Need Guidance on running a large group

[GameDoc]

A friend of mine recently opened up a comics & game shop. We live in a small town (12,500 or so) and we've been about three years without a local game shop. But I digress...

Anyway, I agreed to be the "DM in residence" and run a 4e game every other Thursday night. Based on past experiences starting store-based games in town, I expected 3-5 players the first night. To my surprise, delight, and bewilderment 9 people showed up. Not to mention I have two friends who couldn't make it so I am looking at 11 potential players next time around.

Fortunately, the group self-selected into a good balance of roles and classes, so everyone has a chance to contribute something unique. I'm using Essentials, so the strangest thing to be is having a party with two drow and only one human.

Anyway, we wound up with:

1) Warlock Hexblade (tiefling)
2) Paladin Cavalier (dragonborn)
3) Assassin Executioner (drow)
4) Cleric Warpriest, sun domain (tiefling)
5) Rogue Thief, (drow)
6) Fighter Slayer (dwarf)
7) Wizard Mage, pyromancer (human)
8) Rogue Thief (halfling)
9) Ranger Hunter (elf)

I don't have the time to split them into two groups and DM additional sessions. Also we're limited to about 3 to 3.5 hours per session.

So given that, any advice on making sessions with large groups go smoothly?

 

[kinjiru]

I really suggest breaking it into separate groups, either on the same night and find another DM, or if you have the time, on separate nights. That gives you two perfectly sized groups.

It's been my experience that 8 is hard to manage and beyond 8 is incredibly difficult. It's possible, of course, but it really changes the game in so many ways and also makes each individual party member less significant.

Another option is to just flat out tell people you can only take up to X number, but instead of doing an ongoing campaign do one-shot sessions, or a few-shot sessions and take participants on a first-come basis.

I know neither of these are ideal for you, but I just can't recommend trying to manage an 11 person party. Still, it's awesome you had such a great turnout, and congrats on getting a place to play in town!

 

[Shatter6]

Just a little note from me. I used to run a 15+ game for a little over 2 years. The difference was we were more in to the store not jsut hack ans slash. However here is how we handled it.
We would break of in groups of 5
1 person would act as a "story teller" more or less this person would help me keep the group moving (and yes them selves) and would conduct the random encounters and generally keep the group moving to a location or some sort of plot point i would need a group to get to.
Iwould then rover between the 3 sometimes 4 groups inserting the plot points as needed also settleing arguements and running any major NPCs or encounters that were impotant.
This type of gaming works great for free for all games. (everyone going where they want to go) but workswell with pre planned and plotted campaigns.
Its NOT for newbies that constantly need attention or interaction typically these types of players you simply have to have smaller groups for. You could teach a couple of people to help you with DMing and you become the "Master DM" the others are DMs you still controll the over all plot but they help you out keeping everyone else interested int he game and moving along
You will find you will get a core group of gamers that will consistantly show up at the games. Those folks you will start to focus most of your efforts in to. Just remember to allow a flowing enough game to allow for new short term or even long term charcters to join in to the game.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I've run over-sized (7-8) player games in 4e before. It's very difficult, and the play experience is substantially diminished. One of my players suggested that you basically get the same amount of total fun as in a game half that size, but now that fun is split 8 ways instead of 4, so everyone's having half as much fun. I set a cap of 8 players when I was running--I figured that 9 or 10 players was just clearly too many.

You need to keep things moving quickly. Fights are huge in a game this size--if you have 9 players, a typical fight might be against 9 monsters, or 7 monsters and 8 minions, or a solo and 4 normal monsters--much more complicated than normal. That makes it hard for the DM to be on top of everything, but it also means that there can be really long gaps between a player's turns, which can make it easy to space out, which then makes things worse in terms of speed of play in a vicious cycle. Maintaining a strong sense of who's on deck and who's 2 plays out helps, but only up to a point. I strongly urge you to consider house rules designed to speed up play (like doubling monster damage and halving monster hit points). Also, when a fight is all over except for the PCs grinding out the last monster or two, just call it over. Again, grind is a huge enemy in a game like this.

It looks like you have only one leader and a bunch of strikers--that's good. More leaders would be more effective, but they also contribute to grind. Conversely, strikers speed up play, and that's really helpful.

Full group role-playing oriented encounters can be very difficult with a large group. I suggest having role-playing encounters that focus on a couple characters at a time, but that has the effect of leaving the other players in the cold. I wish I had a better suggestion, but...

Hand-outs are excellent in a large group; a nice meaty puzzle with one copy per player allows everyone to play in parallel, rather than in sequence, which is a big win. That said, it's hard to regularly prep those. Alternately, to the extent that you can recruit an assistant GM, even if just to run combats ("we're dropping an imaginary dividing line between the two halves of the battle--Jane will run that half and I'll run this half; once one of the combats is over, everyone from that side can jump in to the other side to mop up."), that offers the potential for a dramatically better game. If you can get an assistant GM who you can give a quick briefing to and then have run role-playing encounters as well, all the better--you can then run for the whole group but let the players functionally play in shifting groups of 4 or 5 players, which is eminently doable.

4E is not a system that's particularly well suited to a very large group. I wish you luck, but I'm not at all confident that you'll be able to maintain a high quality experience for a group that large, even with some absences each game and assuming that both you are a great DM and the players are excellent. It might be more fun for everyone involved to chop the group and alternate weeks or something (since you said that you can't run multiple games/week). Or you might be better served with a faster, lighter system (even 3.X/Pathfinder is probably better, at least at low levels), although that may not serve the needs of the group/the needs of the store.

