Running a large group game.

[Tegu8788]

I'm considering running a game that may have anywhere from 6-12 people. It may not be 4E, but you are folk whose opinions I value. What tips do you folk have for running a game for a huge party? Aside from running separate games, which is certainly an option I'm considering, but these guys are all friends, so there is a very decent chance they will all want to play together/may be crossing back and forth.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I'm considering running a game that may have anywhere from 6-12 people. It may not be 4E, but you are folk whose opinions I value. What tips do you folk have for running a game for a huge party? Aside from running separate games, which is certainly an option I'm considering, but these guys are all friends, so there is a very decent chance they will all want to play together/may be crossing back and forth.

Interesting. First thing I'd consider is how much it breaks the game to have a very large party - 4E might not hold well under the strain. The second consideration is how much you value your sanity if you can handle such a large group as game master. It might not be a bad idea to designate a couple of sub-game master that can take care of supervising rolls, HP, miniature moving, etc. of smaller groups of players while you concentrate on bigger picture, surprises, descriptions, NPC interaction, etc.

The biggest danger is that you may end up with a lot of bored players waiting for their turns, or you end up running what amounts to two separate groups so that the game remains challenging. Maybe look into a more free-form RPG that scales well? Although I think 4E can work if you do treat them like two groups, and experiment with how the numbers work out (i.e. they will have easier time burying individual targets under novas of the whole team, so set up situations that forces them to divide their attention - without needing to separate the group - to make up for the larger numbers of PCs).

Grey Wolf

[Inevitability]

If this is 3.5 or 5e, I think things will work out fine, if a little slow. In 4e, don't even try. Maaaaaybe a six-person party would work, but I doubt it.

[Kurald Galain]

I'm considering running a game that may have anywhere from 6-12 people. It may not be 4E, but you are folk whose opinions I value. What tips do you folk have for running a game for a huge party? Aside from running separate games, which is certainly an option I'm considering, but these guys are all friends, so there is a very decent chance they will all want to play together/may be crossing back and forth.

It is my experience that 4E plays best with three to five players, that the game becomes excruciatingly slow with six, and that it grinds to a near-total halt with seven. Twelve? I wouldn't even consider that; you should probably split it into three groups.

[Tegu8788]

I figured the majority of the advice would be to split the party.


So, if I run with one or two groups, and tips for the inevitable cross overs? A number of them are theater people, and will occasionally miss "their" games but not want to go without playing. I'm not just talking about dealing with missing players, but good ideas for a story that has a very fluid group of people in it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I figured the majority of the advice would be to split the party.


So, if I run with one or two groups, and tips for the inevitable cross overs? A number of them are theater people, and will occasionally miss "their" games but not want to go without playing. I'm not just talking about dealing with missing players, but good ideas for a story that has a very fluid group of people in it.

How about self-contained "missions" that are part of a larger whole like Mission Impossible? Each week, there is a new "remember, if you or any of your team gets killed or captured, we will disavow all knowledge of your activities" mission that requires a group of characters that just happens to be the PCs of the people who showed up?

GW

[Inevitability]

How about self-contained "missions" that are part of a larger whole like Mission Impossible? Each week, there is a new "remember, if you or any of your team gets killed or captured, we will disavow all knowledge of your activities" mission that requires a group of characters that just happens to be the PCs of the people who showed up?

GW

I like this.

[sktarq]

Firstly. Less experience with 4E (not my favorite) quite a bit with games of 7+ people (most of which failed horribly)-from that end.

Make sure the play styles of the players actually mesh. Do these people all regularly play together smoothly? They may well get along socially but if one groups players a with a strong comedic bent and and lots of in game socialization and another players as a group of optimizing serious adrenaline junkies there could be serious issues.

Also make sure that when designing challenges there is something for more than a couple people to do OR things move very quickly.

Also HAVE A PLAN. big group need structure in the story to hold them together and focused.

Pay lots of attention to party balance and intra-group conflict. The number of relationships between players grows faster than the number of players as you add more and even one really bad one can be devastating. You have less time to devote to massaging a troubled relationship between two characters when you have so many and it is harder to say that the party shouldn't break up as cliques form and the party will at times seem to be ready to split on certain issues anyway.

Be conservative in what builds you allow. Now is not the time to try new slats with unfamiliar rules that you have to look up stress over and spend extra time with those players. Also feel free to be extra nasty about saying no to concepts that could be disruptive or require lots of personal attention, like anyone who would be prone to going off alone.

Keep the party together as much as possible. This may seem counter intuitive but breaking up the game into groups can have a powerfully corrosive effect on how invested the players are. By the time your are ready for your mage to come back into active play the player may well be more interested in the conversation or computer game they started in the meantime.

Simplify choices. This can be overdone and get railroady but is necessary in large or very large groups. Otherwise jawboning and discussion take forever. A couple people will usually dominate the discussion and those who aren't them have their interest fade in the 30 minutes spent in discussing what general TYPE of strategy used to get into the castle or whatnot. Sandbox type situations can hang up a large group (especially if two or more players/character have strong leadership inclinations) for hours.

Be more generous with gold/gems and more stingy with magic items. Less arguing over loot spoils a good thing in large groups. Other option is to create a system for managing them before play starts and give each item no more than a few seconds of time-(intra party auctions can work).

Bring lots of extra snacks

[Naez]

I played a 4e campaign with 7 players. It was insane each round of battle took hours. It's possible but everyone has to be fully invested and know what they're doing. Even then each round will take at least 30 minutes.

[Nightgaun7]

I've been in a group with 9-10 that usually got through a combat or two in our 2-3 hour sessions, and we had a couple of newbies/inexperience players every time.

What made it work was that there were a couple of sub-GMs/party leaders (myself and one other vet) who helped keep track of things and made sure the new players knew what was going on and so forth. When it came time to decide on one course of action or another we also pushed the party along to make sure we didn't spend 30 minutes arguing over things like whether to betray or trust an NPC, who kicked down the door, etc.

The second biggest help was prerolling attacks and damage, so that when your turn came around you could just tell the GM the numbers and go with it. Even if you only do it for half your attacks, as things change or an interrupt comes up or something, it really speeds things along.

[Geoff]

I've played a successful 4e game that had as many as 13 players (at Paragon level, too), the only thing we did differently was to go around the table instead of using initiative (the player with the best initiative rolled vs the monster with the best initiative). While that doesn't sound like much, you always know when your turn is coming up, so you can be ready. With regular initiative, it's too easy to get 'lost' and surprised when your turn finally does come up.

Intentionally avoiding off-turn actions is a good idea, too.

Same went for skill challenges: go around the table. Obviously, a challenge that required fewer successes than there were players might not make it all the way around. ;)

Which reminds me: In 3.5 the problem with large parties was combats ending before the players who rolled low got act. Actually, at high level, that could be a problem for normal-sized parties, too. I guess that's why Improved Initiative was so popular.