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

[Aiden_Keller_]

Also, we trnd to let missing players dedignate a second - a player who agrees to run their pc along with his own.

Cuts down on gm workload.

I have now edited my rules so that it reads like this...

Players will designate a ‘second’ player that will play their character in the event that they are unable to attend a session. The characters must be played 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’s character will not be leveled up until after they return.

Thank you for the advice.

 

[Sadras]

[MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION] how often do you play and would it not help to split the group?
I mean you could play the same adventure with the second group so as to alleviate the DM workload (if possible).

 

[Lanefan]

Biggest party and greatest number of players aren't always in synch here, as we allow players to run more than one PC at a time.

Biggest party (number of PC's) that I've DMed in anything longer than a 1-night wonder was 18 PCs run by 6 (or 7?) players for a 10-ish session adventure based on Ghost Tower of Inverness. This came about as I was running two parties on different nights at the time in the same setting/story, they merged for one adventure then split out again. I also once DMed a 16-PC party run by 7 players for a significantly long adventure, with 2 more players trying to get into the game; at the adventure's end (and much to my relief!) I split the campaign into two parties of 5 players and 4 players.

Greatest number of players I've ever DMed in an ongoing campaign is, I think, 9 at once - but that was only for a couple of sessions; the physical space here just can't handle that many players!

Most players I've ever DMed at once in any situation is 10; in a one-off gonzo "all star" game. Biggest game I've ever played in was 13 players, also a one-off all-star game but with a different DM.

 

[MechaPilot]

[MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION] how often do you play and would it not help to split the group?
I mean you could play the same adventure with the second group so as to alleviate the DM workload (if possible).

We used to play weekly, before the game went on hiatus. I anticipate returning to that schedule, barring any complications.

As for splitting the player group and running the same adventure for each, I don't see that as much of an option. If I were running a published adventure, I feel that suggestion would make more sense (though it runs into another complication, see the next paragraph). However, I'm running a homebrew adventure that I created (and am still working on completing) based off the consequences of decisions they made as a single group after arriving in my homebrew setting from FR.

Also, I believe a big part of the fun for my players is playing with the group of friends we've assembled. Splitting the group into two separate gaming groups before any further play would mean separating the group of friends, choosing which group deals with the consequences adventure (which, I feel, is important for them to get to play given the seriously bad decisions they've made, and their need for a chance to work their way out of the pit they've dug for themselves) and deciding which published adventure to run for the other group.

In short, I appreciate your suggestion, but the present preferences and circumstances of the group precludes taking your suggested course of action. But thanks for the suggestion.

 

[pogre]

In the old days, I often had 20+ show up at our mega dungeon sessions. I remember limiting the number of hirelings each character could have - aside from that I don't remember it being anything but a blast. Naturally, this was a different era with different expectations. No one asked "why are we going into the dungeon?"; the only question was "where is the dungeon?" I remember cancelling once because only five players could make it.

These days I run a large game by modern standards - nine players. However, some of the players are a few hours away and cannot make it every week - typically, I have seven at the table. I always push the action in my game - honestly, there are a lot of encounters per hour compared to most campaigns I hear about. It's not all combat, but it is certainly combat heavy.

Lots of encounters gives a chance for more spotlights in my experience.

 

[Henry]

The largest was a 13-person group I played in during the early 3.0 D&D era -- I did not envy that poor DM.

Largest group I've ever DMed for was maybe 8 people? It was a bit of a slog. Init tracker index cards helped immensely, it's why I still use that method to keep track of initiative at the table today.

I don't see a problem with your house rules; if anything, the one about rolling init once per session might be the thing a group rebels at. If so, maybe substitute a draw from a bunch of playing cards from 2 to A (one suit) around the table, and deal it each round, and let this be the init roll. SHould be pretty quick to pass around, and everyone has their init turn in front of them then.

 

[Fluerdemal]

I ran a regular campaign years ago during the 1E era that had... 8-9 players, with some of them also running henchmen in addition to their characters, plus a couple of regularly-appearing NPC's. I didn't do anything different with the larger group than I did for a smaller group. To this day I prefer larger groups - my current (on holiday hiatus) group is 5-6 players and I love one or two more.

I used to run BYOC games at GenCon (many, many years ago) that could have upwards of... 15-20 players..? I'd start a slot in the morning and run all day long, anyone that wanted to stick around was welcome to - I'd just figure out a way to add in the new players joined based on where the players were in the adventure.

D.

 

[Gavin O.]

I've been in a party of 14. We were a party of 10, which was already pretty slow, and then one of the players decided to invite 4 of his friends without telling the DM beforehand.

It ended up being the last session of that game.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In a long-running group of 12+ gamers, we occasionally had party sizes of 10. We had rotating DMs, too. The main trick was making sure we didn’t end a session where it was impossible/highly improbable that an absent player’s PC couldn’t be off on a side mission or that someone who showed up couldn’t be worked in somehow.

Sometimes, there was a lot of deus in our machina.

 

[Shiroiken]

I DMed a high level one-shot 2E game with 15 players. I was fairly new to 2E, but very familiar with the 1E adventure I was using. One guy convinced me to play a psionist from the new book, and I said fine... without actually looking up the rules for it. About a half hour into the game, said player decided it was time to kill the rest of the party. The next hour was spent running the combat where the psionist brutally killed the party using death screen (or something like that) and defended by inertial barrier (or something like that). The rest of the night was spent bitching about the player who lorded it over everyone else. I'm honestly surprised no one kicked his @$$. I've never allowed a psionist in any game I ran again.

As a player, I was in a 3E game with 9 players, 6 of which were regular. The other three were hit or miss, but they always came together or not at all. It was a strange setup, because 3 of us were mostly interested in the story and RP, while the other 3 were only interested in combat (one had a Nintendo hand-held he played on until combat started). Those were the 6 regulars, with the 3 irregulars usually enjoying a bit of both. The DM (best I've ever played under, and still one of my DMs) did an amazing job balancing story and combat, since he knew about the great divide between the table.