Table of 10
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FunkBGR
Explorer
Awesome. I've done ten before and it's not a problem, despite what people say.
Splitting isn't always an option, because real life sucks.
Anyway, here's my recommendations:
- Give each player a job. One is in charge of keeping track of spell durations, another is in charge of soda, another does hit points for the enemies, another takes notes, etc. Remove as much extra burden on you as possible.
- Use email. If two players want to debate whether to kill the goblin children, tell them to figure it out out of game, not in-game.
- Push for speed. Have people roll damage with attack rolls, don't let lolly-gagging happen on combat rounds.
- Stay on Topic. In my experiences, it's harder to keep a larger group on task, and staying IC. Recruit a player to keep people on task.
- Players see the damage they've done. This was key for my games, which is why I mention it again. Letting them keep track of hit points lets them know exactly how much damage they've done. It lets them estimate how tough a guy is, and see if he's healing, if he's got DR. It's great to want to "hide" that info from players behind a description, but that doesn't help speed up the game, or facilitate easy play, so don't bother hiding it. Just let them know, "your weapon doesn't puncture his thick hide as well" and say "subtract 5 for DR" to the hit point recorder.
- Drop the books. For all intents and purposes, you're the DM still. Set up with the players that during the game, you'll adjucate effects based on the situation to speed play. Don't look at the books - just guess at what it is, and I would tend to favor the players in most cases. If afterwards you turn out to be wrong, admit it, and move on. Now, one game I had, the players communicated enough that the person in charge of spells looked up a spell just after they had gone, so they could tell me the effects right then and there. Reward that, as it helps everyone.
It's definitely doable. Look at where your game is inefficient, and fix it.
Splitting isn't always an option, because real life sucks.
Anyway, here's my recommendations:
- Give each player a job. One is in charge of keeping track of spell durations, another is in charge of soda, another does hit points for the enemies, another takes notes, etc. Remove as much extra burden on you as possible.
- Use email. If two players want to debate whether to kill the goblin children, tell them to figure it out out of game, not in-game.
- Push for speed. Have people roll damage with attack rolls, don't let lolly-gagging happen on combat rounds.
- Stay on Topic. In my experiences, it's harder to keep a larger group on task, and staying IC. Recruit a player to keep people on task.
- Players see the damage they've done. This was key for my games, which is why I mention it again. Letting them keep track of hit points lets them know exactly how much damage they've done. It lets them estimate how tough a guy is, and see if he's healing, if he's got DR. It's great to want to "hide" that info from players behind a description, but that doesn't help speed up the game, or facilitate easy play, so don't bother hiding it. Just let them know, "your weapon doesn't puncture his thick hide as well" and say "subtract 5 for DR" to the hit point recorder.
- Drop the books. For all intents and purposes, you're the DM still. Set up with the players that during the game, you'll adjucate effects based on the situation to speed play. Don't look at the books - just guess at what it is, and I would tend to favor the players in most cases. If afterwards you turn out to be wrong, admit it, and move on. Now, one game I had, the players communicated enough that the person in charge of spells looked up a spell just after they had gone, so they could tell me the effects right then and there. Reward that, as it helps everyone.
It's definitely doable. Look at where your game is inefficient, and fix it.
Whisper72
Explorer
Well, it helps if everyone does not need to think on their actions once it is their turn for example. I think the main word here is discipline!
Give everyone limited time (use an hourglass that goes for 30 sec or 1 minute) to explain what they want to do / their actions when going around the table.
Use cards for actions, stat cards for the PC's so you have a good oversight of everyone's status, use miniatures for positioning where relevant, as suggested above, maybe ban certain spells / powers.
It is probably important to keep things more or less free-flow/free-form and scinematic (sp?). If all players trust the DM to make good decisions and not nit-pick on the specifics of rules, then adjudication should be relatively easy to do as well.
Hope this helps somewhat... also... with a dinner break, maybe make use of dinnertime to do some exposee, give background info, introduce certain issues / information for which no real actions but just 'talk' is required, and use this time to decide on major issues such as whether to accept a certain quest or somesuch...
Give everyone limited time (use an hourglass that goes for 30 sec or 1 minute) to explain what they want to do / their actions when going around the table.
Use cards for actions, stat cards for the PC's so you have a good oversight of everyone's status, use miniatures for positioning where relevant, as suggested above, maybe ban certain spells / powers.
It is probably important to keep things more or less free-flow/free-form and scinematic (sp?). If all players trust the DM to make good decisions and not nit-pick on the specifics of rules, then adjudication should be relatively easy to do as well.
Hope this helps somewhat... also... with a dinner break, maybe make use of dinnertime to do some exposee, give background info, introduce certain issues / information for which no real actions but just 'talk' is required, and use this time to decide on major issues such as whether to accept a certain quest or somesuch...