Good luck!

 

[goblynknight]

I run a weekly group of 7 that has been as high as 9 in the same time limit that you have. I can not stress enough how much everyone must have their stuff together. (power cards, printed out sheets whatever folks need. Players who really know the ins and outs sitting with folks who don't, etc) As for Combats (and this is a thing I have found to be true others may disagree, with that many voices planning and social interaction encounters can be chaos, have to be large and minions are your friend as are brutes, nothing focuses attention (the hardest thing to maintain with so many potential distractions around the table) like monsters that do big damage. Depending on how your doing initiative I have found that calling out the next pc to act is a great way to get people really thinking about their action's ( with thanks to whoever first suggested this on some forum, somewhere Also a couple of table rules that have helped.

1. Bursts, blasts, area attacks have folks roll the damage first tell the dm and then roll attacks, that way you can just go along your list and take off the Hp as you go.

2. Multiple attacks roll 2 at a time (this was after a character in my game had a close burst 8 power hitting 15 enemies in one combat.)

3. Big battlefields, dungeon crawls with a huge group is.. a pain. Terrain is your friend to make up for fights in ball room's and stadium sized chambers.

Hope that helps.

edited to add: Also with regards to the hunter, treat rapid shot as a burst 1 power for purposes of dealing damage, one damage roll multiple attack rolls. The rules somewhere may already cover this but it was real drag recently.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I run a game with 7 players in it.

First, I would tell your two friends that they missed the boat. Nine is plenty and eleven is too many, IMHO.

Second, get the players to "buy in" that this is a crowded game. They will need to keep their off-topic chatter to a minimum and be patient and good listeners.

Third, if you want to thin the field, tell them that if they miss two games in a row they are out.

Fourth, keep things going. Use a timer or an hourglass or your phone and set the alarm to 5 minutes (3 minutes?). When one group (or one character) goes off on their own, start the timer. Only run that group for 5 minutes. Then go back to the main group for five or ten minutes. You want to reward the characters that stay together with more face time. Otherwise, you could have nine different things going on at once. If people have to wait more than ten minutes for their turn, you could lose them to boredom.

 

[Destil]

If you expected 4-5 and got 11, my guess is that you'll be back down to 5-6 after a month or two.

If it's consistently at 9-11, split the party. It's really worth it.

 

[Shin Okada]

I used to run a campaign with 7 players in 3.5e and I felt that was about the limit I could handle. And now I am attending in two 4e games in which up to 6 players come for each sessions. I still feel 6-7 players per table is an upper limit which I can really enjoy. Maybe 7 is too many for most of the people.

Both for role-playing and combat encounters, 4-6 players per table would be ideal. And 5 is the best party size.

Even at lower Heroic tier, one combat encounter involves 9 PCs may easily take more then 3 hours. I expect 4+ hours in some cases. So it may happen that you cannot even finish one combat encounter in a certain day's session. And "waiting time" for each players will be long, both in and out of combat encounters. That will not give them good gaming experiences.

You have you, 9 possible players and 2 close friends. I seriously advice you to convince one or both of your friends to act as another DM. That will make a game club with 12 members with 2 DMs, really ideal. Maybe your 2 friends can take turn and act as a DM once per 2 sessions. If you cannot convince those 2 friends, either use EN World's Gamers Seeking Gamers function or WotC's BBS to hunt another DM. That will definitely worth trying.

It seems that your players includes a lot of newbies. And you are using essential materials. If you start with those materials and start the game from the 1st-level, it will be not so difficult for someone to start as a newbie DM.

Side Note:

If you are uncertain that how many players will attend in a certain day's game, it is a good idea to keep having various companion characters (read DMG 2) at your disposal.

Supposing you often use pre-generated adventures, when you have less than 5 players in a certain day's session, adding some companion PCs to increase the size of a party into 5 is far much easier and quicker than to adjust encounters.

 

[Mengu]

For what it's worth, my advice would be "Just don't do it. "

Break it into two groups, run each group every other week, or see if anyone in either group will volunteer to run. 3-3.5 hrs is entirely too short to even build a story for 9 PC's. And one combat could take 3-3.5 hrs. And in combat a player has to wait for 8 other player turns, and 9 players worth of monster turns, to take a second turn. That is a crazy long time to wait. Not to mention challenging a group of 9 is going to be very difficult due to the amount of redundancy such a group is likely to have.

6 is the max I want to handle in most any game. I've tried some sessions with 7 and it just gets too hectic for me. It's not worth the headache. In my games though I put a lot of effort into creating situations that highlight the strength of each PC, make sure each PC has a part of the plot they can attach themselves to, and be involved. With 9 players, that would be a major headache for me.

Another option I suppose is to play LFR style where you try to contain each session as 1 adventure, and run the sessions first come first serve, when someone can't make it you have substitutes.

Yet another thing I do in my game is I have a substitute player. In the absence of a player, the substitute plays that player's PC, instead of me having to NPC them. This way in combat more justice can be done to that character's abilities, and they don't quite walk around like a zombie, or vanish from the middle of the adventure to reappear next session. If you expect frequent absences, you can have a cast of characters of 6, and whoever shows up can play one of the characters that are not being played. You could even build in MPD into one of the shared characters.

Again, my advice is "Just don't do it." Find another solution.

 

[BobTheNob]

Gotta agree that multiple groups is the way to go.

But dont get too distressed. What you could also consider is to "diverge" the central story-line. Actually have the two groups part of the same story.

Just for a lauigh, I would consider having the two group on opposite sides of the fence, so when the final battle comes about, its group vs group (but dont tell them that)