Large parties. Or; How to Keep Your Sanity?

[Reynard]

So, I'm currently in the midst of a Ravenholm campaign as a player, and it's very likely that I'm going to be stepping up the the DM's plate when we -one way or the other- finish it.

The reason for that is simple. There's a lot of us. 8 players, currently, with that dropping to 7 whenever our Paladin dies or finds a plausible reason to leave, his player becoming bored/frustrated at the many problems that have sprung from our number.

So, I want to be prepared, at least as much as I can be. Does the playground have any recommendations for adventures/modules that I can build off of or modify to suit this many people? Or alternate ways of coping with it?

Current thoughts are running RHoD nearly straight, just bumping up the monster numbers and giving assorted minibosses more minions, or splitting the party into two groups dealing with the hobgoblin menace after arriving in their own ways. Say one group gets involved as stated in the book, with the ambush en route to the Keep, while another is there after being hired/contacted by one of the factions knocking about, such as the Elves or the Ghostlord (probably anonymously, in that case).

Another was just planning some plot points dotted around a stretch of Faerun, tie them loosely together with magical plot-string, then watching in mild horror and severe disbelief as the players have their way with it.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Posting to say that I *will* be sharing my experiences with this. I currently DM a party of 11, and have for the last 9 months. What I have to say, however, will be too arduous a task on a phone.

[Azoth]

Personally, upping the number of enemies and using constricting envirnments can help in combat. So can using monster abilities wisely. A Dryad and lowly cr3 can take 2 players out the fight with decent accuracy before they even realizd what is going on. Once they figure it out, pop off entangle and slow down the others as you rain death with some arrows. Things go south...bolt and use tree shape. Once they give up the search...come out of it and start again.

If they target your sacred oak...have a few assassin vines(also CR3) planted around it. Leave them inactive until the PCs get in range and BAM...down go the squishies.

Tactical use abilities is key. You will get hosed in action economy unless you want combat to come to a crawl by swarming them with countless grunts.

[Reynard]

Any other advice people willing to share? I really don't want to screw this up, since it'll be a nice break for our current DM who's led most of our group through their first experience with D&D.

[Hanuman]

Kill players regularly.

You don't need to DM 8 at a time all the time, have some working on their characters next session.

Read Book of Challenges supplement on how to do this appropriately (start at How to Use This Book).

[Golden Ladybug]

I disagree with the above; playing a lethal game isn't sustainable, it just starts the DM/Player Arms Race, in my experience.

My first campaign with my current group was a rather large step up of my comfort zone of 3-4 players, with 8 also, and it had a bit of a learning curve. Action Economy is brutal, so if you want a meaningful battle to occur, you either need a lot of enemies for them to fight, or a way of neutralising that advantage. The two biggest and most challenging fights my players had were against a band of 80 Mooks with shortbows in conditions that limited their options to fight back, with a bruiser who just wouldn't go down keeping their attention on them (which forced them to blow a teleport scroll to get out alive, even though each individual mook could be killed with even the weakest attacks they could throw out) and the other was against a lone Kython Impaler, with the terrain working completely in the Kython's favour.

Modify your monsters; they're going to need more HP, better Saves, more HD. They simply won't stand up to the weight of numbers otherwise.

Don't let someone play a Summoner, or a Necromancer. The time it takes to resolve a round of combat ends up eating a large chunk of the session otherwise. I learnt that the hard way.

However, combat is probably the thing that was most simple. You just need to aim for a different target area to get it right. Roleplay, if that is a major part of the games you run, becomes incredibly difficult when you have so many people around the table. Individual roleplay becomes a hassle, and your players are going to want to skip over it, so as not to hold the rest of the group up. People are going to be impatient, because everything takes so loooooong, so people are going to want to hurry through things.

Feelings will be hurt, tempers will flare. With so many people, it can't help but happen.

Make sure that you're happy with what game you're running, and the character's they're playing. Having to deal with so many people makes you burnout so much faster. Don't be afraid of calling off a session and breaking out some board games instead, if that's what you need to be able to function.

Also, if you can, try to stop arguments before they happen. One of the biggest issues I've had was between a few of my players, one of which who always takes a very long time to get to the point of whatever he was saying. This annoyed most people, who wanted him to hurry it up, and it left him feeling like no one cared what he had to say. Personality clashes are going to happen, and you're going to need to find a way of dealing with that, if you want to keep the game together.

