Large Group Help

[RFLS]

My regular gaming group is seven people, which is a bit high, but manageable. However, in two weeks, that number's going to jump to twelve. The standard advice is to just say no to some people, but for social reasons, I can't really get away with that.

So, that being said, what advice does the playground have for running such a large group? Tricks for making combat run smoother, balancing encounters to avoid curbstomps in either direction, managing roleplay, etc.

[Extra Anchovies]

Twelve will never work, simply because people will have such long waits between their actions (both in and out of combat) that at least some of them will end up bored and/or distracted. Split the group. If you don't have another DM, you have two options:
1. DM for both groups (probably in the same campaign world to keep track of everything more easily). Occasionally have 12-person raid-style mega-encounters.
2. Let the five new people know that you actually can't run an orderly and fun game with 12 players, apologize to them for that, and wish them good luck finding another group. Unless you're being forced to DM at knifepoint, the number of players in your game is entirely up to you.

[Hrugner]

of course, I second the not DMing thing. If that's impossible I recommend:

Combat:
Make groups and group leaders. Set each group on the same turn and have the leader collect his group's actions together before their turn starts. groups should be melee damage, ranged damage, and control. Anyone who says they don't belong in any group goes in the control group. Do the same with your enemies. Let healing prevent death if applied before their next turn ends.

Avoid using turn skipping attacks from monsters. Focus on mobility control and bottle necks so your players act, but not always at their best. Disallow summons, pets, attack of opportunity builds, and anything else which normally scews turn time.

reward players who are on top of things.

[Metahuman1]

Do any of the players Have enough experience/skill to help with DMing? So you end up with like 2-3 DM's running the game instead?

(If yes, I'd suggest going "Ok, your in charge of gear and treasure that isn't plot important. Your in charge of monsters cause your good at that and I'll tell you the plot important stuff but aside from that your free do stuff as you please. Ext.).


It's worked for me with big groups before.

[Hiro Quester]

We're playing a large group like this, that for most game nights is two groups. We split and form sub groups for a few sessions, then get back together and split into different subgroups, etc. t

Two DMs though. You could run each subgroup on different nights.

It works very well. Sometimes we play on different nights. Sometimes we play two groups the same might, but in different rooms (so DMs can collude).

But you can't run 12 players solo. It takes way too long between turns. Also in a group that large, people have trouble paying attention or hearing what other players are doing. You end up having to repeat descriptions a lot because someone was having a conversation with the player next to them and didn't hear. Etc.

We have tried it with ten or so, for big boss fight encounters, and it was frustrating for all. Twelve would be unworkable, no matter how good a DM you are.

[Chronikoce]

First I will agree with the others. Don't try to DM this as a single group. I had a campaign that went from 6 to 12 players for the exact same reason. The entire game ended up dieing two sessions later.

Here are the main problems and ways to try to address them.

Combat: turns will take ages. If you track initiative like normal combat will last hours and players will not pay attention. After all why pay attention when it may be 30 minutes before their next turn. I got around this by using group initiative. All players actions happen at once and all enemy actions happen at once. It wasn't great but it helped.

Roleplaying: it's very hard to make everyone feel relevant or included. If you have less players it isn't a bit deal if the story focuses on a single player for a short while. However with twelve players it will be hard to have story elements that focus on specific party members.

Group dynamic in general: if you are all friends this is going to be really hard. My game died because we were all friends so when games got bogged down small groups of people would end up chatting about non d&d stuff. Then when their turn came up they would need to be caught up so different people would be chatting. In the end when that many friends got together it was really hard to keep everyone invested in it being d&d night rather than just a game night with friends where d&d happened to be occurring.

The biggest threat though is DM burn out: I was exhausted after every session. Trying to keep everything flowing, all the players involved, repeating myself constantly. It was a nightmare. After the game ended I quit playing all table top rpgs for 6 months and didn't even get on the forums. It really ruined the game for me for a while.

