PDA

View Full Version : Big parties.



GoatToucher
2009-07-23, 09:06 PM
Hey.

Everybody I game with is in their early to mid thirties, and riddled with delicious children, so get-together time is at a premium. Accordingly, to accommodate everyone, our parties tend to be seven or eight strong.

Alot of the party sizes I read about on here tend toward four or five. How big are your parties?

NPCMook
2009-07-23, 09:12 PM
Currently our group is about 9-10 people, needless to say our BBEG is screwed...

Combat takes some time and several people of the group tend to commment a bit to much on other characters, my warforged being one of them, but combat tends to be rather large every session resulting in nice battles. This how ever does have the draw back of battles taking to long thus we lose take longer to level than most other smaller groups. We've been playing 4e for about a year now and are only level 8...

Assassin89
2009-07-23, 09:15 PM
I once played in a party that had six, but usually the group size varies, and most of the time it is four or five.

sonofzeal
2009-07-23, 09:26 PM
1) More enemies, not more powerful ones. Yes, it creates a bit more bookkeeping. But even though an 8-man party can in theory handle something 2 CR higher, half of them won't be able to affect it, and individual lethality will rise even if group chance of success remains the same.

2) Streamline. Get a card for every player, and write down their relevant attributes. AC, hp, saves, Spot/Listen, int, ability scores, all the basic stuff that you might need to ask. You don't want the whole character sheet, but having the most commonly-asked pieces of info right in front of you speeds things along tremendously, and you can make notes on the cards too as needed.

3) Seating arrangements. You're going to lose track of whose turn it is at some point, and time will be wasted getting things straight. One approach is as follows: at the beginning of the session, have everyone roll 3d6 plus their initiative score, and trade seats accordingly until they're all in order. I'd use 3d6 instead of 1d20, because it's less random and reduces the chance of the dwarf randomly going ahead of the halfling rogue in every single fight. You could even just take the rolling straight out of it, but a little randomness does help. I've never had a player complain about keeping the same initiative score between battle, and it'll save a good 5 minutes every fight and reduce a lot of mental tracking for you if you set it up this way.

4) OMG RANDOM NINJAS! One of the biggest problems of large groups is that they'll get mired in discussion. Let them, it's less work for you, but the moment you see any of the quieter players looking bored, throw something random at the party. Maybe something aerial flies by, maybe something burrows up through the ground, maybe ninjas jump through the window. These fights should be low on the risk/reward end of the spectrum, they only have to get the party up and active again, but sometimes they can spawn good plot hooks.

Raltar
2009-07-23, 09:37 PM
I've been playing in a PBP game for I think it's going on 4 years now. When we first started, we had like, 15 people. Since then, interest has dropped off for many leaving us with 8(if my counting isn't off).

Tharivol123
2009-07-23, 09:43 PM
I had a group of 12, yes 12, at one time. We ended up breaking into parties of four, with each group seeking their own part of the overall quest (think a Final Fantasy style setting where there are X number of quests to take care of, so we gave each group a third of the quests). Group one would game one weekend, group two the next, group three the next, then week four we would get all three groups together to get our next assignments and discuss new party arrangements.
In place of a BBEG, we had a BBE-Committee, and the final showdown ran four six-hour long game sessions, with total destruction of the bad guys and only three survivors on our side. Sadly, the two Clerics were not among them, nor was the only arcane caster with access to wish (stupid Sorcerer who didn't take it, despite our recomendations).
As for solutions to the large party, what other posters have suggested. Through the same type of monsters at them, just make it more of them. Also, just my opinion, don't be afraid to through in a massive epic-style battle at them that would push a group of four to the limit.

Edit: I like the random ninja idea if they are taking to long in discussing things. We had something similar in our game when we spent almost two hours arguing whether or not we were going to take the obvious plot hook. DM got sick of us ignoring it (we were supposed to ambush an army of mooks approaching the city) that he had them launch the attack while we were arguing.

Elderac
2009-07-23, 09:45 PM
I have GM'd a party with as much as 10 characters. Right now, I have 6 in my one 4E campaign I am running (my own world), 5 (soon to be 6) in my 4E Eberron game, and 4 (sometimes up to 6) in my Star Wars Saga Edition game.