Being the DM just gets harder and harder the more people there are, but the best things you can do are the same as if you're DMing for 1 or 2. Make sure everything is ready, try to make sure everyone is enjoying themselves and keep a large number of dice within easy reach :smallwink:

[Lonely Tylenol]

The reason for that is simple. There's a lot of us. 8 players, currently, with that dropping to 7 whenever our Paladin dies or finds a plausible reason to leave, his player becoming bored/frustrated at the many problems that have sprung from our number.

So, I want to be prepared, at least as much as I can be. Does the playground have any recommendations for adventures/modules that I can build off of or modify to suit this many people? Or alternate ways of coping with it?

OK, this is from my experience running a group of 10-11 players for the last 9 months:

1) Know your players' abilities. It is easy to step on the toes of another in a crowded room. If you have 8 players, and three of them are any combination of Marshal, Bard, Dragon Shaman, or Truenamer, and four of the remainder are a Factotum, a Rogue, a Spellthief, and a Ranger, then you're going to have a few problems letting individual differences shine through (although it is possible; this group is particularly homogenous, but there are a number of ways to make a Factotum stand out from a Ranger). Suggest different strategies for each player; if players are intent on working toward the same strategy, suggest different builds for going at it (that best fit the players' needs; don't suggest something that is rubbish by comparison). This will give the players the opportunity to feel like they stand out in a sea of their own peers. For example, in my 3.5/PF E6 game, I currently have the following group makeup:
1) Elf Bardic Knack Bard 4/Swiftblade 2 (I moved Haste to a second-level spell for this character, whose concept was a speed-based melee fighter)
2) Half-Elf Scout 3/Ranger 2/Ferocity Barbarian 1 (mobility-based hybrid melee/ranged fighter)
3) Goliath Whirling Frenzy Bear Totem Barbarian 4/Warblade 1/Beastmaster 1 (Bear cavalry (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H2DePAZe2gA/SGPHEzzPIzI/AAAAAAAAC28/qAs1X6BdR1s/s400/BearCavalry.jpg), also spiked chain fighter)
4) Grippli Spontaneous Cloistered "Cleric" 6 (using every aspect of the Favored Soul's spellcasting mechanics on the Cloistered Cleric body)
5) Human Shadowcaster 6 (stealth-based shadow-themed assassin-type)
6) Human Warblade 6 (gestalt Wizard 4, per epic feats; started as your typical greatsword adept, who developed a taste for magic)
7) Half-Elf Swashbuckler 3/Sneak Attack Thug Fighter 3 (Daring Outlaw, playing a bizarre mix of Batman and Don Quixote, two-weapon heavy)
8) Elf Rogue 3/Spellthief 1/Swordsage 1/Assassin 1 (the *other* stealth-based shadow-themed assassin-type)
9) Halfling Kineticist Psion 6 (what's on the tin)
10) Human Whirling Frenzy Barbarian 5 (what's on the tin; greatsword fighter)
11) Dwarf Fighter 2/Whirling Frenzy Barbarian 2 (with some Dragon Magazine variant I can't remember the name of)/Crusader 1 (unarmed striker)

With the following other characters either inactive or gone:
12) Half-Drow Kensai Magus 6 (Scythe-wielding gish-in-a-can; player left for college, intends to play between semesters)
13) Human Warlock 5 (what's on the tin; player was visiting from the east coast)
14) Goliath Summoner 3 (eidolon-focused summoner; player death, player is now running the Psion above)
15) Alchemist 3 (an... Alchemist)
16) Magus 2 (bastard sword-using blaster gish)

A *lot* of similar concepts involved here (for instance, there are 9 melee strikers listed here including the gishes, 10 if you count the hybrid melee/ranged), so I had to work to incorporate different build choices, feat selections, ACFs, etc. to make each character mechanically unique enough that there don't appear to be toes stepped on. (A couple characters have shifted toward each other somewhat, mostly by copying from each other.) The best example of this would, I suppose, be the two shadow-themed stealth-based assassin-types; for one, I offered more of a casting bent, with Umbral Touch and Arrow of Dusk acting as weapons of choice, and for the other, Shadow Hand maneuvers help to create the feel with some semblance of mechanical relevance.

