Too many players!

[Crazy Jerome]

There is a knack for running large groups. I do it almost exclusively, and it can be done well. 4E is actually easier to manage than 3.* in this regard. There was a long topic about this very thing a few months back. I'll try to find it later. (Don't recall if it was here or in general.)

Main thing, though, is if you want to run for large groups (for social reasons), then you and the players must be willing to adapt to make it work. You can't run for nine the way you do for five and expect it to work.

So backing up a bit, the first thing I want to know is how attached everyone is to the current campaign and/or their characters? Also, how often do you play and how often will people show for each session?

Depending on the answers, there are many options. For example, you might find it very effective to all play at the same place, maybe even same or adjacent rooms, but run two different or overlapping campaigns when enough people show. If you've got another player or two interested in DMing, then you've got the basis for forming a dynamic gaming club. In a club, you might not always know what you are going to do when you arrive, but you know something fun will be happening. OTOH, if at any given session, you can often expect to have around 7 people, this may not work as well. That's large enough that you need to do some adapting for large groups, but not so large that splitting up every time is a good option, either. The "Co-DM" option is a better choice in that environment.

 

[IanB]

If you can manage the social dynamics (player X wants to play with player Y but doesn't really like player A, who refuses to play without player B who is married to player Y so they have to go together etc.) dividing the group into 2 is probably the sanest solution, that or just telling the other 2 you're just too overwhelmed with players, and encouraging the other guy who wants to DM to pick them first or something.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Splitting the group 'hard' (that is, you take 4 players, the new DM takes 4 players) makes the most sense. It wouldn't be easy, but it'd be fair. Now, if you have some players that are not interested in playing in both campaigns, it might take care of itself. But, unless you just 'split off' a new group, you're going to have a lot of relationship and scheduling stuff to deal with.

So, really, the most expedient thing to do is not take new players. Just tell them you're full. When someone becomes undependable or drops out, don't replace him right away. Wait until you're under 5 players before you start recruiting again.

D&D really works best with 4-6 players. Especially 4e, which lends itself to larger encounters (that is, more numerous enemies), combats just get very big and complex at 6 or more PCs - still potentially a lot of fun, but lengthy to resolve - and time between turns just grows beyond any reasonable player's attention span.

 

[eamon]

We also had a similar scenario, and will again soon - and we split the groups. Some players (those with more interest+time) play both groups. Playing with 6 players at anything but the lowest levels is simply slow. We play for about 3hours at a stretch, and even with just 5 players commonly don't manage more than 1 encounter (or 2 small ones), and it's nice to have at least some non-combat play too...

So, another vote for split. Ideally, you'd keep in contact, and you can even have a bit of crossover for fun, but heavily entwined campaigns sounds tricky - that'd take significant investment by both DM's and before attempting that I'd let the new DM cut his teeth first on a normal campaign (that's also good socially, so you don't get into an awkward situation with inter-DM hierarchy or whatever). Let him build his dream, and try the coordinated campaign later. Or play in the new DM's world if you really want to coordinate from day 1.

So, split and don't heavily connect storylines at first would be my preferred course of action in your situation.

 

[bargle0]

Option #2 is where it's at, especially if you can get the groups competing with each other, like in the story about The Head of Vecna. Obviously it can't be too contentious, since the player in one group will be the DM of the other group, but there's still a lot of potential here for some honest tension that might not otherwise come up in a single-group campaign.

 

[TheUltramark]

split the group

if you are able to, have two separate campaigns in the same setting.

My game doesn't have this luxury, but if you can play on separate nights, perfect! Then, once in a while as a "special edition" you could have crossovers for something different.

 

[lostingeneral]

Thanks for the replies guys. Looks like some kind of split is favoured, so I'm going to go with either 2 or 3, and in the meantime just tell the two new players (and other player) they'll have to wait until we've sorted everything out.

I'm going to talk it over with my players and we'll put something into action after our current adventure is finished, which should be in about a month. I would really like to split the campaign itself into two groups, but I see now that it might have been a bit of a lofty ideal and a lot of work - either to coordinate with another DM (and also reveal to him, as a PC, my precious plot ) or to do both groups myself (twice the work on a weekly basis).

 

[dray]

Our group sits at around 11 players, and our DM has long since decided to split the group into two parties. What often happens is that there will be one overarching quest (we had to infiltrate each of five or six temples in order to gain the items and knowledge required to defeat the final temple and gain an audience with a god, for example) and our DM had each party go to a different temple, where a co-DM would run the second group.

Sometimes we would be split into two groups in such a way that we were in the same-ish area, but were responsible for fulfilling different tasks: one group would be battling a particularly tricky monster while the second group would be racing through a trapped puzzle that would save their own lives and help to vanquish the monster in the next room. In these cases, the DM and co-DM would often just shout back and forth to one another any status changes that affected the other group.

More recently, our DM has made an overmap of his world, and some of the co-DM's have stepped up to be responsible for an entire continent. While the DM leads one group through a story-based campaign, the co-DM gets to try his or her hand at managing a smaller campaign. The general story is still loosely tied together (right now we're seeking different and rare parts for our characters' air ship all across the world) but the players are not required to stay in one group from week to week.

Generally speaking, our group is pretty laid back, so we'll determine if our group has a decent ratio of people playing defenders vs. leaders vs. strikers vs. controllers and go from there. Players can decide if they want to be on the same side from week to week (usually we want to see how the story ends, so we stay!) but there have been times when we've been debating about how to divide up and a player will say, "glasses vs no glasses!" or "boys vs girls!" and things surprisingly tend to work out!

All in all, if you go with splitting a party up, dropping a tie-in between what the two parties are doing (even if it's pretty thin) will help to keep the game working. We have had to sacrifice the believableness for when characters show up if players haven't been around for a few weeks, or if someone switches groups, but our DM's tend to make some amusing rejoinder or other to loosely tie that in.

Good luck! I hope that you manage to find a tenable solution!

 

[lostingeneral]

Cool insight, thanks. I was wondering how a system like that would actually work.

Question, then - are your co-DMs players as well? Or are they just like otherwise-uninvolved guests? If they're players, how do they deal with playing while being exposed to the yet-unrevealed plot? I'd have to imagine that they wouldn't really "feel" the same as players who don't do the DM thing.

 

[Jhaelen]

I always like to play on line games.

Cool! And I always like to report spammers!