I have found that 6 is about the optimum party size. Of course, I am also running games on-line. If I were in a different situation, I would try to accomodate as many as wanted to play, even if the meant running two different groups on different nights.

warrl
2009-07-28, 04:44 PM
The campaign we just finished usually had 9 players, and peaked briefly at 11. The group was divided into two parties for a while (in fact when I joined the game) but that was in response to a specific situation and we rejoined well before the end - actually in the middle of the first battle my character was in.

I disagree that initiative is hard to deal with in that large a party, but there are a few things that are merely a good idea with small parties and become near-essential by the time you have 9 PCs and a half dozen (categories of) NPCs.

They are:
1) Someone other than the DM builds the initiative list and keeps track of whose turn it is. This is quite possibly the easiest single task for a DM to delegate to someone else, and it makes things flow much more smoothly.
2) That person uses a written list. Pencil and paper will do, or get fancy according to that person's preference - as long as it actually works. Oh, and make sure all the NPCS (categories and special individuals) are on it. They are the ones most easily forgotten.
3) Have a clear understanding what to do if a player's turn comes up when that player is temporarily unavailable. It doesn't really matter what the rule is so long as the person tracking turns knows it well and everybody else has at least a fairly clear idea.
4) Treat mooks as categories, rather than individuals. The eight halfling archers have one initiative roll among them and, when it's their turn, progress from left to right.

I suspect that miniatures or good substitutes are also more important with large groups than with small groups, but I have no experience with large groups in combat *without* miniatures/substitutes so I can't say for sure.

Berserk Monk
2009-07-28, 05:00 PM
My parties are usually 5 or 6. I once was in a 7 person group (not counting the DM) but that's the most I've even been with.

Freejack451
2009-07-28, 06:01 PM
Many moons ago I ran a WOD 1st edition with Vampire, Werewolf, and Ghoul characters. In total I had 14 people. Good notes before you start are a must. Nip the everyone talking at once problem in the bud before it starts by implementing a turn taking rule of some sort. Also, if all else fails be able to accept that you will be free forming a lot, and that some dice rolling maybe for appearances. And last but not least, have some sort of headache reliever handy for when its over. I always found Goodies powders worked best.

Freejack

Glyde
2009-07-28, 10:02 PM
Our biggest party is ten strong. Yes you saw that right. TEN.

And it's a blast to play. OOC chatter happens a lot more, sure, but it's still a good time all around. Combats can be made larger and the DM can have more fun making things more difficult than he normally would (Most of the players dont tend to optimize well.)

Lets see if I can list this properly...

Fighter/mage, Rogue, Cleric, Cleric/Mage/MysticTheurge, Variant Ninja (found on these boards), Warblade/Bard, Ranger, Barbarian, Fighter and a diviner cohort (Who's probably going to die soon. She's a love interest so that stuff tends to happen.)

Raewyn
2009-07-28, 10:31 PM
Our biggest party is ten strong. Yes you saw that right. TEN.

My party goes up to eleven. :smalltongue:

Seriously, we're at 11 players (not including the DM). The players are wonderful... with two exceptions.

... Better stop this before I start ranting. >_<

Sinfire Titan
2009-07-28, 10:35 PM
Largest party I had?


Resulted in a 1400 post PBP recruiting thread. Twice, seeing as this version is a repost of the original on Gleemax. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=786.0)



And if real life didn't hate me, I would have finished the entire thing. Instead, some of the game started flopping and my RL got into a tangled mess due to a divorce (my parents).

Still, what got finished was a damn-near epic piece of work. Looking back provides me a lot of inspiration.

Thurbane
2009-07-29, 09:08 PM
Back in our 1E days (before anyone had kids and mortgages) our group peaked at 11, with 8 being the average.

Our current [3.5] group is 6.

1) Someone other than the DM builds the initiative list and keeps track of whose turn it is. This is quite possibly the easiest single task for a DM to delegate to someone else, and it makes things flow much more smoothly.
2) That person uses a written list. Pencil and paper will do, or get fancy according to that person's preference - as long as it actually works. Oh, and make sure all the NPCS (categories and special individuals) are on it. They are the ones most easily forgotten.
My group uses the Game Mastery dry erase Initiaitive Tracker. While not absolutely neccessary, it comes in very handy. And yes, tracking initiative is delegated to a player. :smallwink: