D&D 5E Help with 7 players

[aco175]

An assistant DM could help. He can help in situations where people are trying to buy armor and want to haggle or sneak out at night to go pickpocket drunks. A few of the players will be sitting getting bored and they can be rounded into playing NPCs or rolling dice for the merchant fighting off a thief.

 

[redrick]

Some others have given some good options. I am going to give you a darker one.

Drop one of your players from the game.

Painful I know. Controversial absolutely. I had to do it in my game (I had 8 people wanting to play, and I dropped 2). I hated the agonizing decision of choosing how to lose, as they were all my friends.

And....it was the best decision I could have made for that game. I have run games with large parties, and ones with smaller ones. Smaller groups run better. Now you can manage large groups, I'm not saying you can't. But there is a crispness, a good pacing, and just generally more enjoyment per time spent with a smaller group.

It feels so terrible wrong to consider, but for everyone else playing, it was the absolute right decision for my group...and it might be the right one for you too.

A more cheery variation on this:

Find an extra player and split the game.

8 or 9 people can easily become two separate games. Grow. Subdivide. Conquer!

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

I think I'm going to do most if not all downtime activities via text or email. If the there's a skill check required I'll handle it and give them the outcome. And to help things be a little more structured, I'm going to limit the amount of stuff the PC's can do to three things. I'm hoping this will give us more time at the table to explore the jungles and ruins of Chult.

 

[iserith]

I think I'm going to do most if not all downtime activities via text or email. If the there's a skill check required I'll handle it and give them the outcome. And to help things be a little more structured, I'm going to limit the amount of stuff the PC's can do to three things. I'm hoping this will give us more time at the table to explore the jungles and ruins of Chult.

If you're going to do things over text and email and, if the downtime activity is a task performed repeatedly over time, you could just use passive checks to resolve any uncertainty as to the outcome. If a PC works together with another PC on a given task, you can just add +5 to the resulting check. That will save you needing to resolve anything at the table.

 

[thorgrit]

I'd say not to let any one PC have the spotlight for too long, unless necessary for the story. After describing a scene, go around the table and collect (but don't resolve!) all the players' actions. Then resolve them in groups. Cliffhanger some actions. It probably won't speed up play, but it would increase engagement.

 

[Imaculata]

I would encourage the players to stick in small groups. Its fine that everyone wants to do their own thing outside combat, but surely they can think of a reason to join up with a fellow party member, and reduce the spotlight management for the DM.

A friend of mine is currently running a scifi campaign, and we will soon have 5 players. So whenever a character goes shopping, another character (or 2) will often join them. This allows the DM to play out one scene for multiple players, instead of having to constantly switch between individual players. We also try to deliberately mix it up, so that not always the same characters pair up, for the sake of role playing.