Too many players!

[lostingeneral]

Hi everyone.

I've been running a 4E Eberron campaign for a few months now, and we've rapidly escalated from our humble beginnings with 3 players and myself. We quickly moved up to five players, then six, and then one moved away so he was replaced by a new player. This kept us at six, and for me even that is bordering on too much to effectively handle, given the somewhat-sluggish nature of the game's system. It is clearly not meant to comfortably fit player groups greater than five.

Recently, I've had two more requests to join. Of these new potential players, I already told one that he could play (way back when we had 3 and needed more), the other was invited by another player and assured a spot, and regardless I still don't want to cut them both out. To make matters worse, my original player that moved away is potentially coming back home, which would bring me up to 9 players and 10 people at the table over all.

I don't pretend to have the mental wherewithal to handle this. I will tear all of my hair out before one encounter is finished -- assuming that it is even possible to finish one encounter under these circumstances.

Due to social dynamics of my group I will reiterate that I really don't want to cut anybody out. I've come up with five possible (reasonable) solutions to this problem:

1) Take one of my newcomers (one of them has some experience) and enlist him as a co-DM instead of a player. DM roles would then be split between us and the party would number at eight instead.

2) Split the campaign up into two. One of my current players has been itching to try on the DM hat and was in early planning stages for his own campaign; I'm thinking of just asking him to DM a branching campaign instead. In this scenario he and I would be dedicated DMs and likely also play in each others' games (in large part because he's very attached to his PC and wouldn't want to lose him). The upside is that no table will ever have more than five players (quite manageable I think) and players can switch groups between adventures, but the downside is that this is probably going to be pretty chaotic and difficult to coordinate.

I'm leaning most towards this one right now. I think it has a lot of potential, plus I like the prospect of actually playing versus being DM for a change. Between adventures maybe we could have gatherings of both groups, full party encounters (ala idea 1) for major battles... I don't know.

3) Like 2, only instead, two separate campaigns are had and there is no crossover between them. This keeps things a lot more organized but player groups become rigid this way and we tend to like the social gathering aspect of D&D.

4) Divvy up roles usually DM-only and assign them to players to both speed up combat and give them something to do; this includes the ever-popular "on-deck" initiative system for one player, giving others hit points to track, damage, etc. I'm on the fence about this because I know that whatever speed boost this provides will be nothing compared to the inevitable slowdown of trying to play with 9 PCs. I feel the game gets bogged down with 6... I can't even imagine nine.

5) Just tell the two new players they cannot play and we are overfilled as it is. Again, though, this is a last resort if nothing else pans out.

So, I'd really like to hear some thoughts. Which of these ideas (if any) seems like it will work, and if not, any suggestions on what we can try? Anybody else ever have a similar problem?

Thanks in advance!

PS: I'm not sure if this was the right place to put this but since I'm only really familiar with 4E and the combat slowdown appears to be one of its hallmarks, I put it here.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

My game did the same and we ended up splitting the group, option 2. A co-dm only helps so much, mostly when the party splits up in game.

That being said, a 9 player roster has its advantages..you are less likely to tpk or not have enough players for a session. You could use option 1 and use all the tips in Stalker0's Antigrind thread to streamline combat. Also, if a few of you new players don't pan out...you don't have to rebuild the group.

Sent from my SPH-M900 using Tapatalk

 

[S'mon]

4e often creaks with 6 players (even if players are doing the initiative count etc), 7 is a bad idea, 9 is ridiculous.

Two separate campaigns is a possibility, but raises the issue that people will want to play in both. Two separate PC groups in the same campaign world, allowing for crossovers but capped at 5 players per table, seems like the best approach.

You can do this with one DM running two groups. If using two DMs, I recommend using a published campaign world as this really helps keep things on the same page, Nentir Vale would work; so would Forgotten Realms etc. There must be plenty of liaison between the DMs, both will need to know normally-secret stuff about the others' plans, and indeed their PCs can potentially be enlisted to help further those plans. Each should have veto over any world-shaking plots (Time of Troubles, Spellplague, Rain of Colourless Fire), though lesser upsets like destroying a city or assassinating a monarch should be fine.

 

[S'mon]

Between adventures maybe we could have gatherings of both groups, full party encounters (ala idea 1) for major battles... I don't know.

IME this - bringing everyone together for an epic mass battle - can work as a change of pace; I've GM'd up to 14 players at once in 3e - the 2002 EN World gathering at Gencon UK - and it was doable, but SLOW. Do not expect to get through more than the one fight in a 4-5 hour session.

Tips for doing this:

Keep things dynamic - storms of arrows from offstage archers, bewildered minions wandering through kill zones, a mostly open battlefield with points of interest, not large amounts of difficult terrain.

Minions minions minions - most of the enemy should be minions. Have them appear in waves during the battle. Use a wide variety of minion levels. Use minions where you would normally use standards. On Sunday I ran a mass battle, most PCs 6th level; for the grunt ogres instead of 6th level standards I used 14th level minions; worked great. BTW I use a damage threshold of 1/2 level +5 to kill a minion, half that to bloody, which works extremely well.

Enemy champions should be mostly standard monsters, usually of equal or higher level than the PCs, use a decent number of them but 9 is too many. I think 6-7 including a single Elite BBEG is probably best. IME if you're piling on the minions, your PCs may have a lot of trouble focusing fire on non-minions in battlefield conditions, so Elites tend to last a long time.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I don't think the branching or splitting campaigns is so easy. How will you assign players to the different groups? What about players switching to the new group who learn that they like your DM style much more than the other guy's? Will you let them return to your game or tell them to stick with the new DM?