[JDL]

How long are your game sessions? 3 hours or more?

If so, I agree with the previous advice. Split the groups up into teams of 4 to 6 people. Have a friendly competition going with each group adventuring in the same campaign setting as different adventuring parties. Whichever group completes a dungeon, that group gets the loot from it, and whatever extra benefits it contains like treasure maps to new places to explore. Run one group first for half the session, then the other group for the second half, or use alternate days.

For a great run-down on creating a large campaign designed to accept large groups of players, I highly recommend reading Ben Robbins' West Marches blog posts. He has excellent advice for creating a sandbox world that lets the player be the centre of the story.

Grand Experiments: West Marches (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/)

[Thurbane]

We had a group that hovered around 10 at some points in our AD&D games, and combat was very, very slow.

AD&D's combat is much pacier than 3.X, so yeah, have to agree, a group of 12 really is very unlikely to work.

You might be better off splitting them into two groups of 6...

[fallensavior]

My regular gaming group is seven people, which is a bit high, but manageable. However, in two weeks, that number's going to jump to twelve. The standard advice is to just say no to some people, but for social reasons, I can't really get away with that.

So, that being said, what advice does the playground have for running such a large group? Tricks for making combat run smoother, balancing encounters to avoid curbstomps in either direction, managing roleplay, etc.

The biggest problem is obviously going to be getting bogged down in combat. So the most helpful advice I can offer is to use a 5 second rule. When you come to someone's turn, and they don't decide on an action within 5 seconds, you skip them. They're not paying attention OOG, so their character isn't paying attention IG.

Other ideas:

Consider going light on combat.
Consider eliminating damage rolls and using averages instead. 2d6=7, 10d6=35, etc.
Consider group initiative. All of the PCs go and then all of the opponents go, or vice versa. Decide by coin flip or whatever.

[Studoku]

Why does your large group have to add five more players? Are they refugees from one of Talakeal's GM's games that the UN are forcing you to accept?

[Magesmiley]

My regular game group has 8 players and in the past it has swollen up to 12 on occasion. So I totally hear you.

Some things I do:

General Etiquette:
* No phones. Seriously. They are a huge distraction. Or laptops. Or tablets. If you must have one for rules references, limit it to a couple of players who are in charge of looking stuff up and who can be counted on to pay attention.
* Establish how players are going to declare party actions and stick to it.
* Don't split the party. Like ever. And if they do despite your warnings, do something horrible to ensure that they never do it again.

Combat
* Get an initiative chart of some sort and put one of the players in charge of it. I use an older version of the Combat Pad (http://paizo.com/products/btpy9066?Pathfinder-Combat-Pad) that Paizo makes, but a whiteboard with some magnetic names works pretty well. Make sure that everyone can see it (this usually works best if a player at one end of the table has it, so they can hold it up, or else have it on a wall where everyone can see).
* Delegate tracking durations of effects to another player.
* If a player doesn't start saying what they're doing within 5 seconds, they are delaying. Period. No exceptions.
Use premade maps and miniatures. It does actually help people know where things are so you don't have to keep repeating yourself or do a lot of drawing.
* Establish a clear system for moving miniatures on the map, so whomever is close by can do it (move me 2 squares south and 1 west, past that ogre)
* If a player is going to summon anything, they must have the stats ready and at hand before doing so. Otherwise the spell fizzles.
* Use large, easy-to-read dice. Sounds silly, but a lot of players waste time trying to read their dice. Shaving seconds from this really adds up.
* Roll attacks and damage together
* If a player is casting a spell, they should have the description ready when it hits their turn, and be prepared to give the DM a source and page.
* If players are going to do something odd (grapple, sunder, etc.) They should be ready with the rules before their turn starts.
* Keep yourself organized. Notecards for monsters and treasure, etc.

