D&D General Ghost of Saltmarsh Player Max

[CEK]

Hey, I'm new to dnd and have never played. My friends (who also haven't played) and I are starting a campaign of Ghost of Saltmarsh, but here's the issue. We have a total of 8 players, while the campaign recommends 5-6 players. At this point, I am not willing to kick anyone out, and I've already purchased the book, so is there any recommendations to make it more fun, such as a upscaling guide for encounters? Anything you have will help

 

[CEK]

In my experience, most roleplaying games get awkward fast past 5 players, and that's with experienced GMs and players. Keeping everyone involved & engaged is difficult, and playing combats in a fun & efficient manner, in particular, takes a bit to learn. You haven't said whether you'll be playing in person or online, and that's also a big factor; online can be significantly more challenging as number of players goes up.

Particularly since you're all brand new to the game, I feel you should scale down your number of players at any given session, rather than scaling up the difficulty of encounters. You can rotate players through sessions (admittedly easier said than done, depending on the adventure), and/or have some folks be DM helpers, playing NPCs/monsters and whatnot. You could also run two groups in parallel, with 4 players in each group.

Hey, thanks for the suggestions. Truely I wish I could lower the player count but I don't want to exclude anyone atm because we are one large friend group. And we are doing it in person so it should be a bit easier. But thank you for the time to reply

 

[niklinna]

Hey, thanks for the suggestions. Truely I wish I could lower the player count but I don't want to exclude anyone atm because we are one large friend group. And we are doing it in person so it should be a bit easier. But thank you for the time to reply

Being a large group of friends, in person, will go a long way toward making this work for everybody. Especially if you all agree to be on the ball and resolve your turns promptly!

 

[Kinematics]

When my group played Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I think we had 7 people. There was definitely a feeling of it being run for maybe half the group at a time, most of the time. There's often not enough going on in any one location for everyone to really participate at the same time.

As long as you can vary who that focus is on (ie: don't let the drama queens always take over the show), it's still reasonable to work through. It also helps when you can let them split the group up, such as investigating several locations in parallel instead of everyone going together to each place one at a time. (Splitting the group up into single people is bad, but 2-3 people together works just fine most of the time.)

For combat stuff, the lower level encounters can be incredibly deadly for 1st level characters (we had three characters get one-shot in the opening haunted house event), so the number of characters doesn't really matter. However it doesn't take long before it's hard to keep a party of that size occupied in combat. Experiment with adding a few extra enemies per encounter when it's dungeon crawl type stuff.

Or, again, splitting the party into a couple 4-man groups can work in some locations. We had one fight on a ship where there was one battle going on above decks, and a separate battle going on below decks. Run one round for group one, then a round for group two (separate initiative sets for each), and alternate back and forth, and it generally keeps people engaged.

 

[aco175]

First, welcome to the site and to playing D&D. Most all of us here have played for a lifetime and truly enjoy the hobby.

Second, remember everyone is there to have fun and that includes you, but the DM puts in the most work. Yes, 8 is a lot of people, but since everyone is new you can try and control some of the yelling out and force taking turns. Try and keep the group together and not split in half since that makes you swap back and forth like a movie and leads to half looking at their phones. Just keep it slow and follow along with the pacing in the book and you will be fine.

You may also find that some players drop out if the game is not for them or some will not be able to make it each week or session. This may end you with 4-5 each time after a few sessions.

 

[iserith]

I recommend you keep the 8 players, but you tell them that only 6 can play in any given session (quorum of 4) with those that RSVP the fastest getting the seats (or some other method of your devising). In my experience, there's always going to be 1 or 2 people that can't make a session anyway, so this helps ensure that you both control the number of players at any given session, but also ensure that you rarely have to cancel a session due to lack of quorum.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think you're going to have eight players showing up for most sessions anyway, so I suspect this will be a largely self-correcting problem.

Given the episodic nature of the campaign, that's fine -- maybe someone who's missing is in the drunk tank when the other characters are sailing off to the Isle of the Abbey, or whatever. Everyone can reunite next time.

 

[el-remmen]

I'll think about splitting the group, but that's quite a large time commitment.

You don't have to do it forever, just for the first couple of sessions. People will fall away and you will gain confidence and soon you will have one group of 4 to 6 when you re-merge them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I would consider 8 players too many for a fun game of D&D. Combat is slow, and players are often squeezed out of participating. I have a 6 player cap for my games.

As for the adventure itself, it's pretty deadly for the recommended number and level of players, especially when they are inexperienced. No need to increase the difficulty. Some of them will probably die before the end anyway!

You haven't experienced Saltmarsh until you have been killed by a giant weasel in the first 10 minutes of the game!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Something else I have thought of - a number of locations in Saltmarsh are kind of cramped. With eight players there may not be room to move. Adding more enemies would make the situation worse.