D&D 5E Help with 7 players

[ad_hoc]

Some others have given some good options. I am going to give you a darker one.

Drop one of your players from the game.

This is ultimately the correct answer.

My maximum limit is 5 players. More than that is a nightmare.

The only reason I even allow 5 players is that it is nice to have a back up if someone can't make it.

4 players is the sweet spot.

 

[jgsugden]

Try telling a non-linear story and giving players with an inactive PC another role that is more active..

When I have a PC that wants to have a side encounter and I don't want to make the entire group wait it out, I tell the player we'll circle back to it and then I'll roll a few dice, give them a slip of paper and we'll move ahead. Usually, the slip of paper gives them a couple obvious things they'd have learned during their side encounter. Sometimes - rarely - it is a fun change up, "The encounter went bad - now you're a vampire/doppelganger/illusion of yourself" - but I only introduce this type of change off screen if the player in question would enjoy seeing it and not be too worked up over it. Then, when there is a break (people going out to get food, bathroom break, session ends and some people leave), we go back and roleplay the encounter with the players and I both knowing how some parts of it will play out, but not necessarily all. Sometimes we just agree that there is no need to go back and roleplay it out.

However, that doesn't work for every splitting of the party. Sometimes, if the party splits up, I give monsters or NPCs to players to play while their PC is not present. If it is just a monster, I give them a side objective for the monster to try to meet to try to keep it interesting, "Renfro is wearing an amulet that is so shiny and you love shiny things... if there were some way to steal it and sneak away from the fight, you'd be a happy goblin."

Unfortunately, sometimes there is nothing you can do and you're going to end up with half the group waiting for the other half to wrap up an encounter. In these rare circumstances, I have a few 15 minute type board games out that the inactive players can amuse themselves with in the waiting period. Kingdomino, Lost Cities, and Blokus are all used for these situations.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I know you're probably locked in, but this is why I usually cap my personal games to 5 players. Enough to toss difficult challenges at but not too many to keep the spotlight from touching each of them for RP purposes.

For larger games I've found that if you have willing players, online methods of continuing RP play are an option. Email or forum or whatever. Lets you keep playing and often at a higher level of detail than if you were face to face as time is less of a concern.

 

[Wulffolk]

As others have said, smaller groups play better. In the case of your group I would follow some of the advice that people have been kind enough to offer in this thread until that story runs it's course, and then I would split the group in two. Groom one of the other players to try his hand at DMing, then each of you take 3 players and run your own games, maybe linked for cross-over potential.

I personally prefer to DM for 3 players, each controlling a Hero and a Sidekick. The Hero benefits from rolling 3d6 (replace one die with a 4) for their abilities, while the Sidekick rolls 2d6+4. That gives them 6 character's to handle tough challenges, while a specific 3 are usually the spotlight character's. This also helps avoid the situation of players getting left out if their character is incapacitated or the group splits. I usually encourage the use of one warrior character and one non-warrior character, with the player choosing which is the Hero, and for the player's Sidekick to be associated with another player's character rather than their own. That way when a party splits each player usually still has a character involved.

I do still enjoy running games for 4 players, or even 5, but anything more than 5 becomes burdensome. When I run games for 4-5 players I just go with the default of one character per player. 6 players is my absolute hard limit, and I make sure the player's understand going into it that they each will get less spotlight time because of it. The more players that I have to deal with the less personal my stories become. Once I hit 6 players it shifts much more towards just finding an excuse to set up the next combat encounter and playing D&D as a war-game.

 

[habahnow]

Now, that is what I do generally. In certain campaigns, like the city-based one I'm running now, I handle tasks in town via a town task system that breaks the basic tasks an adventurer might want to do in town into a mechanic that resolves quickly while providing some meaningful choices and outcomes. Much of these are based on downtime activities, more or less. I set some kind of limit on the number of tasks that can be performed per PC per day and make sure that Team Villain's agenda is on a timer, too. So it's like rounds of combat and just as quickly resolved. Of course, spending too much time on this kind of stuff, while beneficial, just means that the antagonists get further along with their plans and are that much stronger when the PCs face them. (The town tasks are also not worth XP whereas pursuing adventure and its inherent challenges is!)

What are these tasks of which you speak of? would you happen to have written rules about them? i need something like that in my game.

 

[Sadras]

I'm of a similar mind, but didn't want to say it.

For myself, I've got 8 players in my game, but only 5 PCs can adventure at one time. So the players decide among themselves who plays week to week. This takes me out of having to deal with scheduling which I hate and it means we hardly ever miss a session since we've always got at least 4 PCs (which is quorum for us). Basically as long as I can DM, there's a game.

This works well for you and makes much sense since you use the caravan system/base camp for dealing with Long Rests.

 

[iserith]

This works well for you and makes much sense since you use the caravan system/base camp for dealing with Long Rests.

Yeah, that was last campaign though. I'm doing it differently in my current campaign. It's chiefly city-based so as long as your character(s) is in the city, you can swap freely. If a set group is out of town, those players need to be present to continue the out-of-town adventure. If they can't be present, then we just focus on characters who are in the city. (Each player has at least two PCs.)

 

[iserith]

What are these tasks of which you speak of? would you happen to have written rules about them? i need something like that in my game.

I don't have it in any format that would be easy to post. But imagine the main things a character would do in town: Gather Info, Buy/Sell, Carouse, etc. Make a set task with default uncertainty for whatever fictional reason and a range of outcomes per ability check result (you get more the higher you roll). The downtime activities in the PHB, DMG, and XGtE are useful for ideas as to the structure.

Then I add some variations based on the location at which the task is performed. Some places are more expensive than others, but offer extra benefits. Other places are less expensive, but offer more risks. For example.

So at the table, I get everyone to say what they plan to do. Then resolve each in turn. It's just brief description for color and to make sure I understand the player's goal and approach. They pay whatever cost there may be. Then we make an ability check if applicable and narrate the results. If anything is particularly interesting or funny, we might add some more fun details, but otherwise it gets resolved fast.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I didn’t discover what my limit was until I was over it. I was all set to tell the two newest players that they had to go, but they never came back after that first session. Considering the one guy was playing a game on his phone when it wasn’t his turn, I can’t say I was too worked up about it.


Another option is to split the group into two (whether someone else runs the second group, or you run it on a different date, that’s up to you).


It can be a painful thing to do, but the way I see it, you can either drop the group size and have a better experience for the remainder, or keep everyone and provide a degraded experience.

Drop one of your players from the game.

Painful I know. Controversial absolutely. I had to do it in my game (I had 8 people wanting to play, and I dropped 2). I hated the agonizing decision of choosing how to lose, as they were all my friends.

 

[CubicsRube]

There is another option...enlist one of the plauers as a co-dm. You can talk about and plan sessions together and split up enemies in a fight and duties. You can even split the party and run simultaneous scenarios.

There's a whole range of things you can do with 2 dms and you may find it really fun to brainstorm with someone else about how to plan out the game.

Plus fights could be more fun for you as you don't know for sure how all the enemies are going to act.