Balancing Encounters:
* A group of 12 is about 2-3 ECLS higher than normal when planning encounters. And generally to get the balance it right you want to just triple the number of creatures you'd normally use. Just using more powerful creatures is a formula for players to do poorly, unless they work well together.
* In a group of 12, you can usually count on at least one of the players to get a bit greedy. This can be useful in designing encounters, particularly if you leave some bait out.

Roleplay:
This is going to be a mess any way you do it. I've got nothing for making this go smoothly. You can usually count on at least one of the players in a group that size to have a case of foot-in-mouth though.

[lytokk]

Currently I'm a player in a group of seven players and the DM of a ground of 6 players. I don't know if any of this will work for you, but here's something.

For combat, initiative changes every round. The DM knows the highest initiative that anyone can get, and starts counting down from that number. When someones initiative comes up, they speak their actions, make their rolls and keep going. When the DM gets to a certain point, he asks who hasn't gone and if no one answers, next round and initiative is rolled again. This was used in the group I play in, and I moved it into the group I DM, and its kept things going pretty well. It keeps people paying closer attention to when their initiative is called and to the rest of the actions of party members.

Also, during combat in the big group, we don't use miniatures. Its up to the players to remember how many baddies they have attacking them. I believe the DM also uses a chart to show the HP of each of the baddies on each of the guys. He also eliminated all attacks of opportunity. This negates some builds and feats, but without the AoO, things go smoother.

No minionmancy. No one should get to use a summon spell. Having extra creatures out on the battlefield will only slow it down. In the big group, my artificers homonculous and the rangers pet only ever do anything if we give up our full round to do it in. In the smaller group, I limit our druid to a single summoning spell at a time.

I would definitely recommend splitting the group into two and playing on alternating game nights. 12 people is just insanity. But if you are going to keep it at 12, don't allow books at the table. Reason being, no one should waste time looking up a rule. Make a gut decision, and a note to look it up later. Let the players know if you made a mistake, and how it should work in the future, but just keep the game going. Also, I say no rule books because they players should know their spells and abilities enough to use them, without having to look them up.

[Nibbens]

I agree with the majority here: Don't. lol.

But as you say, we've all been there before - taking on that new guys because we have to. Regardless, a few pieces of advice for speeding up encounters:

1) ...

=Randbetween(1,20)

The above statement, when plugged into an excel spreadsheet creates a random number between 1-20. Click and drag to create a large table of random d20 rolls. Modify the spacing of the cells to get the maximum number of d20 rolls on a single sheet. Print this sheet. When playing, do not roll dice. Use average damage numbers and mark off your d20 rolls as you go through them. You're looking at turning a couple minutes worth of rolling and adding on your turns into seconds. Extremely fast.

2) Designate 1 player to be in charge of loot and equipment. Seriously, a person shoots an arrow, he marks one off the list etc etc. 1 player should be in charge of writing important plot points down. 1 player will be in charge of keeping everyone in combat tactics (seriously, have him initiate discussion of what they should do every turn - yes it'll make combat lengthier, but all your PCs will be involved at once so it won't feel so bad) This player also decides the "general outline" of what every player should do - yes, you take away a little bit of autonomy here, but you're playing with 12 people... you have to. Designate 1 player to be in charge of the rule dependencies and doublechecking (make him double check a rule every so often, even if you know the rule already). Designate 1 player to be in charge of the Monster Knowledge (every combat, give the players a chance to figure out what the monster is (knowledge checks) - tell him to give that info out to players so everyone can coordinate tactics with the "Combat Tactic: leader.

3) The remaining players should be your newer players (I'm assuming they are newer players haven't played as much either) Let them have ALL the roleplay time - make your more experienced players give hints on what they could do, but make sure that they get to express themselves outside combat, since inside combat will be kind of rigid and more regulated by the experienced players.

4) rotate jobs down the table every session.

The idea here is to keep everyone involved - all the time. It's exhausting, but if you can keep everyone sucked into the game this way - no one will feel left out and the time it takes to do things won't feel so bad. Theoretically...

