Party of 9

[Istar]

We had a large group already, then people came back to the group after a long time, and someone's son was allowed to plan.

Any tips for the DM on how to speed up play, as more players leads to more monsters and 4e is already 10 times slower than 2nd edition.

Any tips on bulking up his campaign to battle against such a large group besides simply doubling or tripling the enemy.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Check out MerricB's post on faster combats in the general forum..

As for 9 players, the additional suggestions I have from my experience with 9 at the table are:

> Use the table as your initiative order, start at the left and work your way around. If someone wants to delay, have them move...

> Talk with your players before hand about how long combats can take if they are not ready. Explain it as a team deal where your actions can impact on the fun of others {I had a player wander off mid combat round, return a couple minutes later and still not miss anything }
- Each player should have already decided what they are doing, set up thier dice {both attack and damage} and know what the power does. If thier planned action isn't there due to a monster dying, use an at-will and move on.

> No rules arguments. Write them down and move on.

> Monster damage pile for tons of critters. Instead of tracking each bad guys hit points exactly, track a pile of hitpoints and remove dead guys from the board based on which got hit most recently. {or which is most dramatically appropriate}

> instead of extra monsters, use traps and terrain to spice up and seperate the group.

> Use elites more often.

> Use monster cards to track what the monsters can do and write teh damage/conditions right on them.

These have worked for me, altho sometimes I needed to re-talk to the players about preparation at the table

 

[UngeheuerLich]

use 2 solom monsters and elites. Double minion xp and give them 2 hits to kill Or at least let them roll a saving throw to reduce a hit from killing them to make them bloodied.

 

[Camelot]

If 9 people wanted me to DM for them, I would be very unsure about it. I'd find one of them who'd like to DM and split the group into two, each with a DM and 4 players. But it sounds like you're set on doing this, so this probably isn't what you want to hear.

Have a whiteboard to write down the monster's defenses. This way, players can roll their attack and damage while it isn't their turn and know if they hit or not so they can just say so when it comes to their turn.

Use props to denote status conditions and areas. Pipe cleaners work great. Bottlecaps and bottle rings are good for hanging on minis or putting over chips. If you don't want to mess up initiative by just going around the table, hang cards over your DM screen to show everyone the order of initiative, or use magnets on a magnetic whiteboard.

Get the players to help. Have one seasoned player sit next to you. This player can help you set up the maps and keep track of information on the whiteboard so you don't have to deal with it. With that many players, it might even be best to have both players sitting next to you help out.

Hope this helps!

 

[eriktheguy]

Have a whiteboard to write down the monster's defenses. This way, players can roll their attack and damage while it isn't their turn and know if they hit or not so they can just say so when it comes to their turn.

Have one seasoned player sit next to you. This player can help ...

Both of these are excellent tips.

NEVER allow people to get books out during a fight. Use power cards and make ad hoc rulings, then look stuff up between sessions and come to a consensus.

In general, I don't allow books at the table unless we are in town and shopping.

I also record the defenses of my players on the whiteboard, as well as everyone's initiative.
Plan out each monster's action and roll attacks while the player are going. On the monster's turn you only need to move the miniatures, say 'you take 10 damage, you take 8 and are prone', remove conditions that you saved for, and instruct the next player to go.
Don't roll damage, just pick a random number close to average (average is usually [min + max]/2). I only ever roll d20s when I DM.
If one player is taking awhile on their turn, inform the next player to start getting ready. Don't rush newer players, it rarely speeds things up and makes people cranky. Seat a helpful player beside a confused one.

Its nice to have an experienced player sit beside you and give them privileges and responsibilities. You could let them help you track combat. If two players are going at once you can handle one while your wingman handles the other. You need to let this player in on monster HP etc though.

Make sure to have a card, paper, or computer screen showing all the monsters' stats during every fight, flipping through pages of the monster manual is generally too slow.

 

[Markn]

Good lord!

Honestly, if there is any way you can split into 2 groups, one of 4, another of 5 you will find things move along a lot faster. The game really beings to bog down with 6 or more.

If you are hesitant to do this, just give a try for a single session with only 4 or 5 players just to experience the difference.

4e does not scale well for large numbers of players. Its a drawback to the system. Its unfortunate but its a reality. Trying to play under those circumstances will just turn some players off anyways.

 

[Dr. NRG]

Sociology studies tell us that if a group of more than four or five people sit down together and engage in one conversation, a second conversation is likely to start among them. Human beings naturally gravitate towards conversational groups in the range of four or five, and generally split off into a separate conversation if more people are present. The same thing happens at the gaming table. Unless you have a disciplined group, side conversations will start to happen and will detract from the speed of the game as well as its immersivness. As someone else suggested, talk to the group about this in advance. Or, as someone else suggested, don't fight human nature and instead split the group in two.

There are some really interesting scenarios where a single DM runs two parties that eventually meet. I would suggest looking up an adventure known as The Head of Vecna. . .

 

[Herschel]

1. As UL said, go with fewer, bigger monsters and beef minions, if needed. Either that or prepare for epic combats every time.

2. Delegate Initiative and marking. This includes have some sort of condition marks.

3. Remind players to have their actions planned before their turn, if possible.

 

[Imaginary Number]

I frequently DM for large groups but, for the reasons everyone's pointed out above, it's not easy to do for an entire campaign. If you're going to do it that way, however, I'll offer the following in addition to the excellent suggestions already provided.

1) Make sure that everyone at the table knows that the campaign will not involve a lot of individual role-playing. Every group has at least a player or two who likes to interact with the setting, gather information, talk to NPCs, etc. This can be a lot of fun with a normal-sized group, but it often gets really tedious when eight people have to sit still and listen to one other person try to develop their character. If I have a group of nine, any one person gets at most ten seconds to banter with the tavern wench, haggle with the merchant, ask questions to the sage, or whatever before I cut them off. Nobody gets to be a special snowflake. That's not to everyone's taste, obviously, but you need to do it to keep everyone's attention and move things along. For the same reason, the DM needs to make sure that the players can get all the information they need for the adventure without requiring them to do a whole lot of investigation or fact-finding beforehand.

2) As someone mentioned earlier, the usual adventure model where the players go through a number of reasonably challenging encounters before reaching the boss fight at end does not work very well for large groups. Because combat takes a long time, no matter how much initiative bookkeeping you delegate, I typically plan for only one big combat encounter per session. The encounter should be complex: I often send waves of enemies at the party from different directions, and the group tends to separate into smaller groups to fight different threats before they finally can combine at the end and take out the big bad who is directing the action.

3) Any combat with that many players and monsters needs a lot of room for the participants to move around, particularly in 4e. Grids for miniatures need to be huge -- I've had as many as eight standard-sized battlemats laid out for a single encounter. Your DM should know that published adventures and modules will not work well for this reason alone.

4) For a variation from straight combat, try 4e skill challenges. The math needs to be adjusted to accommodate a big group, but you'd be surprised how much players pay attention when they need to come up with creative uses for one of their skills and roll some dice.

5) Finally, the DM should be more tolerant than usual of the players engaging in non-game activities. My ideal is to keep everyone engaged at all times, but if a player knows their turn is not likely to come up for five minutes, they'll naturally look for other stuff to do. As long as they're able to survey what's going on when their turn comes up, I have no problem with them doing whatever they want to do in the meantime.

 

[Flipguarder]

I honestly give a party of 9 people a 2-5% chance that everyone will enjoy it. It just requires way too much out of way too many people. My advice would be to split into to groups and dm them separately and intertwine the campaigns every few months.