Lwaxy
Cute but dangerous
After recently having had surprisingly little trouble in bringing two small groups seemingly incompatible together for a new campaign, I now face the opposite issue.
Over the last 6 years, it has somehow happened that my co-GM and me assembled a group of 14 players. Friends brought friends, a temporary turned to a full group member, someone's son who at first just did the hirelings got a PC etc and so we've come to a point where doing a campaign is getting difficult.
As this is online, it is partly a time zone issue. But the main problem is giving every PC enough focus. We've split the party in game a lot, of course, like with most big parties, to allow for side adventures and promote the differences in the PCs. But most of it was done as a group, more than in any other large groups I saw.
Now the PCs have grown to a point where, at about the equivalent of level 11 - 15 (we play levelless) , it's hard to run them as a group and giving everyone enough options. The last campaign was a modification of Age of Worms and at the end rather stressful to run, even when both GMs were online - which usually wasn't the case.
Thing is, the players are not willing to split up, mainly because their PCs often wouldn't have a reason to campaign if not for one of the other PCs. The halfling thief-assassin in employ of the king usually got the missions for all of them, the magician is dependent on the thief-assassin due to weird circumstances resulting in an illegal spell, the bard is in love with the magician, the dwarf fighter in honor debt to the bard, the orc shaman has orders to watch the dwarf and try to find out where the dwarf's father has hidden a holy object his tribe wants back, the halfling scout has sworn to watch out for his "evil" cousin the thief-assassin ... it goes on like that. We've never noticed before how all the connections really come together. Everyone has at least 2 obligations involving the other PCS.
So, not wanting to destroy the story and not wanting to deal with 14 players (well, usually about 12 are online at once) anymore, I thought of making 2 groups and allowing PCs to switch groups between adventures if they want to, with the story of the world connecting them. But there is the issue of timing it, even when I split up the party with some groups, one part of the story usually runs faster.
Has anyone tried this before? Any other ideas maybe?
Over the last 6 years, it has somehow happened that my co-GM and me assembled a group of 14 players. Friends brought friends, a temporary turned to a full group member, someone's son who at first just did the hirelings got a PC etc and so we've come to a point where doing a campaign is getting difficult.
As this is online, it is partly a time zone issue. But the main problem is giving every PC enough focus. We've split the party in game a lot, of course, like with most big parties, to allow for side adventures and promote the differences in the PCs. But most of it was done as a group, more than in any other large groups I saw.
Now the PCs have grown to a point where, at about the equivalent of level 11 - 15 (we play levelless) , it's hard to run them as a group and giving everyone enough options. The last campaign was a modification of Age of Worms and at the end rather stressful to run, even when both GMs were online - which usually wasn't the case.
Thing is, the players are not willing to split up, mainly because their PCs often wouldn't have a reason to campaign if not for one of the other PCs. The halfling thief-assassin in employ of the king usually got the missions for all of them, the magician is dependent on the thief-assassin due to weird circumstances resulting in an illegal spell, the bard is in love with the magician, the dwarf fighter in honor debt to the bard, the orc shaman has orders to watch the dwarf and try to find out where the dwarf's father has hidden a holy object his tribe wants back, the halfling scout has sworn to watch out for his "evil" cousin the thief-assassin ... it goes on like that. We've never noticed before how all the connections really come together. Everyone has at least 2 obligations involving the other PCS.
So, not wanting to destroy the story and not wanting to deal with 14 players (well, usually about 12 are online at once) anymore, I thought of making 2 groups and allowing PCs to switch groups between adventures if they want to, with the story of the world connecting them. But there is the issue of timing it, even when I split up the party with some groups, one part of the story usually runs faster.
Has anyone tried this before? Any other ideas maybe?
