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Dr. Bidlo
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Joined: 24 Nov 2021
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Location: Arizona, USA
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 Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2022 11:40 am Post subject: Large game groups |
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While in high school, I played in (and sometimes GMed for) a game group that grew and grew as word spread and more friends and curious bystanders decided to join.
I do not recall the maximum number of players we had in a single game, but I want to say it was somewhere around 16 active players in a single game with a total pool of more than 20 players. Mt friend was the one who GMed the biggest groups and he was incredibly efficient and systematic in getting declarations, remembering everything, and keeping order. He did learn that is was sometimes necessary to break up the group to keep things a little more manageable and cut back and forth between the smaller groups.
What is the greatest number of players you have played with or GMed? What worked and what did not? What was the best thing the GM or you did to keep a large group game flowing well and exciting for everyone? |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:39 pm Post subject: Re: Large game groups |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | While in high school, I played in (and sometimes GMed for) a game group that grew and grew as word spread and more friends and curious bystanders decided to join.
I do not recall the maximum number of players we had in a single game, but I want to say it was somewhere around 16 active players in a single game with a total pool of more than 20 players. Mt friend was the one who GMed the biggest groups and he was incredibly efficient and systematic in getting declarations, remembering everything, and keeping order. He did learn that is was sometimes necessary to break up the group to keep things a little more manageable and cut back and forth between the smaller groups.
What is the greatest number of players you have played with or GMed? |
16 PCs playing in one adventure?! I had two very large game nights, but not that big. My story goes back to high school too, my 1e days.
In my town there were two main clicks that played RPGs, the nerds and the peaceniks (hippies without drugs who were into theater, U2, and R.E.M.). I'll just refer to second group by the less derogatory term "theater kids" (those in theater and their friends). I was a nerd, and had become known as the biggest Star Trek nerd in our class since junior high. Game-wise, nerds were mostly into D&D but occasionally played other RPGs (mostly TSR). The theater kids were evenly into D&D and Call of Cthulhu. There was a little overlap of the two groups due to D&D. A transfer student from another school, Jim, eventually befriended some of the nerds and some of the theater kids. With Jim, I played D&D with a couple of the theater kids a couple times.
In 1987 a friend of mine got the Star Wars Trilogy on VHS and we "trilogized," which totally renewed my childhood love for Star Wars. After WEG Star Wars came out, I began running campaign with some other nerds at the end of the school year in '88. When school started back up in the Fall, we kept playing on the weekends, and on Mondays my players would excitedly talk about their weekend adventures to other nerds at lunch, which soon generated enough player interest to start running a second second campaign with a completely different set of players, this one including Jim. In the Fall of '88, I became the king of the nerds at my school. By December or early winter of '89, Jim told me that the theater kids were very impressed by me running two simultaneous weekly campaigns of Star Wars, and wanted to try the game with me running it for them sometime.
I was also known as a drinker, and one day two of the theater kids approached me and invited me to a party at someone's house (whose parents were supposed to be gone). One of them said, oh, by the way, bring your Star Wars game books because I'd like to look at them. I showed up and the parents were there. There was no party, but there were 12 theater kids and they wanted me to run the game for them. I realized I had been conned, but I accepted the challenge.
I thankfully had lots of copies of the character sheets. So with two copies of the 1e core book, I took six of the theater kids, my friend Jim took the other five, and we quickly generated 12 new PCs using templates in the back of the book. Then I ran a truncated version of Tatooine Manhunt (this was only my second time running it as I had only ran it for my first campaign and not my second one yet at that point). It took most of the night. They theater kids had a blast and wanted to work Star Wars into the gaming rotation with D&D and CoC. So that began a third simultaneous campaign with a third set of players (only one overlap player was in the second and third groups). This third group was a pool of 12 players but thankfully there never was another session in that campaign where all 12 of those players were there at the same time. Unlike the first two campaigns, this third one was purely episodic with no metaplot.
