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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ScottB" data-source="post: 2996667" data-attributes="member: 30614">Some background:My group of three years just held out final session on Sunday as our much-beloved DM is moving out of state.  By now, the group is very close and we wanted to stick together.  I am inheriting the DM chair, which is somewhat intimidating as my only other DM experience has been a six session guest adventure with the same group last Fall.  I over prepared, and everyone had a good enough time to want me back.At the time I ran my adventure, the group consisted of five full-time players and two busy part-timers.  Before we broke up we were running comfortably on seven full-time players.Now, the group is forming up for the new campaign (we're slated to roll characters on the 25th) and I am looking down the barrel at perhaps nine full-time players.  We picked up two significant others, one ex-part-timer who is back from NY with time to spare, and another friend who the retiring DM kept out of the game for reasons I never understood (and which I hope don't come up).My plea:I could really use some advice on how to best approach this large of a group.I see several problems.  Any social interaction brings in one to three players and leaves everyone at the end of the table to chat among themselves.  Any viable threat to the party as a whole has a good chance of killing any given member in two rounds.  With less of my attention to go around, I worry that pacing will flounder and people will get and stay distracted.  With this many dice being thrown, someone will always make the Spot check, and someone will aways fail the Move Silently check.  Less spotlight time means less fun for everyone, and decision making can be painstakingly slow if everyone wants a say.I have considered many options for fighting the size.  Not the most drastic of which involves another guy in the group who was going to switch off DMing with me for a few adventures (a guy who has never sat at the head of the table, but I'm not much better).  I thought about asking him to come on full time as a co-DM.  I hadn't worked out the particulars, but he could work the opposing force while I directed story, or at times we could split the party into two groups to accomplish two connected quests simultaneously.  This alleviates the problem, but creates a host of others connected to the troubles innate in having two DMs.Lesser help would come from giving encounters with more weaker enemies, pairing people based on their move silently/whatever checks and have them make four or five checks rather than eight or nine, and generally running a very tight ship with people rolling all attack and damage dice at once, planning their actions ahead and knowing when it's not their turn in the limelight.  Lucky for me, it's a good group and I can expect this from most of them.So, are there any veterans of large groups out there with sage advice for a self-proclaimed newbie?  Has anyone co-DM'd before, or been in a game with two DMs?  All comments are greatly appreciated.</blockquote>

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