&D (all versions) to Vampire the Masquerade to the D&D-lite splinters (Numenara, 13th Age, etc.) and have even made up our own entire game systems - but the gradual trend has been away from hard core, crunchy, time-consuming games (D&D, Pathfinder) and toward much more fast-paced, rules-lite games, partially to maximize engagement. In sum: our latest is a home-brew Powered by the Apocalypse game, which we love - and barely holds together with 8 or 9 folks. But even something where turns (we've resorted to turns) take seconds instead of 5-10 minutes, it's still difficult to keep that many people engaged, participating, and keeping up. Also: not everyone can come every time, so we have anywhere from 100% to 50% attendance from each person, although we rarely fall below 7 people. So flexibility is also helpful.
At this point it seems like an insurmountable logistics problem: how do you even hold a 10-person work meeting and keep them engaged and contributing the entire time? Is it something that can happen? Or are we working against a natural group limit of human beings?
We've already thought of:
We like games like Cards Against Humanity, which has no upper bound on player limit - they are great fun but aren't really about anything; we want more than what I would (not derisively) call a party game. We fell into Zombicide for a long while, and that was great: it easily goes up to 8 people. But it has run its course. We're not interested in slimming down the group. Also we're not into vs. games (co-op or DM-led tabletop RPG preferred).
Another suggestion we haven't tried yet is trying having 2 people play a single character: we could match people who don't often show up on the same night, which solves some attendance and story issues, and it gives the natural, constant side-conversations a channel, instead of letting them conflagrate spontaneously. But it has its own drawbacks, not the least of which is characters that seem to have split personalities (although baking that into character creation could be a great seed for a campaign!) and people can fall behind even more easily.
So I am also trying to crowdsource a solution: does anyone know of a game that still works with 8-10 people? Just about everything I've seen is built to run with 3-6 players, and I'm wondering if this may be for a larger reason than simply marketing.
Quick edit: In case this wasn't clear, something like the Pathfinder card game or Gloomhaven is not going to work for our group either; too crunchy. (There's nothing wrong with these games or anything else I've listed! They're just not something that matches our group.)
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