But 12 players isn't my single game record. The first three campaigns were what was later retro-named Rebel Spec Ops teams. In the Spring of '89 I got the idea to run a campaign where the PCs were members of a small bounty hunter guild. This campaign did have a metaplot but we played with whoever showed up (the leader was the only PC that appeared in every adventure). This campaign replaced the third one (the first two Rebel campaigns were still going), but the pool of players for the "Hunter" campaign were most of the players from all three of my RPG player groups. For one adventure, we had 12, or maybe 13 PCs! I remember that at least one PC died in that adventure, but maybe it was two.
| Quote: | | What worked and what did not? What was the best thing the GM or you did to keep a large group game flowing well and exciting for everyone? |
These two huge-group adventures were over 30 years ago so most of my memories of them are lost to time. I remember all the players of both adventures had a great time and praised me for being a legendary superhero GM. But I also distinctly remember running those adventures was very mentally taxing for me, and I had made a few mistakes. I'm not 100% certain, but it is likely I may have instituted a 'one action per PC per round' rule to keep things flowing (or maybe that was only on the second big-group adventure after my experience with the first big one).
Outside of those two adventures, the max players I've ran is six. That is really the limit for me, but I prefer a max of five PCs.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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I've gamed for 8 before, but usually stick around 5 to 7.
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Dr. Bidlo
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Joined: 24 Nov 2021
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Location: Arizona, USA
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| Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2022 6:25 pm Post subject: |
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I guess I would have been a nerd among peaceniks then. In theater because it was fun, but didn't enjoy the plays themselves much and HATED the musicals.
My friend actually recalled the biggest group he ran was about 20 in one setting! He even recalled whose house we were at all those years ago. We would set up two large 8' folding tables and push them together up to a big sectional couch and add in as many other chairs as we could find on the other side. Lots of snacks and soda... |
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CRMcNeill
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Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2022 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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Makes me wonder if it would be possible to have a GM Team to share the load, so that one GM isn't having to keep track of a dozen-plus PCs on top of whatever NPCs.
In fact, something like that would make it easier to split the party, as is seen so often in the films. If we were to take the end of TPM, for instance, you could have one GM running the lightsaber fight, one running the palace blaster fight and another running the starfighter battle in orbit. All three being run at the same time and all merging back into the same timeline in the end.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10435
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2022 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | I guess I would have been a nerd among peaceniks then. In theater because it was fun, but didn't enjoy the plays themselves much and HATED the musicals. |
I became good friends with some of the theater kids but never really joined them. I never got into U2 or R.E.M., and I hate musicals too. But I wish I had gotten into theater back then. It would have been a good experience for me with some good people. In college I took an acting class and got a A. I had minor roles in a few college plays but never really loved it.
In college, I was known as the vice president of my fraternity and an all-greek council representative. One year I was even vice president of the student body. Only some of my fraternity brothers even knew I was secretly a nerd, the ones who played in my college Star Wars campaign (the single four-year episodic Rebel Spec Ops campaign ran with 2e Blue Vader).
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:11 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | Makes me wonder if it would be possible to have a GM Team to share the load, so that one GM isn't having to keep track of a dozen-plus PCs on top of whatever NPCs.
In fact, something like that would make it easier to split the party, as is seen so often in the films. If we were to take the end of TPM, for instance, you could have one GM running the lightsaber fight, one running the palace blaster fight and another running the starfighter battle in orbit. All three being run at the same time and all merging back into the same timeline in the end. |
Assistant GM. Pfft. There's a pipe dream! I'd love to have some underling to pass off certain NPCs to run.
But I don't think I'd like splitting the group and the assistant GM fully running a 'second unit' elsewhere or elsetime. Everyone would miss half the chapter. The purpose of RPGs is to co-create a story. Groups of PCs should split sometimes, but I'd rather all the players (and I) still be together to watch part of the story their characters aren't participating in. Participants in the game are still observers of everything else going on.
However, two GMs isn't too likely to happen anyway. I know plenty of gamers who only want to be players, and they tell of the groups they are in where everyone wants to be a player and they argue to not be GM, or take turns because it is only fair that everyone should have to share the 'burden' of being GM. I'm not like that because I'd rather be GM. In any group I've ever been in, everyone else is happy to let me be GM so they don't have to be.
Well, there was one exception. Several years back I was invited to join a group as a player and accepted. The GM already had a Star Wars campaign planned and the GM had never gamed with me before. About in the middle of a two year campaign, the GM hit a slump and didn't have the game ready one game night. I offered to run a one-shot for the group (with new characters) and did. The GM later thanked me for inspiring him and rejuvenating the game for him. His campaign got a little better after that, but it still started to suck for me because I longed to be GM. No other players wanted to be GM. When that campaign ended, I was hoping that I could take over as GM for a new Star Wars campaign, but more than half the group want to play a different game (probably D&D or Pathfinder). I dropped out of that group.