[Studoku]

Ok, so now I've got more time to post, I'll add more detail. I'll repeat the "don't let them join" that other people have mentioned. Seven players is slightly above the ideal number (3-6) but is doable. 12 is absurd.

Since you mentioned "for social reasons", you probably should read the Geek Social Fallacies (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html)- especially #4 and #5. If that's what's happening, you need to realise that it's ok to politely explain that the game's full. It won't somehow make you a monster and you're better off running a good game for fewer people than running a farce for everyone.

You'd be much better either running a separate game for them or, if someone's interested, splitting into two groups with someone else DMing the other.

If you do have to run for 12 players because of life-debts/faustian pacts/the UN/other such circumstances, there are a few things you can do. The main issue is going to be combat taking forever. Since any combat suitable for 12 players needs a similar increase in enemies (don't even think about running one massive boss), those fights should be suitably epic. Don't run random encounters, pointless skirmishes or try to do 4 encounters/day.

During combat, you need to keep things going at a decent speed. You don't need a hard time limit but, outside of exceptional circumstances, players should have their actions planned and be ready to start moving figures and rolling dice as soon as their turn comes around. If they don't, skip their turn. This may seem harsh but all it takes is one player to hem and haw for 5 minutes for everyone to lose interest and the entire combat gets bogged down with "so what happened?" at the start of every turn. Obviously, players shouldn't look up spells or abilities during their turn.

Feel free to veto anything that might bog down combat even more- as well as banning Leadership and suggesting players with Animal Companions/etc. swap them for something else, I'd consider a blanket ban on summoning and calling spells in combat.

[Drork]

A lot of good ideas above.
No one has said get a second DM and play on the same night and change your campaign to an adventure guild style so you can mix and match parties between adventures. That is a big change. Having said that given how many people you are adding to the group a new campaign might be the answer something designed to work with the number of players you have.

Also you can try the buddy system. Limit the numbers of physical bodies on the field.
If everyone wants their own character buddy system dice roles. Have someone say to their buddy what they plan to do in combat. They can roll the dice and everything then you can move around the table asking the buddy what the player did. It also enables a player to add more flare to their combat descriptions because they know all the numbers (also as their flare doesnt get out of hand.)

I would how ever echo the really you HAVE too do this? Perhaps have the people sit in on a game night with out input to see things and how it will turn out with the extra bodies.

[Twurps]

Here's what worked for my group when it got to big:
as already mentioned, so I won't elaborate: no summons, state your action within 5 secs, only cast spells you have the description ready for.

This is all to speed the player's part of combat up. In a group this big, you want to speed up your DM actions as wel. As has been mentioned: It's a good idea to have a larger number of enemies, rather then 1 bigger one. A good way to speed this up is to have all baddies go at once and have players roll the dice.
You simply state: Players A, B, And C: you get full attacked by X. Attack bonus=xx, damage yy. Player D, you get targeted by Y, attack bonus xx, damage yy, etc.
Let all of them roll the attacks and damage, and then have them (in order) describe what happened. (I've never tried the buddy system Drork mentioned, but I think it fits with this approach really well). It reduces the amount of tactics you as a DM can deploy, but that's a small price to pay. (Plus you'll be so busy you're tactics aren't going to be optimal anyway)

If players find it weird to roll dice wishing for a low roll, try this: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/playersRollAllTheDice.htm

[Banjoman42]

Unless you're being forced to DM at knifepoint, the number of players in your game is entirely up to you.
I have to force some people at knife point not to DM, but that's something completely different.

As for my advice, find the people who actually like to play the game (their will always be some who don't in large groups) And only invite them to your games. Then, once in a while, have some one DM a mini campaign for the whole big group. This lets the people who aren't all that into DnD at least hangout once in a while with the ones that do.

You cannot run a serious game with more than 7 people. There is no way to speed it up to reasonable pace, as always at least 1 person will be distracted or bored.