2) Don't be afraid to let some players shine. More importantly than just feeling unique is feeling unique and useful; if your trick is swinging from the chandeliers and descending on your enemy from two stories up, then once in awhile, incorporate rooms with high ceilings and low-hanging chandeliers.
On a larger scale, though, you have to also be willing to adapt to more diverse roles. The likelihood increases with each added player that you'll have more than one stealth-based character, for instance (I myself wound up with three); that means that, were you to run a game with no stealth element whatsoever, you would be leaving more than one character out of the lurch, which is no fun. Of course, if you have three players of eight with a stealth focus, and you run an exclusively stealth mission (or sub-mission), then you have five people sitting on their hands for that mission. This is why you...

3) Do not be afraid to split the party. If you have a significant number of people with a stealth component, and a number of people with a combat component, split them up; let the stealth people have their stealth mission, and the combat people have their combat mission. If they need to storm a castle, maybe the sneaks could help by climbing the towers, taking out the night watch, and raising the gate so they can get in unassailed? If you have people with a face component, perhaps they can run a gambit or distract a mark at a gala, while the rest of the group investigates their involvement in a smuggling ring (or searches for materials with which to extort the NPC)? If done right, such a task can create multiple layers of involvement, and the entire game's various components become like a puzzle that the players need to come together to assemble.

4) Throw all pretenses of conventional balance out the window. If you want to create balanced but challenging encounters, you need to know your party (#1) and you can split the group (#3) to make things easier, but ultimately, if you have eight people kicking down the door, it's just not the same as four. As a general rule, if you want to use the CR system, I would add 1 to the CR of a "normal" encounter for every two players above four that you have (so an encounter with 8 party members of level 5 should have, on average, about CR 7). This is also (somewhat) consistent with XP awards (as an encounter with a CR 2 higher gives twice as much experience, and you will be dividing the encounter's experience between twice as many people). This rule is a functional jumping-off point for anyone for whom the CR system is perfect and balanced, which is next to nobody, and I recommend you don't use it as a rule with which to live by, but mainly as a beginning reference point. You're also going to need to know how and why the system begins to break down especially at a larger table, and for that, you will need to know how to...

5) Differentiate. In the field of education (in which I am a senior pursuing accreditation, so roll with me here), there are four key elements of differentiation:
Acceleration: Acceleration focuses on taking a single concept or strategy and developing it to a more advanced state. The closest D&D analogue I can think of would be a flat increase in the CR of an individual creature; for example, if you were originally going to throw a single CR 1 wolf at a party of four level 1 players, throwing a single CR 3 dire wolf at a party of 8 instead. At low levels, this is how you kill players. The game is simply too swingy to try to differentiate with single badass creatures, because that +8 hit bonus for 2d8+7 (average 16) from that ogre is likely to insta-gib three or four of your level 1 party, and that's not fun (unless that's the type of game you're running, in which case, yes, it can be fun). After level 3, this becomes a much more sane and reasonable method for increasing the challenge without being the homicidal DM.
Complexity: Complexity focuses primarily on taking a single concept and applying it in conjunction with any number of other concepts (in order to make connections between these concepts). The D&D analogue of this would, to me, be introducing multiple enemies, perhaps with some more complex strategy (with various levels, depending on the party). This would be taking that same CR 1 wolf against four first-level adventurers from above, and throwing in a second CR 1 wolf (for a total of CR 3)... And then having the wolves surround a player (or players) and use flanking tactics. This will be your bread and butter for most encounters (as increasing the number of enemies, typically through doubling, is going to be the easiest way of changing the scope of a challenge without rewriting the world or screwing up the balance or anything).
Depth: Depth involves increasing the, well, depth in which a topic is explored. In D&D, I would say that this relates the most to how themes are built between encounters, and how strategy and exposition are employed over the course of multiple encounters; depth might, for example, involve having to make the difficult choice between saving a bus load of schoolchildren, or the woman you love.
Novelty: Novelty concerns itself primarily with how the student approaches the solving of a unique problem. This is where, I feel, that bizarre and unique abilities of monsters (or creatures with class levels) can come into play. Novelty would be, to use the wolf example, having two wolves that, when cornered, howl out, calling other wolves within earshot to their aid (hopefully the players learn quickly not to corner a wolf). More commonly, I think novelty would be using unique abilities (such as the Color Spray ability of the Corollax, and the Retributive Aura of the Jovoc) to adjust the scope of the encounter. Novelty is my personal favorite, actually, as it allows you to completely turn the preconceived notions of how an encounter is resolved on their head, and force the players to really think.
Pick one or two of these at a time and apply them. If you take a single wolf designed for four first-level adventurers, put it against eight, and then turn it into two dire wolves who cry out for help every time one dies, you will TPK. Even if you don't, applying all strategies all the time somewhat kills the diversity of it.
6) Seriously, know your players' abilities. I have copies of every character's sheet (past and present), and stat blocks of every character (at least, the important things, like AC, full/touch/flat, saves, Spot/Listen/Sense Motive/Knowledge modifiers, special senses, and the like) on flash cards with their character name, initiative and HP written on the front. There is seldom anything I don't know about the character better than the player itself. This speeds up play immensely.
7) Apply speed-of-play strategies wherever necessary (wherever you can). The one-hour combat round is a terrifying reality in large tables only if you let it be. Initiative cards help the speed-of-play in combat. Get a timer; if the player can't act in a minute, skip them and move to the next in initiative. Have a "quiet please" sign for when you are giving descriptions (as the DM) so that you don't have to talk over side conversations or repeat your description of a room, character or activity (and then enforce it; I'll leave it up to you to decide how). Better yet, have a symbol or artifact of some sort that a player can hold, that gives them precedence in speech or conversation (but don't be stingy with it). Larger tables are just generally louder and more unwieldy, so this is something you have to specifically plan for.

There are probably a million other things I'm forgetting, but let's start here.

Any questions?

[Reynard]

Thanks for the large posts, Ladybug and Tylenol. A lot of what you talked about I had picked up on from watching how our current DM is coping with our group (or in the case of Ladybug's post, how our group is handling our group), but there were a few new things for me in there. The flashcards in particular seem like a very good idea.

Couple of questions to Tylenol (or whoever wants to answer them, really):

1: Would you reccomend coming up with my own original adventure/campaign, or modifying an existing one such as RHoD to suit the increased numbers?

2: In a party of this size, it's fairly likely that most roles (or rather, Being Good at Certain Important Thing) will be filled. But in the event that there's a gaping, obvious hole in the party, should I lean on people to fill it, or let them use their superiour numbers and posible ingiuity to deal with it?

[TheTick]

The Red Hand of Doom Handbook talks in part about running it for 8 characters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171284), and includes a lot of monster/opponent improvement tips. Could be a considerable advantage for you if you choose to run that.

[Novawurmson]

All respect to Lonely Tylenol who sounds like he is doing a much better job with 11 players than I do with 3, but I highly recommend trying to limit your group to 4 people if at all possible. The first few campaigns I ran all had 6-8 people, and I was drowning as a DM. Then I played in a campaign that had 3 people and had a change of heart - my current campaign is small, and I plan on keeping it that way.

Less people means:
1. Less personality conflicts
2. Less scheduling conflicts
3. More time for each player
4. More time for the party to come to a consensus

Obviously, 1. and 2. are more dependent on your group's drama levels and the homogeneity of your schedules, but overall I find DMing for a small group is better. See if you can split into two groups of 3-4 players and a DM, with occasional big-group meet-ups.

[ahenobarbi]

I have never DMed a campaign with more than 4 players but as a player I was in campaigns that had more than 6-7 players (including DM). Those campaigns either failed or split the group.

As Lonely Tylenol example shows it's possible to run such campaigns but it [probably] requires a lot of dedication and skill on DMs part (to give everyone opportunity to have fun, know what's going on, prepare something that'll work for non-standard group, ...) and other players part (basically understanding that you'll get less attention and not wasting time).

So if it's an option split your group. This worked very well for my current group (we were split by intuition, taking into account preferred alignment, player age, role play capability and system mastery). If that's not an option you probably can make it work, but [cut - I have no personal experience, you'd probably read LT's post[s]]

[ahenobarbi]

1: Would you reccomend coming up with my own original adventure/campaign, or modifying an existing one such as RHoD to suit the increased numbers?

Are you experienced DM? If not you're probably better off using ready module - as TheTick suggested RHoD has suggestions for running it for larger groups, it could save you a lot of problems.

If you are experienced DM... you're not experienced with large groups - why not try using something ready to get the feel of it :smallsmile:


2: In a party of this size, it's fairly likely that most roles (or rather, Being Good at Certain Important Thing) will be filled. But in the event that there's a gaping, obvious hole in the party, should I lean on people to fill it, or let them use their superiour numbers and posible ingiuity to deal with it?

