Largest Party Size you have ever Participated in/DM'd?

[Aiden_Keller_]

Greetings,

I am attempting to run a campaign that involves 10 players.

In order to help facilitate this I have a few rules in place...

I am mainly wondering what the biggest party anyone has ever participated in?

[FONT=&quot]D&D Rules:[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]If a player is unable to attend or will be late they will need to alert the DM.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Missing players will be played by the DM in accordance with how they have been played. They will receive a fair share of loot. If the party happens to accomplish something that would level a character up…any missing player will not be leveled up until after they return. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]An initiative roll will take place at the beginning of a session. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It will determine the initiative during that entire session.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Any time a discussion needs to take place between the entire party, the initiative roll will be in place. Each player will speak during their “turn” according to the initiative roll.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]While playing, you directly represent your character. If you say something aloud the DM will take it literally. This could result in natural consequences. For example…if you say aloud “I want to steal that crown…” while in front of the king, he will hear you and put you in the dungeons.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]During the first two sessions you will have a single retraction per session to help you out of the above situation.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]If you need to make side conversation have it away from the table. Otherwise the DM will find a way to incorporate that into the current situation…this will not be beneficial.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]If your character is currently not within hearing distance of another character who is interacting with the DM/story you are unable to discuss or offer suggestions for that character. If you do, your character will possibly be disciplined by having a disadvantage roll whenever the DM feels. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Pay attention to the battle as it unfolds, and use this time to plan the actions you will take on your turn. If your turn takes more than 6 seconds to tell the DM your initial action, the DM reserves the right to delay your action until later in the initiative roster. You will be able to take more than 6 seconds to explain/think through your actions.[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Keep an accurate count of your hit points and abilities. Everyone makes mistakes, but if you are caught cheating you will be disciplined, with penalties ranging from losing your current turn to suffering the last initiative turn for the remainder of the session or not being able to gain the benefits of a long rest during that session or other penalties that are up to the DM. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]No Metagame thinking is allowed and will be treated as cheating (see above).[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]DM makes final decisions.[/FONT]

 

[Morrus]

Blimey. 9 is the largest I've run for, and that was not easy

One bonus of a big group is that cancellations don't affect it so much. We tend to have missing players just disappear for the session.

You do sound very.... strict. I'm not sure I'd personally enjoy a session that strict so much, but of course each to their own.

 

[Aiden_Keller_]

That is what I was thinking!

I have been in several 6-8 groups and this is technically a 9 person group...a father is also using it to introduce his 3rd grade son how to play the game and will be 'technically' DMing his son...

 

[ccs]

12. It was a long slow evening.

 

[Aiden_Keller_]

Was that a one-shot or a continuous campaign?

 

[Richards]

I'm currently in the biggest ongoing campaign I've ever run at six players and myself. Although technically we had one session where my granddaughter (visiting us from out of state) played as well, so I did one 6-hour session with seven players.

Johnathan

 

[Nytmare]

I co-ran a one shot that was either 12 or 14 people. But it was two different tables in two different rooms that, if memory serves, had at most 7 or 8 at a table at a time.

I played in a particularly gonzo campaign around that same time that regularly had at least a dozen active players, but probably had upwards of 20 possible players. Hard coded into the campaign was the fact that if you didn't show up, you and anything you were carrying disappeared and people's memories of you grew foggy and indistinct.

As for your rules, I'd worry a little bit about maybe how draconian things might seem to your players. It's probably more that it's just not my style of DMing, but I'd be worried about souring people's expectations. The closest to your rules that I probably ever really ran with was having what we referred to as either The Ooc or The Conch (ala Lord of the Flies). It varied from game to game, but it was something big and noticeable and not otherwise important to the game (frequently in my games it was a giant ceramic skull mug) If you wanted to talk out of character, you needed the Conch. There wasn't a penalty or anything, it was just a player enforced rule to prevent people from eating up game time or side tracking things too much. In addition to that, if in-character arguing and bickering got to be too much or too noisy, you'd pass the Conch around. One person would start, every body else would pass it around and say what they wanted, and then it would go back to the first person again for a final argument.

The more players you have, the more play styles you're going to end up with. It was FAR too common in my RPGing hey days (and this was well before the advent of the smart phone to act as a diversion/distraction) to have the people at the table fully split between the players who wanted to act and role play and be the centers of attention, the players who were just itching for an excuse to get into a fight so that they could show off all their stats and numbers, the people who sat quietly off to the side maybe reading a newspaper or a book unless someone specifically called them to ask them what they were doing or what their character thought, the person who was also playing a board game at the other table and who'd run over between their turns.