Cassander
Explorer
How about somewhere in between the co-DM idea and splitting the group idea? Find another co-DM and for most of the sessions, split into two groups. each having a DM and 4-5 players. Then when you get to important BBEGs or other major scenes, the two groups can come together and both DMs can handle the combined group. Think about the cover of Dungeon 150 with all those adventurers fighting Demogorgon.
The two groups might be cooperative rivals (and thus could be competing to do their respective parts better than the other) or they could just be separate groups that are friendly to each other. You might give each a theme for example, one following a druidic/old faith filled with barbarians, rangers, and druids and the other following a newer faith with clerics, paladins, and such. Just some ideas.
The two groups might be cooperative rivals (and thus could be competing to do their respective parts better than the other) or they could just be separate groups that are friendly to each other. You might give each a theme for example, one following a druidic/old faith filled with barbarians, rangers, and druids and the other following a newer faith with clerics, paladins, and such. Just some ideas.
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
I was just lurking on this thread, but I have to say that there are some really great ideas presented for handling this size group. If I was running it I'd be tempted to try a simpler version of DnD to run the campaign or to go for the co-DM idea if there was a creative friend I felt comfortable trusting my game with.
Last edited:
MrFilthyIke
First Post
Ryan Stoughton said:
It's not a virus, but the Truth!
I was going to suggest BECMI D&D myself, as it can easily handle 10.
SiderisAnon
First Post
In college, we had a chess and gaming club where we had to take any student and put them into a game. We never had enough GMs for anything, so I've had 9+ players before.
* Have a party leader who speaks for the party. This can help move things along if you have a decent player at the helm because they can cut through the noise and get things moving.
* Be willing to allow the players to split up, especially if they have different ideas. Note that I said "players". I remember one situation where half the players were concerned with the mystery, the other half with just kicking in some doors, so the players split up and while half of them worked at the table to figure out the pieces they had, I ran combat with the others. When the combat was done, they puzzle-people had their answer worked out.
* Find a player you can trust to handle shopping and such. Make them a kind of assistant. They help people with buying gear and that sort of thing. (This is not really intended for keeping players honest, it's because there's always a couple of people who don't have the book memorized and need some help with things like that.)
* If you allow the buying of magic items, make up shopping lists you can hand out in town. List the quantities available and let people buy what they want. (Or just do things like, "You can buy as many of these as you want.")
* When it comes to combat, everyone has tons of time to think. When their turn comes up, if they cannot immediately say what they're going to do, they get skipped. There's no excuse for slowing things down when you've got nine people's actions to think through.
* Have everyone roll their attacks BEFORE their initiative comes up. That way they can go, "I swing on the orc. I get AC 18 and do 9 damage," and you can keep rolling.
* No henchmen unless their job is to guard the horses and never speak. Detailed character-specific roleplaying is handled in e-mail. Don't set up encounters where having a mob of people is impossible, unless you want to leave most of the PCs bored. (Or just wave your hand and say, "Fred goes in and gets the following information...")
* Don't get upset if someone is reading or doing homework quietly in the corner. If they're not disrupting the game, they're not a problem.
* Be prepared to make things happen if the players get too distracted. I taught this to one group by having them get attacked every time they started yelling at each other in the dungeon. (The noise attracts monsters, after all.)
* Don't allow odd classes, psionics, new prestige classes, or material from third party books unless you know them by heart. There's nothing worse than having to look up a rule in the middle of things.
* Make a rule that no PC can perform an action that the player doesn't know the rules for. This can involve opening the book and reading them step by step when doing the action (such as a grapple). Allow for another player helping, so that more experienced players can help newer players with the rules.
* If you have a newish player, assign a more experienced player to help them with the rules. This saves you tons of time.
* Have the players e-mail you between sessions of what they'd like to accomplish in the next session or two. If they don't e-mail you, then don't worry about it because they obviously aren't worried about it.
And finally: Just remember that you're there to have fun. It doesn't matter how far the plot advances. If you're having fun, you've succeeded. (In all honesty, if you figure out how to ignore the slow progress and never stress over it, tell me how. I never figured it out. Sorry.)
* Have a party leader who speaks for the party. This can help move things along if you have a decent player at the helm because they can cut through the noise and get things moving.
* Be willing to allow the players to split up, especially if they have different ideas. Note that I said "players". I remember one situation where half the players were concerned with the mystery, the other half with just kicking in some doors, so the players split up and while half of them worked at the table to figure out the pieces they had, I ran combat with the others. When the combat was done, they puzzle-people had their answer worked out.
* Find a player you can trust to handle shopping and such. Make them a kind of assistant. They help people with buying gear and that sort of thing. (This is not really intended for keeping players honest, it's because there's always a couple of people who don't have the book memorized and need some help with things like that.)
* If you allow the buying of magic items, make up shopping lists you can hand out in town. List the quantities available and let people buy what they want. (Or just do things like, "You can buy as many of these as you want.")
