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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jester47" data-source="post: 399864" data-attributes="member: 2238">An interesting thing has happened with my gaming group.  All total there have been a total of 13 people go through my group since I started it last spring.  Most of them are consistant and we have leveled off at 9 regular attendees.  However nine people and a DM is a large number for a game that was intended for four and a DM.  And I have to admit things have been pretty tough.  I started off with the default world of greyhawk.  But as we played an interesting thing occured.  I found myself cutting out more and more of the world.  I kept changing the City of Greyhawk to fit the story that I was presenting.  In fact the story I was presenting kept changeing.  What I think I was doing was trying to start off with too much.  Originally I had scetched out a backstory for the campaign with an overall goal.  I was going to run a module.  But my backstory clashed with the module and the campaign world.  This was the first problem.Then another problem presented itself.  And I discovered this as time went by.  My players did not know the rules!  Furthermore, I realised that the reason that I kept changeing everything was that I could.  My players did not know the world.  They were wholely unfamiliar with it.  I could have told them Mordenkeinan was the right hand man of Iuz and they would have gone with it!  And that was when I realised my mistake.  I had made the assumption that everyone know how to play, and ignored the fact that people were coming from all sorts of gaming backgrounds and styles of play.  I made the assumption that people knew the world enough to keep me from drifting and to have their characters have goals on thier own.  Instead the characters had goals based on what I presented.  They were feeding off of my creativity and nothing was coming back my way!   Also, I took a count, and discovered that half of the players did not even own a PHB!  I was tempted to send those away that did not own the rulebooks.  Instead I decided that the best way to handle this situation was to teach.  So, I decided to start a think tank.  I decided that people needed to learn about the world, and the most detailed world is the Forgotten Realms.  I decided that everyone should have the ability to DM, not just me.  So I ended my campaign.  Now what we do is a lot more rewarding.  We research the realms, run clinics on how to DM better, clinics on how to use the compbat rules, we do character critiques, develop our own locations in the forgotten realms and everyone gets a DMs perspective of how to do things.  One of the things I look forward to is the Furious Fighter Fracas.  Everyone makes a fighter and well we fight.  There are also the Mad Mage Mayhem, Radical Rouge Romp and other things that are designed to get people used to using the rules and how they work.  When we start running adventures again I think things will be better, because they no longer are based on me and what I know and present.  Does anyone do anything similar?  I have found this to be the best way to handle large groups of gamers.Aaron.</blockquote>

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