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Gnome Alone
2020-06-18, 03:11 PM
Greetings, playgroundateers - in the immortal words of Jim Anchower, been a long time since I rapped at ya. Family reunion out of the way, I thought I'd ask some advice. To invert a The Simpsons reference, I may have turned a mere Three Mile Island into a potential Chernobyl.

I'm mostly a player, but DM'd a few 3.5 games about 5 or 6 years ago. I'm a big fan of both Ursula Le Guin and Watership Down, and since good artists borrow but great artists steal, I made an archipelago world with true-naming magic as in Earthsea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthsea), and an anthropomorphic rabbit race called "the lapine" that, while not truly indebted to Watership Down, is one of those things that is so obviously a labor of love that the players couldn't help but get into it, I think. So, that's a bit of background. Not super relevant yet. Sorry, I'm long-winded.

For a year or two, I've been brainstorming another game set in this world, this time a 5e one (btw I am very impressed with 5e so far, it seems like they fixed almost all of the obvious problems with 3.5, and yet it still feels like a realistic and fun version of D&D, and if there aren't quite as many Legos, the Lego sets they've picked are so shiny I almost don't miss, y'know, dreaming up a Swordsage 13/Ferocity Barbarian 1/Hit-and-Run Fighter 1/Cleric 1/Binder 3 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?378237-In-Which-I-Attempt-to-Make-the-Kind-of-Speedy-Finesse-y-Warrior-That-Is-Hard-to-Make) but I digress, again. (Look, it all creates a vibe, right? This all...emotionally relevant background information. I hope.)

This world features, as character races, only humans, wooden golems called clockworks, a moblin race that's just goblins, orcs, hobgoblins and bugbears all crammed together as a subrace of the same species which I've also turned fae, and the lapine. It's a sort of a viking rabbit steampunk thing with a splash of Zelda vibe.

I've been calling it "Viking Sim City." I want the players to be the local nobles (or their retainers) - to be the kind of people who normally give PCs the quests. I want them to politically and economically manage a small island (although not with an obsessive level of granularity - the example I gave in the campaign's introductory document was "What I’m picturing is less 'How many pounds of crops did our farmers produce this season?' and more “Should we plant more cash crops to increase our treasury, or should we plant more staple food crops to increase our self-sufficiency and stores for the winter, just in case?”)

But I don't want it to be JUST that. It wouldn't really be D&D anymore, plus I don't know how much "roleplay the city council" juice I or my players have in us. I want them to be doing "adventures" too. Now, the question that is always asked of questgivers in RPGs is, "Why can't you do this yourself?" Inverting that, why would the local nobles risk themselves doing their own dirty work? And my answer, for why the local nobles will be doing quests themselves, is that this is a warrior culture and an honor culture. As I told the players, I've been saying "Viking" but I could as easily have said "Klingon." If you aren't the ones who can handle it, you shouldn't be the ones in charge - so thinks the kind of culture I am envisioning.

Okay, long story medium - this idea has grown some wings. I now have ten players. The players are my three brothers and son, five good friends we occasionally play with, who really wanted in on this, AND my brother's wife, trying D&D out for the first time. So, this question is obviously about how to manage this many people, but, kicking anyone out is out of the question, because a) half of them are my literal family or near-enough-as-makes-no-matter, and b) almost all of them are displaying the kind of enthusiasm for this campaign that some DMs would kill for.

Further complicating this is, cuz of both distance constraints and the, um, worldwide pandemic, we're playing online.

So my question, gentle readers, dear dear friendos who've read all the way through this frost giant of a thread...How am I going to run a role-play heavy game for ten people? Three of them want to be sailors, one is a visiting famous artist, the rest are council members or their retainers...Good gravy, I should show you the full bios of all the PCs. It simply will not make sense either to have all of these people always together roleplaying Civ 2 or whatever, nor to have them always all going on the dig-through-a-dirty-dungeon quest.

I have a few ideas: one, make what other games call "downtime" the main focus of the campaign. A very low combat game, which occasionally erupts into adventure. But really I'd be starting a whole bunch of different story threads, which would end up interacting. Two, and possibly related, to not be afraid to do what is anathema in other games and split the party (DUN DUN DUN!) There's already gonna be a long time between turns sometimes, so maybe having them be in completely separate places or scenes isn't quite as much of a stretch/disaster as it would be usually? Maybe if it was only two or three separate places to start off with? Even seeing this written out now is kind of making me skeptical, but, I have a feeling I could just manage to pull that off.

I guess I could split the campaign into two separate nights, but, we only have one night a week we could play, and "a huge ensemble cast, Game of Thrones-style [although my world-building and thematic style owes more to Robin Hobb] where we all make an epic story together" was a big part of the draw in the first place.

Any other ideas? Thanks in advance, to any brave souls who both read this and will offer advice.

TL:DR: Any advice for dealing with ten players in an online, role-play heavy, "city management" kind of campaign?

NRSASD
2020-06-18, 03:58 PM
To answer the title question, very ; ).

For a less flippant answer from a DM who has learned the hard way about trying to run 10 player games online, be very careful.

10 player games in person are rowdy and a bit of a mess to manage, to ensure everyone feels cool and has their moments in the spotlight. 10 player games online are much harder because only one person can speak at a time over the internet without degenerating into garble.

I have two solutions for you:
A. Run extremely focused missions. I have a 12 player lovecraftian WW2 game. In that one, we have two squads, appointed leaders, and strict talking protocols. To keep the game moving forward at all, we only allow the DM, player actions or incharacter dialogue to be spoken, everything else is typed. They have a mission, the rules are simple, and everything is optimized for ease of play. After all, for every 5 seconds a player spends on their turn, it increases the length of the round by a minute. This adds up super fast, cause if we took a minute per player, we’d get 5 rounds per hour which is miserably slow.

B. Split the party into two campaigns. It’s a bit of a headache making sure everything runs smoothly and the timeline is straight, but it’s tremendously fun to have two simultaneous games with the same overarching objectives. You have your city planners do their thing and hire the other party to take out their monster problems. You have the monster hunters find incriminating information which “changes everything”, to hand it off to the political party to make the best use of. I’ve done this and it’s buckets of fun

Grod_The_Giant
2020-06-18, 04:09 PM
As a general sort of structure for a kingdom-management game, I'd suggest something like the following:

Introduce some sort of problem that threatens the kingdom ("there's a drought and people are going to starve")
Have the NPC advisors suggest different ways to address it, all of which would lead to adventures ("find this one archmage and ask for help," "petition the god of storms," or "find the Flasks of Endless Water in this one dungeon")
After some discussion have the players vote on which way to go. (And I do highly suggest a real-time-limited debate period followed by a vote; "what should we do now" can go in circles long enough with just three people, much less ten).


But with a big party... you're going to need to be juggling separate threads, yeah. Would something like a West Marches (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/) campaign work? You could use the one shared day to get everyone together, make plans, stuff like that, and then break into smaller groups at different times as necessary. ("Okay, so Alex, Bob, and Charlie are going to negotiate with the pirate emissaries Monday night; Dave, Ellie, Fran, and Greg are going to make an alliance with the moblins Thursday afternoon; Haley, Irene, and Jake are going to scout the pirate base Thursday evening; and we'll all meet back Sunday evening to compare notes.")

MoiMagnus
2020-06-18, 04:27 PM
10 players is a lot.
How do you maintain 10 players focussed, or at least not bored, when you're only one DM?
(Btw, if you can manage to get another DM, that would be great. E.g someone who could run the D&D fight for few peoples while you narrating for others, or something like that)

At one DM with 10 players, unless you have some experiences in doing one-man-show or other kind of spectacle, it's pointless and counterproductive to try to keep the game "centred on the DM's story".
My 2cents is that you want to try to build situations in which the players could essentially continue playing without your help, because you probably will have moments were you're talking in a private chat with a small group.

Think about the GM in a werewolf game. Sure, he put some narration, make sure the rules resolved normally, chose the setup of the game, and answer rule questions. But for the most parts, it's just the players playing together. In fact, the most important role of the GM in a werewolf game is to keep the pacing, and make sure the game doesn't drag in uninteresting moments, possibly reviving the game by strongly suggesting at someone to make a speech.

At 10 players, it's also quite reasonable for players to temporary split, either because they have to solve a problem / make a decision in a small group, or because they want to conspire / exchange informations.

Example:
Players could be split into a certain number of families, and you might call the head of each family to another chat, explain them the problem, and the possible solutions and what they would cost. Since every family would have different goal, resources, secrets, ..., you can let them negotiate on what will happen while you're resolving a combat encounter with the remaining of the group.

By the way, skip the end of combat encounters. Once an encounter is "won", unless you feel like some players not yet had the time to do anything, you should skip to the conclusion.
(Enemies can surrender, run away, or you can narrate how it ends up. Don't forget to put highlight on specific players when you narrate conclusion, like "Grog gets the final blow on X, do you want to decapitate him?" or "After having already killed two wyverns in a row (during the previous turns), Grog makes frightening roar and the remaining ones run away in fear.")

Other remark, if you're getting peoples that don't have the same experience level in games, giving them multiple role available is good, as you can get an idea on what they want: diplomacy/plotting, city management/economy, or combat.

Gnome Alone
2020-06-18, 06:33 PM
we only allow the DM, player actions or incharacter dialogue to be spoken, everything else is typed. They have a mission, the rules are simple, and everything is optimized for ease of play. After all, for every 5 seconds a player spends on their turn, it increases the length of the round by a minute. This adds up super fast, cause if we took a minute per player, we’d get 5 rounds per hour which is miserably slow.

I'm not sure I can manage to simplify 5e rules, but I really like the idea of anything out-of-character has to be typed. I've got a couple o' real loudmouths among the players, and I'm dreading having to be a kindergarten teacher. I wrote up a house rules document where one of the rules is called "Shut Up Already" followed by begging them to not talk over me and to at least wait for opportune moments to pipe up, rather than constantly, but I think this is the best solution.


Split the party into two campaigns. It’s a bit of a headache making sure everything runs smoothly and the timeline is straight, but it’s tremendously fun to have two simultaneous games with the same overarching objectives. You have your city planners do their thing and hire the other party to take out their monster problems. You have the monster hunters find incriminating information which “changes everything”, to hand it off to the political party to make the best use of. I’ve done this and it’s buckets of fun

I'm gonna call that the all-purpose Plan B. I want to avoid doing this if at all possible, but it might just have to be done this way. Thank you.



As a general sort of structure for a kingdom-management game, I'd suggest something like the following:

Introduce some sort of problem that threatens the kingdom ("there's a drought and people are going to starve")
Have the NPC advisors suggest different ways to address it, all of which would lead to adventures ("find this one archmage and ask for help," "petition the god of storms," or "find the Flasks of Endless Water in this one dungeon")
After some discussion have the players vote on which way to go. (And I do highly suggest a real-time-limited debate period followed by a vote; "what should we do now" can go in circles long enough with just three people, much less ten).


But with a big party... you're going to need to be juggling separate threads, yeah. Would something like a West Marches (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/) campaign work? You could use the one shared day to get everyone together, make plans, stuff like that, and then break into smaller groups at different times as necessary. ("Okay, so Alex, Bob, and Charlie are going to negotiate with the pirate emissaries Monday night; Dave, Ellie, Fran, and Greg are going to make an alliance with the moblins Thursday afternoon; Haley, Irene, and Jake are going to scout the pirate base Thursday evening; and we'll all meet back Sunday evening to compare notes.")

This is all gold, especially the first part. I love the West Marches thing, and I'm very much on the sandbox side of the sandbox vs. railroad spectrum. "Create a setting with no overarching plot for the players to play in" was a big part of my motivation for this whole thing in the first place, but the way everyone's schedules work out, I just don't think we could pull this off logistically. I've been frantically reading stuff on large campaigns, and I gather that this method is how Gygax handled it in his original campaigns way back when, so, interesting footnote there. Thank you.



At one DM with 10 players, unless you have some experiences in doing one-man-show or other kind of spectacle, it's pointless and counterproductive to try to keep the game "centred on the DM's story".

This at least is not a problem. There's no overarching story. I am setting up a sandbox. A sometimes fiddly sandbox, maybe, but a very open-ended game.



At 10 players, it's also quite reasonable for players to temporary split, either because they have to solve a problem / make a decision in a small group, or because they want to conspire / exchange informations.

I'm thinking this is going to have to end up being part of it. I think it could actually end up being a really cool part of it, if handled well.


By the way, skip the end of combat encounters. Once an encounter is "won", unless you feel like some players not yet had the time to do anything, you should skip to the conclusion.

I've seen this advice elsewhere, but I forgot it, so, thank you, because I think that's some of the best advice ever. It can get a little tedious to engage in mop-up of a battle you know you've already won for ten minutes. Thank you.

Quertus
2020-06-19, 05:27 PM
10 players is a little small for my tastes, but it's workable. You just need to beat certain fundamental principles into your players' heads.

Rule #1 - know your place

You cannot star in every scene; some scenes, you will be as bit player, and may not even have any speaking part. Know when it's your turn to enjoy someone else's story.

Rule #2 - participation ribbons

"Rarely shining" sounds bad; "often participating" sounds better. One of the easiest way to enforce this is with an activity where nobody shines, and everyone gets a participation ribbon. "An easy combat" is among the easiest to generate version of this.

Rule #3 - be quick, dagnabbit!

Any player who struggles with the rules, someone needs to be there jump in and do it for them. A PC whose personality traits include "verbose" (like my signature academia mage for whom this account is named)? Sometime needs to be on point to cut them off mid-sentence, or the player needs to drop to 3rd person: "Quertus rambles on for several minutes before coming to the point: he has experience with this". Etc.

*Everyone* needs to be onboard with making things quick… but without sacrificing "the good parts" in the process.

------

A council is an awesome (and terrible) idea. I think everyone gets how it's awesome; let me explain the terrible.

For starters, you're inherently making the core of the game adversarial, PvP: can I get people to side with my idea. There are winners and losers.

Or, at least, that is how some people will see it.

Related to the above point, it will give you a false sense of "participation ribbons", when, in fact, not everyone got to participate. *Maybe* everyone ate into your time budget by talking, but many probably had nothing to add beyond "+1 this", and some (those whose ideas "lost") may feel like they didn't participate at all (after all, they may as well have not been there - it wouldn't have affected the final outcome).

Lastly, it's a place for the difference between player and character skills to show - badly. I'm a big fan of player skills. But, here, it's easy for the wallflower playing the charismatic character, or player of the "skilled / knowledgeable X" to feel serious disconnect from their character.

None of these have to be problems, but… know your group. And watch for the potential for things like these to turn a good group toxic.