I occasionally had to run D&D for 9 players and that experience had quite a learning curve. Bear in mind, this wasn't a regular occurrence, it happened once every few months in our West Marches campaign. With that in mind, I wrote a blog post on advice and strategies for running large parties in D&D.
TLDR; If you have this many people, split into smaller groups or run a West Marches style campaign, but if you really need to run a session do the following:
Warn players ahead of time they're going to have to keep their focus on the game, more so than usual.
Limit your content. You're going to have to be ruthless when it comes to pruning your narrative.
Keep things moving. Don't allow player deliberation to spiral endlessly
Streamline Combat. You can pre-roll enemy dice rolls and use average damage where applicable.
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I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Most of my campaigns have been for between 6-9 players, in fact as a dm I actually prefer larger groups. My biggest game wasn’t DnD but a 12 player paranoia game. I will be honest I don’t really change a thing, narrative stays as is, I let he party split I don’t peer ill or anything like that and I allow my players as much time as they want to discuss and talk through ideas. I love large groups because it can allow to add a level of complexity to encounters, enemy tactics, the types of monsters used a lower levels etc.
What I do do is make sure I am tracking that everyone is getting a say, I will cut in if someone is not being allowed to engage and talk.
Combat I will always be priming the next 2 players that they are up and telling them to start preparing. I will also sometimes time limit turns, if someone isn’t quick enough making a decision they get knocked to the back of the initiative queue for that round simply to give them time to think.
Make sure you move around the group when performing social encounters. It might mean keeping track of a couple of threads at once but it keeps more people engaged at once if you let someone do a thing then move to the next person, I almost treat everything as if it is a combat, each player explaining maybe a few mins of lay and then moving into the next working around the group.
Give time limits in combat. One or Two minutes max per character (depending on party size) and if they have not decided by the time limit then consider their character paralyzed by indecision.
In the 9 person games I ran, I had players roll for initiative during non combat encounters to speed up rp sessions and to make sure everyone had a chance to interact.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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I occasionally had to run D&D for 9 players and that experience had quite a learning curve. Bear in mind, this wasn't a regular occurrence, it happened once every few months in our West Marches campaign. With that in mind, I wrote a blog post on advice and strategies for running large parties in D&D.
http://thathitsrolldamage.com/2021/02/26/how-to-dm-for-a-large-party-and-keep-your-game-moving/
TLDR; If you have this many people, split into smaller groups or run a West Marches style campaign, but if you really need to run a session do the following:
Warn players ahead of time they're going to have to keep their focus on the game, more so than usual.
Limit your content. You're going to have to be ruthless when it comes to pruning your narrative.
Keep things moving. Don't allow player deliberation to spiral endlessly
Streamline Combat. You can pre-roll enemy dice rolls and use average damage where applicable.
I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Dungeon Master, Blogger at That Hits, Roll Damage!
https://thathitsrolldamage.com/
Most of my campaigns have been for between 6-9 players, in fact as a dm I actually prefer larger groups. My biggest game wasn’t DnD but a 12 player paranoia game. I will be honest I don’t really change a thing, narrative stays as is, I let he party split I don’t peer ill or anything like that and I allow my players as much time as they want to discuss and talk through ideas. I love large groups because it can allow to add a level of complexity to encounters, enemy tactics, the types of monsters used a lower levels etc.
What I do do is make sure I am tracking that everyone is getting a say, I will cut in if someone is not being allowed to engage and talk.
Combat I will always be priming the next 2 players that they are up and telling them to start preparing. I will also sometimes time limit turns, if someone isn’t quick enough making a decision they get knocked to the back of the initiative queue for that round simply to give them time to think.
Make sure you move around the group when performing social encounters. It might mean keeping track of a couple of threads at once but it keeps more people engaged at once if you let someone do a thing then move to the next person, I almost treat everything as if it is a combat, each player explaining maybe a few mins of lay and then moving into the next working around the group.
Give time limits in combat. One or Two minutes max per character (depending on party size) and if they have not decided by the time limit then consider their character paralyzed by indecision.
In the 9 person games I ran, I had players roll for initiative during non combat encounters to speed up rp sessions and to make sure everyone had a chance to interact.