Game Mastering for Large Group (Remote)

[CowardlyPaladin]

I posted this here cause I figured that this applies to most games, so I"m DMing Curse of Strahd and my D&D game went remote for Covid and even after vaccines we have stuck with a remote game ever since due to people being located across the country. And it has been a lot of fun and has been working for awhile, but I ran into a hitch. Some players left the game for a time and I brought in new players, but then the old players came back. It was only 6 players total and I've managed that many players before so it seemed fine. But then a problem emerged. When gaming remote, I just had a really hard time being heard, people keep accidently interrupting each other, its very hard to get people to move to along. Nobody is being malicious or a jerk, it just seems like herding cats. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to do group management better? The online setting worked fine with smaller groups but its a devil of at time with larger ones

[Algeh]

Since talking over each other verbally doesn't work online, you need to add a little more structure to conversations that would just overlap in person. Two ways to make sure that everyone gets a "turn" in a conversation that you can invoke when things get out of hand are:

- Everyone raises their hand (using whatever raise hand feature your chat system has, I know both Zoom and Google Meet have this so I assume most things do), you take each hand in order in the queue, so everyone gets one chance to speak before anyone gets a second chance.

- Chat "waterfall". Tell everyone to type their thoughts about [thing] in chat but not to hit enter yet, then after everyone shows that they're ready have them all hit enter at once so all messages appear in chat at the same time, then everyone reads them.

Either of these can add a little more structure to a debate or discussion so you know everyone had a chance to speak before things move on, but you'd probably need someone to provide some kind of closure/summary for the group and that's tricky if the group doesn't have a "leader" (or, worse, has 3 of them...).

You can also come up with reasons to split the party and throw each sub-party into their own breakout room, but that does mean that people are sitting there with nothing to do for half of the time...

[MoiMagnus]

If I try to sum up the conventions we use, I'd say:

(1) If you want to say something and it's not your turn, use text. This include jokes or information like "don't forget that you're blessed". Don't interrupt unless it's really important.
=> In particular, if the GM ask you something, you might reply immediately in vocal, but if you need to search from the info or think about it and the game continue, don't interrupt with the answer, send a text message instead.

(2) Even if there is no turn, try to have an "active player". For example, the GM should make it clear to which player the NPCs are talking, and unless someone else has something really important to say, they should not interrupt in vocal. (Though suggestions in text are welcome). Note that's it's fine if the active player want to let another player talk and make them the new active player, I say "the GM" because most of the time it's them who make it clear who is suppose to talk, but the players could also handle that on their own.

(3) If there is no "active player", because for example players are brainstorming ideas, the GM should make sure everyone had the opportunity to talk before proceeding with the resolution.

(4) As a GM, be mindful of what kind of playstyle you are encouraging. It's much easier to get things moving if the players are not afraid of doing a little mistake that will ruin everything. It's much easier to avoid interruption if the players don't feel that they NEED to interrupt to prevent something from happening.

[Faily]

I posted this here cause I figured that this applies to most games, so I"m DMing Curse of Strahd and my D&D game went remote for Covid and even after vaccines we have stuck with a remote game ever since due to people being located across the country. And it has been a lot of fun and has been working for awhile, but I ran into a hitch. Some players left the game for a time and I brought in new players, but then the old players came back. It was only 6 players total and I've managed that many players before so it seemed fine. But then a problem emerged. When gaming remote, I just had a really hard time being heard, people keep accidently interrupting each other, its very hard to get people to move to along. Nobody is being malicious or a jerk, it just seems like herding cats. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to do group management better? The online setting worked fine with smaller groups but its a devil of at time with larger ones

Wow, relate to this so hard with our weekly group being online after the start of the pandemic (and then continued to be that way since people moved away). We have the same struggles, and we're only 5 people in total, four players + GM.


1) something that helped another group of mine during the online-period was that we had a dedicated sub-channel in our Discord for "memes & ****posts". Basically, whenever we want to joke about something, instead of interrupting the flow completely, we'd usually take it out there in texts/pictures. Helped a lot, and the GM even commented on how much more focused we were during game-time because we got it all out there.

2) heavily enforce not talking out of turn in combat. Make it clear that it's not to punish anyone, but that it is to have some order during the session. We follow the rule of "unless it's super-important to what is happening now, wait until its your turn".

3) outside of combat, when you usually pass the ball to the players to see what they'll do/how they'll react, direct your attention specifically to someone. It's easy to either get the awkward silence or people talking over eachother because it's not easy to get the social cues we usually have in person to see who is going to talk. So like once you finish a description or an NPC's speech, say something like "what do you do, Bob?". Make sure to change who you ask so that attention is spread out.

[Calen]

In the online games I play with larger groups we put all character actions, player speech etc. in text chat in the VTT. If we split the party we will sometimes use a discord text channel for one of the sub-groups. Our voice channel is the "unimportant" stuff, jokes, rule questions, or other stuff.

[gbaji]

Agree with the comments about structuring. Try to make it clear who is the current "active" player, and direct stuff to/from that player.

A semi-related issue I've been having lately is that some of the players are in person and some are remote. One of the things I've learned is that I have to discourage table/cross talk at the table if someone remotely is speaking. Two people having a conversation by themselves at a table doesn't normally cause problems if everyone is at the table, but even speaking quietly, I find it makes it very very difficult to hear folks in the zoom call.

I think they get the hint when they see me leaning in towards the computer, tilting my head to the side, squinting (not sure why that helps), and pointing my mighty GM "hand of shushing" in their direction.

It has nothing at all to do with age. Nosirree. I'm certain my hearing is just as good as it was 40 years ago. Right?

[animorte]

Essentially having an “initiative” so that everybody can speak in turn.

- Going in alphabetical order is one way to accomplish that.
- Or everybody opting in what order they would prefer (and maintaining that order) if you always have the one that prefers to go first and the one that prefers to go last, if they aren’t disagreeing about it.
- Start with your left, go around the table, but that only with in person.