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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shin Okada" data-source="post: 5406390" data-attributes="member: 1956">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.</blockquote>

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