It's probably better to decline the new players and at the same time encourage the prospective new DM to start a campaign of his own and offer him these prospective players for his campaign. This solution would also offer you the possibility to play.

Another idea: implement the solution from my last paragraph and after several sessions start a "player exchange program".

 

[Riastlin]

Personally, I would go with option 2 that you described above. There is the potential conflict of players wanting to play in both games, but I think you just put your foot down on who is going to be in which game. Do this politely of course and just tell the players that the game is going to be way too hard to handle with 9 players. They should be fine with that, after all, as much as they like hanging with you and everyone else, they won't want to do it for long if the game becomes a drag.

The only other real option in my opinion is to incorporate a waiting list and tell the new players "sorry, but you'll have to wait for an opening". Its far from ideal I realize (which is why I prefer #2) but its better than running a bad campaign. One of my current campaigns is currently in this mode. Throughout the first year or so I had a lot of trouble keeping players (the game is played at the FLGS) and we had a pretty constant stream of player turnover and low attendance numbers. Now we are at a 7 player roster which usually works out ok because there is almost always 1 person at least who cannot attend. At the same time, I've had several requests to join as well and I just cannot imagine running the game with say 10 or 11 players. Fortunately, those asking have been cool about it, in large part because they likely agree that the game would drag with that many players. Nobody really wants to be in a campaign where they are hoping 3 or 4 people won't show up for a session so that the session can run smoothly.

On the bright side though, be thankful you have so many players wanting to play, no doubt your players are inviting people because they are having fun as well. Its much better to have too many players than not enough.

 

[Jhaelen]

That being said, a 9 player roster has its advantages..you are less likely to tpk or not have enough players for a session.

Yup. I had nine players in my 3e campaign but effectively there were rarely more than five or six players present at any given session.

Creating challenging encounters is, well, more challenging for a large party, though.

Also, combat can be very slow, particularly in the higher levels. But it can be done!

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I played in a campaign with seven regular players and it was pretty terrible. Everything slowed down and there was much more downtime in between each players' opportunity to act (both in combat and out of combat). One session we went up to ten players and it was one of the worst sessions I've ever played in.

I think your best bet is option 2 or 3. Characters switching groups in between adventures seems like it would get overly complicated but it is an interesting idea. I'd at least give it a try and if it becomes too complicated, I'd switch to more rigid parties.

 

[OnlineDM]

When I started my online game last July, interested parties posted right here on EN World. I wanted five players, but I figured that some people would flake out and not show up, so I recruited seven.

On the night of the game, eight players showed up (one of the seven brought his significant other). We played the one session with eight (which worked, but I wouldn't want to do it again) and then broke the group in two. I wanted to run a campaign that started at level 1, while some of the players preferred starting at level 6. So, three from that latter camp went off on their own to start a separate game.

Thus, I'd recommend option 2. Furthermore, I'm not sure that you really want two intertwined campaigns - it might be simpler to just keep them as separate games. As you acknowledge, it's probably already hard to coordinate schedules for seven people, let alone ten, so there are probably going to be weeks where group A can meet but group B can't. If this happens a few times, the parties are going to diverge in level, etc. Just have two separate groups, and maybe you can all get together from time to time to do something other than playing D&D.

 

[andy3k]

I recommend splitting the group.

That being said, I'm in a group that has 7-8 players. It is first level, so combat goes pretty quickly since people don't have many options to choose from. The higher the level, the more options each person has, and the longer they take for their turn. My level 22 epic game has so many powers, effects from equipment, effects and powers from Paths and Destinies, etc. that reacting to events, and choosing actions after the battle map situation just changed the turn before, can be daunting.

IF you want to keep everyone in one group, and even for smaller groups, I recommend the following game efficiency ideas:

1. Place a time limit on taking actions. Each person has 1 minute (or even 30 seconds) from the time you say "X, you're up" to state their first action. If they don't speak up in 60 or 30 seconds, you skip them or they are only allowed a basic attack. After their first action is resolved (move, standard, etc.), they have 60 or 30 seconds to state their next action, etc. Or you could just say, "You have 2 minutes to do everything you plan to do, then your time is up."

2. Require that everyone have power cards with all calculations written out (attack, dmg, etc.). Many people use Character Builder or other automated system, but many don't. Situational math will occur but no one should be looking up their powers in the player's handbook while at the table and no one should be recalculating their standard attack to hit every time their turn comes around.

3. If you are in Paragon or Epic, require that everyone have a sheet of paper with all possible modifiers written out for easier reference. For example, the sheet will say "On critical hit" and list all the extra damage, effects, other powers, etc. that might or will go off when there is a critical hit. Under "On stunned" they would list that magic item that lets them get out of a stun. Under "heal", a leader would already have a simple formula for their heal powers with all the extra hp and temp hp already added up. This way, players don't have to waste time searching through all the paperwork every time something unusual happens that allows for a response; they just check their quick sheet for possible responses and already-completed math.

4. End combat earlier. Intelligent creatures will often run for their lives or surrender if badly outnumbered. Use creatures with fewer hit points that deal more damage e.g. Monster Manual 3. Allow characters to destroy all those minion skeletons faster by skill challenging the Altar of Bones during combat.