You'd do good to point it to them "guys... you have no one to deal serious damage so it will be harder for you" but don't try players into roles - it is likely to make player forced to play something they didn't want enjoy game less.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Thanks for the large posts, Ladybug and Tylenol. A lot of what you talked about I had picked up on from watching how our current DM is coping with our group (or in the case of Ladybug's post, how our group is handling our group), but there were a few new things for me in there. The flashcards in particular seem like a very good idea.

You're welcome. :smallsmile: The flash cards came to me early (before it became obvious I was going to have a large group), and they have proved indispensable.


Couple of questions to Tylenol (or whoever wants to answer them, really):

1: Would you reccomend coming up with my own original adventure/campaign, or modifying an existing one such as RHoD to suit the increased numbers?

As stated previously, level of experience will play a big part in how you swing this. If you are not an experienced DM, I do not suggest building from scratch; I did as an inexperienced DM, and I managed to swing it (with some early difficulty), but I do wish I had eased into it more. Modules allow you to skip the encounter design basics and focus on differentiation, basically giving you a template balanced for four that you can adjust (using the rules above, or others) to balance it for eight.

If you are a more experienced DM, creating a world will be so much easier--but so, of course, will be modules. You'll know what works and what doesn't in a module, and so you'll know what to fix, but you will also be able to do the same thing from scratch anyway, so that's not really much of an issue.

Really, I think in the hands of an experienced DM, it's more of a matter of how the group works: if the group is full of people that more or less make predictable character choices with results somewhat resembling the "sample characters" in the book, modules will work very well, with some differentiation; this is, after all, the level of play that most modules are best balanced at. If your group has players who typically play things like Focused Specialist Conjurer 5/Mage of the Arcane Order 10/Archmage 5, or Wildshape Mystic Ranger, or Cloistered Cleric, modules are going to be next to useless, but this is just as true at four characters as it is with eight or twelve; modules are poorly equipped to handle higher levels of optimization, so you'll need to either differentiate on a large scale or throw out several encounters and completely rebuild them. They won't function well otherwise.

Of course, you could also run your own world and throw in the occasional module...


2: In a party of this size, it's fairly likely that most roles (or rather, Being Good at Certain Important Thing) will be filled. But in the event that there's a gaping, obvious hole in the party, should I lean on people to fill it, or let them use their superiour numbers and posible ingiuity to deal with it?

When I originally designed my game and began inviting players, I made sure that the group did not talk with each other to decide how to build the party; in fact, I didn't even tell them who else would be playing. Instead, I met with them in person, one-to-one, and discussed their character concept and how to build it. When the game finally began, I wound up with a ton of strikers (with some minor skill focus), a few arcane casters, and not a single divine caster. The group kept expanding for a little while in this pattern until a couple of weeks in, when one of the players invited another player in without my knowledge, and told him before I had introduced him to the game, "we need a healbot". (This was at level 1.) I really hated that.

Now, the whole group is level 6 (+feats, as is customary for E6), except for the newest player, who is still level 5. The group has since learned about wands of Cure Light Wounds (and, more recently, wands of Lesser Vigor), that in-combat healing is close to the least effective way to handle combat except in emergency situations (walking up and touching somebody for 1d8+3 points of healing means less when the Ogre is not stopped from swinging for 2d8+7), that HP is more expendable than they thought... The list goes on. Now, I'm working on fixing the healbot so he can do more than just be a healbot, because he feels that his character's whole shtick is replaced by a 750gp wand used between fights (even if he uses that wand best), which might not have happened if the group hadn't pressured him into being a healbot in the first place, and just stuck out the first level or two, knowing that they are just inherently swingier.

In short: no. Let people play whatever they want. If that leaves an unfilled gap, then modify the scope of the campaign somewhat to adjust to this (don't build a mass-battle campaign with three social characters, two sneaks, a scout, and a diviner; build a guerrilla warfare campaign instead, or focus more heavily on the political arena behind the war). Don't leave out their weak spot completely (a campaign with no character with Open Lock or Disable Device, or magical mundane or magical analogues, should still have locked doors and traps), but use them relatively sparingly--and provide an alternative to at least *some* of the hurdles that may come from this (if the party can't unlock a door, then maybe they can overpower those guards over there, and see if they have a key).