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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 5544383" data-attributes="member: 54629">Me too.Thanks, Rel. My sentiments exactly.Yes. But it's not the only "issue" at hand really. As others have suggested, there are other, underlying issues. And I think that I have to admit to myself that I may not be up for managing a large RPG group in the long run. I would much prefer to run a weekly game, and I did that at first, but I eventually had to admit to myself that I couldn't sustain that pace. Work and family and whatever else have to have a place too. I can't spend all my free time prepping for my RPG game (that being said, there are a number of things I could do to reduce my prep time, in which case I could possibly go back to running a weekly game - the main one would be to find a "fast and dirty" way of cooking up NPCs instead of going through the whole rigamarole of dotting every i and crossing ever t as one is wont to do with a fiddly d20 game; although I enjoy the "mini-game" of building characters, it is the most time-consuming part of being a GM simply because I have to build so many on a frequent basis).Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that I am now at a point where I would actually like to try playing with only two players to see if that makes things any more fun/manageable for me.I don't want to kick the other guys out of the group or cause any bad feelings. Would it be all right to just say something like, "Look guys, the current situation isn't working for me. I don't think I can manage. I would like to try something different, namely run a game for a much smaller group. I hope you don't mind."That still doesn't sound quite right. As was suggested earlier, it may not be possible for me to let them down gently and politely at this point. But I'll do my best.I agree. Momentum isn't the only thing, and Player #1 told me as much too when I spoke to him on the phone. He said something along the lines of playing more frequently isn't necessarily going to make things better. As far as I could tell, he thinks I've lost the plot and that the campaign/group is about to implode. He's not quitting, but he's not exactly being positive about it ... which I think probably doesn't help my own attitude. It only really reinforces my own negative feelings.   This. I would like to try just having two for a while, but if that doesn't work out, or if the others feel a bit lonely or something, I'll look for some new players, but this time I'll make sure that they're more compatible with our style and way of doing things. I'll look for people who don't mind playing a bit loose with the RAW and who are more willing to communicate via e-mail and invest a bit of time outside of game night and so on. I can accept this on a rational level, but at the same time, part of me is resisting the idea because of the "hassle" of having PCs that pop in and out of the story. I've never liked that. We've tried everything in the past: having another player take over the PC, having the GM take over the PC, and so on. There was the odd occasion where a player got a "borrowed" PC killed (not on purpose though), so we mostly went with having the PC just not be present, even if that strained the narrative and our suspension of disbelief and so on. The thing is, we generally play lengthy, plotted campaigns. We don't really do episodic stuff that only takes a session or two to get through, so we can't really just have absent players' PCs "stay behind".I realize that this is probably a fairly picyune problem, and that it's really only a problem because I'm letting it be one, but even so ... this is why I am hesitant to keep "intermittent" players.Perhaps one option would be to let them run some of the NPCs or the shared PC when they want to show up, rather than giving them their own PCs to run. That way, I don't have to worry about a whole bunch of PCs that are only ever going to be around intermittently. Instead, they can be "guest stars" who just take control of characters that are already always going to be on-screen. Does that make sense? Thanks, and I agree.</blockquote>

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