A big group splitting up (problems before the Age of Worms)

[Altamont Ravenard]

Hello all,

I'd like some input on the following situation:

We're a rather big group (7 players including me) that doesn't get to play D&D very often, mainly because of the group's size, and the difficulty of rassembling (almost) all players for a game.

Lately, I've been wanting to play more, and the solution I've thought of is splitting the group in two. I'd DM the two groups of 3 in the Age of Worms adventure path.

We're all good D&D friends, and splitting the group up is not the ideal solution, but in (almost) every game we play with 6 players and the DM, there are always players who do nothing for some time, causing even more distractions, which makes the game bog down even more, even with the DM and every player's best efforts.

Furthermore, we're all kind of nostalgic of when we played in smaller groups. The dynamic in a smaller group is much better, there are no overlapping of character abilities. Most of us feel that, in this case, "smaller is better" (to play).

We all realize that, D&D being in great part a social game, by doing this, we're pushing away slightly the "social" part of D&D, much to our disliking.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, as they say.

A solution some of us thought up would be to use pre-gen characters, and that some players would switch group, after each adventure, so that, over time, everyone will get to play with everyone else.

A group of 3 characters can be sometimes strechted thin (and from what I've read of Age of Worms, it's not a cakewalk and lots of groups have suffered many losses) so I proposed to add in each group a 4th character. The players would choose which character they want to play, and the 4th character will become, for the time he's playerless, an accompanying DMNPC.

When a player will switch groups, he'll always have a choice between 2 characters to play, lowering the chances for each player of playing a character he doesn't like to play.

So there's my situation. What are your opinions on the subject? (mainly

1) Splitting the group
2) Imposing pre-generated characters
3) the Age of Worms adventure path
4) What would you suggest for a competent group of 4 characters to take on the Age of Worms adventure path?
5) Anything else you feel like sharing

Thanks in advance for your comments,

AR

 

[Emirikol]

We have a rule: if at least 4 players will show, we will game. The other players just have to suck it up and go on with their lives. We have another rule: we keep constant "Players Wanted" advertisements out at the local hobby shops, enworld, and WotC. Gotta move on.

I'm in the same boat right now. I deseperately want to play, but I'm one of the players (and the DM) that can't play because of summer family obligations.

One more thought: DON"T run two groups through the same series of adventures. That will burn YOU the DM out really quick. Make someone else DM the other table. If you haven't groomed a successor, you're making DM mistake number #6.

jh

 

[Herremann the Wise]

1) Splitting the group
2) Imposing pre-generated characters
3) the Age of Worms adventure path
4) What would you suggest for a competent group of 4 characters to take on the Age of Worms adventure path?
5) Anything else you feel like sharing

As I'm DMing a large group (was 5 now 7) of PCs through the Age of Worms Path (Currently into module 4 out of 12), I kind of feel obligated to respond to your questions. In fact I most probably would have anyway.

1) Splitting the group is an option but I will simply state that the path is quite tough. A party of three with an additional NPC is going to make things tough. You may have to jiggle down the adventures to get the threat balance right.

2) Personally, I would never want to impose pre-generated characters on my group (I have 6 DMs and 1 Player in my group). So while they would understand why I was doing such a measure, I just don't think they would find it a "fun" option. YMMV

3) The Age of Worms is excellent. I have altered and twisted one or two things around so they made a little more sense to me but I do this with everything. The level of support on the Paizo website is fantastic, from both DMs as well as the Paizo staff. If you do decide to go with the group as a whole (which I'd kind of recommend), then follow the advice in the back of the adventure in pushing the threat levels up a notch or two.

4) You can't go past the classic Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, Fighter if you want to go the pre-gen option. Kind of boring but this does cover most of the bases you could want to cover. You could play around with the Rogue and Fighter (Ranger and Barbarian?), but I think a cleric is a must and a well played wizard very very handy.

5) I'd go with the big group and let them craft what they want in terms of characters. It takes a little bit of co-operation from everyone to keep things smooth and it will be slower than a smaller group but from personal experience, my group's finding it very rewarding. We've had 12 fortnightly sessions in a row and this is pretty weird for our group. Normally we swap from one game to another and back again but I've managed to keep the group together for this pretty well so far. They're enjoying themselves although there have been one or two quibbles about the difficulty level. They understand though that it's meant to be tough (to get the PCs up to 20th level by the end).

If you have any questions that I can help you with, ask away, I'd be more than happy to share my experiences thus far.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[FunkBGR]

Don't know if this will help you -

I split the Age of Worms into two. Ran both groups through Adventure One, and then split Group 1 to Adventure Two and Group 3 to scaled down Adventure 3. Criss-cross again - it made it so they had to talk.

Granted - you need to be familiar / comfortable with changing things up. I ended up running "Prince of Redhand" (normally lvl 15) for a group of lvl 5's (I toned everything down TONS, and slightly altered the story - trying not to spoil anything though), but both groups LOVED talking to one another about the games, and really really worked to help each group out - sent potions to one another, etc. They also switched between groups if they wanted, based on their schedules, and we inserted enough "downtime" to make this possible.

The other thing was that when we could - we'd get the big group together to take down some BBEG as a giant group - and they really loved that - showing up as their group, seeing their comrades, and knowing that it was going to be epic (I had 12 players - 5 in one group and 7 in another).

Like everyone else, I'd be happy to answer any questions about what I did, and would also like to back up what Herremann said about Paizo's website - tons of support.