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ThrorII
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:51 am Post subject: |
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Dang, guys!!??!! I'm impressed!!
In middle-school in the early 80s, our group(s) were 5-9 kids.
I've never GM'd more than 7 players, and really prefer 5 as my ideal number.
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:11 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | Makes me wonder if it would be possible to have a GM Team to share the load, so that one GM isn't having to keep track of a dozen-plus PCs on top of whatever NPCs.
In fact, something like that would make it easier to split the party, as is seen so often in the films. If we were to take the end of TPM, for instance, you could have one GM running the lightsaber fight, one running the palace blaster fight and another running the starfighter battle in orbit. All three being run at the same time and all merging back into the same timeline in the end. |
The sparks group i game with, Kind of does things like that, when we do our Interactives, each gencon, with the 4 hr mission, where its split amongst a # of tables.. say one for face people, one for ground combat monkeys, one for tech folks, one for space combat, one for force users, and one for 'others'..
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2022 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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I've GMd (or co-GM'd, often with my son) for some big groups (maybe 8-10 players). I've seen my son do something like 12. Personally, I prefer more the 4-6 range.
One friend ran an annual d6 Star Wars game that I think grew to having about a dozen players. Not only that, a bunch of them had their own ships, so we were a small squadron once we took to space. He did an excellent job of keeping everyone involved and moving things along, but it was only an annual game and it also often went really long (sometimes like 8-10 hours, I think).
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fogger1138
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| Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2022 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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| I did an "intro to roleplaying and Star Wars" type game once back in the early 90s that had about 25 people. Not something I'd try again, but it was fun enough. |
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Dr. Bidlo
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| Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 12:46 am Post subject: |
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| Sounds horrible. Trying to teach a group of 25 players the game for the first time?!? |
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fogger1138
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Location: Maine
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| Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 9:22 am Post subject: |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | Sounds horrible. Trying to teach a group of 25 players the game for the first time?!? |
4-5 of them were my usual group of players, who helped out a lot, and we did a lot of the grunt work ahead of time. But yeah, as I said, not something I'd do again. |
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Whill
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FVBonura
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 12:52 pm Post subject: Re: Large game groups |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | What is the greatest number of players you have played with or GMed? What worked and what did not? What was the best thing the GM or you did to keep a large group game flowing well and exciting for everyone? |
1987-88 I DM/GMed a party of 10 for AD&D. Total chaos, I’ll never do that again.
2003-04 I ran two groups of five back-to-back on Sundays for AD&D. Ran smoother but prep was insane.
Groups above five become difficult to prevent boredom of players waiting for their turn. It’s very important for the game master to keep their descriptions and narrations brief as possible, and keep the focus on the players as much as possible. Keep the players talking to each other in real time to prevent them playing video games on their phones. In the old days, they used to stack dice. I used to gauge the groups boredom level by how tall their dice stacks were. 
Smaller groups (three or four players) are more intimate and faster paced but with the fewer minds thinking, they are more prone to get stuck. If you’re running a smaller group, you may want to increase the number of clues in more investigative scenarios.
Player handouts are very helpful being in more than one place at the same time. While you’re dealing with one player, another player could be looking at a handout trying to figure out clues. I ran one investigative game, where one of the players literally had sheets of paper all over the floor, trying to piece the puzzle together. Other players were helping her out and I was able to deal with individuals who were looking for answers outside of what was handed to them.
I created a spreadsheet called, “what’s in the store?” and I was able to generate the contents and prices of merchandise in a given store. I was able to send a link to one player so that he could go shopping while I dealt with other players who were searching the city for rumors and clues. The bottom line is you need to find ways to be in more than one place at the same time.
Another technique I use is called “round robin”. If there’s a lot of dice rolling involved, I go around the table and say what do you do and then I tell them what to roll and then I immediately move to the next player, not waiting for their response when I get back around the table, I find out what they rolled, and give them the result. This keeps things moving very fast and gets hearts racing, which is our job. Game Masters have to create the illusion they are all knowing and all powerful even though they are not.
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25 