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Lord Il Palazzo
2012-04-30, 04:12 PM
After two months of my usual group not being able to meet for various reasons, it looks like the stars have aligned and I'll have a chance to DM a one-shot adventure for seven players. I've never had more than five players at once before and have only been DMing for about five or six months so I'm a bit intimidated.

It seems like DMing for a group that big is largely going to come down to keeping the game focused and planning an adventure and encounters that will run at a fairly brisk pace so it doesn't drag. What else should I know if I'm going to pull this off with minimal frustration on everyone's part (especially my own)?

Deathslayer7
2012-04-30, 09:38 PM
Try to roll initiative, spot/listen/search checks before hand so you know immediately if they see or fail to see the monster. Sometimes it is even easier for the entire group to go and than the entire monster group to go. That way you aren't waiting on someone to cast a spell or something.

Note that delays and some such don't ruin this, but do make it more complicated to use this method.

Because of so many players, you may wish to increase the amount of monsters and or DC's to spot such monsters. Otherwise PC's will just have extra action economy over the monsters and should win relatively easily. You may also wish to give monsters max hp or something as well or in addition to more monsters.

Make sure everyone is hit and not just one person is targeted. Do what is most logical but again refrain from targeting one person.

If you have maps and miniatures, I strongly suggest using them. It is really hard to do online combat otherwise.

valadil
2012-05-01, 10:23 AM
This topic comes up a lot so I've collected my thoughts on the matter in my GMing blog: http://gm.sagotsky.com/?p=225

It's mostly about running combat efficiently since I think that's where big games really slow down. The two biggest suggestions are to designate a rules lawyer (as this will keep the rules lawyer off your back and keep the newb questions from ever reaching you) and to get the attention of the next player when the current player starts his turn.

Magesmiley
2012-05-01, 03:03 PM
Having run games with as many as 10-11 players, it can be a big chore. As previously mentioned, you've really got to keep combat moving. I usually draft some of the players to help keep things going. Some tricks that I use:

1. Get a chart or whiteboard to keep track of initiative. Make sure that it can be seen by everyone at the table. Put a player at the far end of the table in charge of it (including notifying who is coming up).
2. If someone is taking too long when it becomes their turn in deciding what they are doing I simply say... "Ok, you're delaying. Next."
3. Notecards. I use notecards of different colors to help me keep track of things. Some folks prefer a laptop, but notecards seem to work for me.
4. Use something physical to help keep track of what spells people are affected by. Markers for the miniatures, cards in front of the players, whatever works for you. There's too many things going on to remember who is under the effect of which spell.
5. Very clear miniatures or tokens to keep track of enemies, obstacles, and other things. Being able to quickly match up who the players are fighting during a messy battle is important.

Other considerations:
1. Lots of actions. Actions are in some respects the ultimate resource constraint that players have. They're going to have a bunch more than usual, which can open up some unusual strategies.
2. When balancing encounters, try to resist the urge to simply throw more powerful creatures, unless you are ok with increasing PC fatalities. More creatures of a better type works better.
3. Try to have encounters that work with different playstyles and character types. This is really important - if one character shines all of the time, the others will note it, and adjust their future play accordingly, to the detriment of your game.

Lord Il Palazzo
2012-05-02, 10:57 AM
Thanks for the suggestions. Those are all good ideas. Miniatures shouldn't be a problem. My group typically uses Scrabble tiles and all of my players for this session will have different first initials so that's easy (we usually use the characters' initials, but with this being a one-shot, I won't know all of the characters' names until the last minute and won't have much time to learn all seven names.)

I'm probably going to institute some kind of time limit for turns. I'm thinking of either 30 or 45 seconds to act before you action gets delayed by one initiative position. (One of my players has never played before so he may get a little leeway at first.)

My biggest worries are keeping the game balanced and keeping everyone engaged. I'm thinking that I might try for a kind of open ended goal (something like "a notorious bandit leader is passing through town, track him down and arrest or kill him") to give the players a chance to do things how they want with whatever characters they bring to the table. Does anyone with more experience have any idea how well this might tend to work?

Another idea was to have a some party members with different goals than the rest to let the players themselves provide a some of the engagement and tension. (Using the above scenario, a couple of the PCs might work for the bandit and be sabotaging the bounty hunters from within, or some of the PCs might have specific reasons to want the bandit alive while others have specific reasons to want him dead.) Has anyone ever run this kind of game? Any tips or advice on making it work? (Or dire warnings not to try it?)

Ghost49X
2012-05-02, 03:18 PM
Personally I've played games with big groups and keeping the flow going was the main challenge, that being said last time I did have more than 7 people I had a DM helper asisting me and it did a world of a difference. While I narrated the story he focused on book keeping and stats, for combat we split the duties with who controlled which monster and so on. This did not play as a player in the game but rather remained 100% on the DM's side of the table

Ghost49X
2012-08-04, 10:24 AM
On an update I recently went from DM-helper to full co-DM, our group went from 7 to 12 and instead of just helping move things around we splintered the story and both DMs are working together to keep the campaign setting and timeline cohesive.

It's working out great!

Rallicus
2012-08-04, 11:15 AM
Seven players isn't too bad. I've only been a part of a large group like this once, but it ended pretty abruptly. Twenty minutes in we opted to go get drunk instead, because there was just too much down time.

Only thing I can really remember is that my friend brought a real claymore with him and started posing with it half way through the session.

The key is to keep players involved. If you don't, they might start posing with a claymore for no reason. Undoubtedly some of your players will be less involved or more shy when it comes to the game, so if you see someone sort of drifting off and getting less and less involved, provide them with something no matter how trivial. "A shady looking man shifts through the crowd near you, Shy Guy," stuff like that.

Also, the DM assistant thing sounds like it could be pretty helpful.