[EDIT] Just remembered that I used to routinely run games of Paranoia that would almost always have upwards of 12 players at a time. I think the reason why our large games worked so well was because they weren't married to a battle map and an intricate combat system. I'm having trouble trying to imagine running a typical, modern, combat intensive RPG with more than 4 or 5 people. It's just not what I want out of my RPG time nowadays.

 

[Yaztromo]

I participated to a one-off session (that took a full weekend, almost night and day...) with three groups of six (or was it eight?) players each (starting in three different places and interacting with each other more and more closely, until the final confrontation) and four DMs (one for each group, plus one co-ordinator).
It was absolutely epic and memorable (including the final carnage), but these are things that can't be organized often, unfortunately...

 

[Blue]

I've run 12 at a convention, that was really tough. I really had to focus on keeping everything moving, there were a lot of compromises I made to that which didn't let me deliver as good as an experience as if I had fewer.

I've been run as part of 12 at a convention as well but it had two co-DMs. And we would recombine and split the party to take advantage of that. Actually, more than once becuase one time at the convention there was party vs. party where the DMs ended up combining for a fight between the different parties (it made sense and was done cool). That was probably 10-12 as well, and the fact that there was two DMs didn't help as much because we were all in the same place taking part in the same combat.

I've been part of 20+ when a friend who ran multiple Champions games would have his one a year big "crossover issue". (Think Avengers: Infinity War.) That was really cool for the RP and really, really, really horrible for anything that involved combat. (Champions combat is ALREADY slow and cumbersome.)

I'm part of a group of ... 9 players, though probably really 8. DM runs with at most 7, and if more than that show up, they are seated in order of seniority. Harsh but it's never come up - with that many players we're always down some enough that it's not a factor. If a player isn't their, their character isn't there. Zero processing cycles on them. Yes, it breaks the narrative a bit, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful.

If you are making people keep a single initiative roll for the night, I'd suggest you arrange seating the same so you can just go around the table.

BTW, your rule about group RP happening in initiative order I think will greatly slow things down, the opposite of what you need with many players. If you are worried about a few players hogging the discussion spotlight, tell them that and deal with it directly. But the natural flow of conversation is pretty quick. If you really want to do something, there's plenty of real-world-tested conversation methods to make sure it's orderly and everyone is heard.

 

[MechaPilot]

The group I currently DM for, the largest group I've been part of, is 8 players.

It's a real challenge to manage that many people. I don't mind a bit of frivolity and joking around the table, but keeping 8 people mostly on-task is rough. Our sessions typically run about 3-4 hours, and I'd say out of that time we probably get only 45 to 90 minutes of dedicated play.

It certainly doesn't help that two of my players are entirely new to the game; one of those players has a neurological problem that affects her memory, and we frequently have to remind her to roll the d20 to hit and then to roll damage on other dice if she hits. Most of the group is sufficiently patient with her, and she's a good friend who I like spending time with, but I get the feeling TTRPGs just aren't a good fit for her.

Another of my players (who has a bit of OCD and really wants a lot of information before deciding what to do to make optimal use of his turns) had before my game played only a single and heavily houseruled session of AD&D 2e many years ago. So, effectively, he's brand new to the game as well.

I have another player who is a power-gamer who likes to try to maximize group efficiency and effectiveness by trying to tell other people how to play their characters. "No, no, no. You should do _____." is one of the most common things out of his mouth when talking to other players; seconded only by "You have to realize, the thing about my character is _____." He also talks really fast, and it takes a lot of focus to keep up with what he's saying.

It's largely because of the last two players that I've had to get a battlemat, but also because an 8 player group going against monsters that can challenge them (meaning, generally, at least 6 foes, usually 12 or more) means a ton of positioning and threatened areas to track. While it's hard for me to track those things (and I've been doing this for 25+ years), it's near impossible for the newer players, and even I can't track them mentally well enough to answer all the OCD questions, or all the questions from the optimizer. Throw in some interesting, non-static, or exotic terrain in the encounter area (such as my Necrofungus), and even I'd be completely lost without the battlemap.

The group had to go on hiatus for a little while (the place we used to play at closed down), but it's starting back up this Saturday. I'm both excited about getting to run D&D again and nervous about having to manage all 8 players in a manner where we can hopefully get more time dedicated to actually playing the game. I mean, I like hanging out with them, but I can do that without having to do all the DM prep-work. So, if we're not spending at least half the time actually playing I kind of feel like I shouldn't have bothered to do all that prep work.