Keeping groups small

[Dreaddisease]

While reading the "boot the player" thread I started thinking about my group. Right now we have 7 down from 8. In Spring we had 2 games going where the DMs would switch back and forth between their respective campaigns. During the summer I decided to start a satellite group, of a small size, to focus more on the role playing and skill usage (i.e. doing some testing of game mechanics while keeping interest in the story by role playing). It went okay but most of the time I just held my game when not everybody was available to play. I have tried to be dynamic enough to accomodate the comings and goings of the group but I have this feeling that when we go back to my campaign that I will be dealing with a large group. This may not be so bad.

Now to the question. In such a large group of good friends, how do you play smaller games? Who do you exclude? Or how do you determine. I've thought of doing some Co-DM or maybe two groups at the time, but our size doesn't really permit that. Any ideas?

 

[the Jester]

A lot of the time scheduling conflicts decide who can come to a regular game.

Personally, I can just grin and bear it with a large party; if there are always one or two pcs missing, you can usually go on without them, and you can kill more pcs that way without a tpk.

 

[Crothian]

I am grinning and bearing it with the large party. I run 7 PCs and the other game we just went from 5 to 6 PCs. Personally, I really don't like it but there is not a thing I can do since I'm the new guy to the group.

However, if we were starting a new game and I wanted to reduce the numbers but not in an obvious way, the first thing I'd do is have it on a day that I know not everyone could make. Or I'd have the campaign be such that not everyone would be interested in.

 

[Fenes 2]

Structuring the campaign or the playstyle in a way that not everyone will be interested does work. If you got a mixed group of people who are more into the tactical aspect of D&D, or straight into hack&slash, then announcing a roleplaying-heavy campaign "for those interested" may keep them away.

 

[Ciaran]

Structuring the campaign or the playstyle in a way that not everyone will be interested does work. If you got a mixed group of people who are more into the tactical aspect of D&D, or straight into hack&slash, then announcing a roleplaying-heavy campaign "for those interested" may keep them away.

Unless you have "gaming whore" players who'll join any game that someone in the group runs, even if it's in a play style they don't like, and will show up to every session and complain about how they'd rather the game was being run differently.

No, I'm not bitter.

- Eric