* When it comes to combat, everyone has tons of time to think. When their turn comes up, if they cannot immediately say what they're going to do, they get skipped. There's no excuse for slowing things down when you've got nine people's actions to think through.
* Have everyone roll their attacks BEFORE their initiative comes up. That way they can go, "I swing on the orc. I get AC 18 and do 9 damage," and you can keep rolling.
* No henchmen unless their job is to guard the horses and never speak. Detailed character-specific roleplaying is handled in e-mail. Don't set up encounters where having a mob of people is impossible, unless you want to leave most of the PCs bored. (Or just wave your hand and say, "Fred goes in and gets the following information...")
* Don't get upset if someone is reading or doing homework quietly in the corner. If they're not disrupting the game, they're not a problem.
* Be prepared to make things happen if the players get too distracted. I taught this to one group by having them get attacked every time they started yelling at each other in the dungeon. (The noise attracts monsters, after all.)
* Don't allow odd classes, psionics, new prestige classes, or material from third party books unless you know them by heart. There's nothing worse than having to look up a rule in the middle of things.
* Make a rule that no PC can perform an action that the player doesn't know the rules for. This can involve opening the book and reading them step by step when doing the action (such as a grapple). Allow for another player helping, so that more experienced players can help newer players with the rules.
* If you have a newish player, assign a more experienced player to help them with the rules. This saves you tons of time.
* Have the players e-mail you between sessions of what they'd like to accomplish in the next session or two. If they don't e-mail you, then don't worry about it because they obviously aren't worried about it.
And finally: Just remember that you're there to have fun. It doesn't matter how far the plot advances. If you're having fun, you've succeeded. (In all honesty, if you figure out how to ignore the slow progress and never stress over it, tell me how. I never figured it out. Sorry.)
Philotomy Jurament
First Post
I wouldn't go so far as to say you *can't* handle 10 in 3.5, but IMO, you'd be better off with a different system for a group that large. Any of the usual suspects would be a good choice: OD&D, B/X, AD&D, C&C, et cetera.
cougent
First Post
I have consistantly run 8, and have gone as high as 16 for a short run (4 sessions) before we dropped back to 12 and then 10 and then finally the usual 8.
From the DM perspective it can be frustrating that you spend massive prep time to get through 1 room and 100' of corridor, but seriously if everyone is having fun how can anything be wrong? (the infamous badwrongfun?)
If you as the DM are not having fun, then yes you need to make changes, but if you are just fretting over the group moving at a pace that slugs even laugh at, then just lighten up and go with the flow.
As for actually managing large groups, the co-DM idea worked great for me above 8.
Much of what I have used is already listed above.
From the DM perspective it can be frustrating that you spend massive prep time to get through 1 room and 100' of corridor, but seriously if everyone is having fun how can anything be wrong? (the infamous badwrongfun?)
If you as the DM are not having fun, then yes you need to make changes, but if you are just fretting over the group moving at a pace that slugs even laugh at, then just lighten up and go with the flow.
As for actually managing large groups, the co-DM idea worked great for me above 8.
Much of what I have used is already listed above.
BlackMoria
First Post
I did this once for a large group and it worked out well.
The players over the party size were my assistants in a very unusual way.
One guy was the BBEG. I handled the megaplot but he was allowed to make decisions and once the good guys entered his dungeon, he had free rein of the tactical situation.
Another guy was the BBEG's right hand man. He had the freedom to make some choices (like he could obey the BBEG's orders to the letter, change the orders, or undermine the BBEG)
Other people were the monster wranglers and were lower level leaders for the BBEG.
In short, I had a evil party to oppose the good party. The evil party had to stay within my megaplot but had a large degree of freedom at the tactical level.
On game nights, the enthusiasm of the evil party to try to kill off the good party was delicious.
Everyone really enjoyed that campaign. Of course, to make it work, the megaplot must allow for a very proactive bad guy so that the players playing the bad guys have something to do on game nights and are not sitting on their kiesters waiting for the good guys to kick in the door, kill them and take their stuff.
The players over the party size were my assistants in a very unusual way.
One guy was the BBEG. I handled the megaplot but he was allowed to make decisions and once the good guys entered his dungeon, he had free rein of the tactical situation.
Another guy was the BBEG's right hand man. He had the freedom to make some choices (like he could obey the BBEG's orders to the letter, change the orders, or undermine the BBEG)
Other people were the monster wranglers and were lower level leaders for the BBEG.
In short, I had a evil party to oppose the good party. The evil party had to stay within my megaplot but had a large degree of freedom at the tactical level.
On game nights, the enthusiasm of the evil party to try to kill off the good party was delicious.
Everyone really enjoyed that campaign. Of course, to make it work, the megaplot must allow for a very proactive bad guy so that the players playing the bad guys have something to do on game nights and are not sitting on their kiesters waiting for the good guys to kick in the door, kill them and take their stuff.
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