I work at a university and am running an orientation for new student workers in my department. We needed a teambuilding exercise and I figured there's never going to be a better opportunity to play D&D on the job than this, so I explained the virtues of the game (woo, soft skills!) to my boss and got the green light. Now comes the hard part.
I will have 3 hours and 10 players, all of whom I will assume for preparation's sake have never touched a set of polyhedral dice. Combat with 10 people who don't know D&D is out of the question, so I intend to make this more of a skills-based heist or locked-room encounter. I'm also going to run it at level 1 and have pregen characters, just to simplify things. They'll be sent a quick "how to play" email prior to the game.
My call to aid is for this:
- Advice on handling parties of that size (the largest group I've DMed for was 6)
- Ideas for puzzles/MacGuffin retrievals/locked rooms that wouldn't be unreasonable to run with a group that size
I'm going to straight up say the sad thing: there is no way to run an enjoyable game for a group of 10 players. There's even less way to run an enjoyable game for 10 new players in 3 hours, of whom it's possible that none might be interested in D&D at all. This is because, mathematically, you don't have time to enable anyone to really play.
You have 3 hours; after everyone settles in, let's call it 2h45. That's 165 minutes. Assume that as the DM you'll need to do 50% of the talking, especially as they're new players and there won't really be roleplay because they're new and there's no time. That leaves 82.5 minutes for the 10 players, giving each player a total of just 8m30s to speak within the 3 hours.
Essentially you're suggesting that you'll run an escape room type scenario. I can see how that would work... kind of. But why do it using D&D? They're level 1, and there's no combat so nobody is going to have any useful abilities (why play a Fighter?). So basically it's an escape room, but only in their minds. You'd be better off making them an actual escape room.
Call out whoever has the next turn. So Player A starts their turn and then you call out "Player B is on deck" so that they start thinking about what they are going to do.
The first adventure from the recent Radiant Citadel book is a good RP / soft skills adventure.
I was thinking about possible ways to actually run a game like this that would feel fun, and so I thought about how to address it as a super-simplified version of D&D. This is what I'd come up with:
Create level 2 character sheets for each player. Each character gets maxed hit points. Let them choose between Barbarian, Fighter (archer), Wizard or Cleric only. Each character sheet should only contain: Ability score modifiers (not the scores, just the modifier), their attack information, and any spells that they can cast - listed in detail on the sheet. Put tick boxes to record spell slots. Simplify abilities like Rage to always be active. Get rid of Bonus Actions and Reactions so that every turn each player can only move and take a single action. List Dash, Disengage and Dodge as actions on the sheets.
The set up is that they are all competing in a deadly challenge.
Design a short dungeon. It has a puzzle in the first room, a combat in the second room, a social interaction (riddles maybe?) in the third room and a final combat in the 4th room.
Make it lethal; The first puzzle can one-shot characters easily if they mess around with it. Aim for 50% of the characters to die in the 2nd room. Allow them to continue as ghosts accompanying the party into the 3rd room. In the final room, the PCs have to fight each other.
When there's only one PC left, they win the treasure.
Doing something like this keeps it all pretty brief, limits turns, gives a little story and should be fun for a bunch of people totally new to D&D. Killing each other at the end would make it extra fun.
I was also thinking of a Squid Game type thing. The problem is that if you go down that pathway, it stops being a team-building exercise. When the first person eats it, they have to twiddle their thumbs for three hours and everyone will be using one another as human shields and getting mad at each other.
I think this is a great idea for a con, but won't fit the bill for corporate icebreaking.
Maybe a superhero campaign where everyone plays a Marvel character and gangs up on Thanos?
Definitely definitely definitely play at level 1. Anything more is going to be too complicated for that number of new people.
Also consider using pre-generated character sheets, basic archetypal stuff, that the players can choose between without having to do character creation.
As far as gameplay goes, you may consider breaking the cardinal rule and in areas where combat might happen, find a way to split the party. That way you can have a few characters in a combat, flash over to what the other group are doing at the end of the round, flash back to the combat, finish it off, then have the groups reunite, maybe split again, have the other group get in a scrap, reunite, puzzle, then BBEG boss fight with everyone.
It's still a lot to run, but it was always going to be, and at least this way you don't have to run it all at once.
For that many players avoid trash combat at all cost, have a BBEG fight like CharlesThePlant suggests for sure but avoid the rest. Also you'll be better off with ToTM rather than mapping it out
My current group is 8 players that play add hoc with several younger players and we actually ending dropping D&D as a rule set and using Risus rules just for this group. Having 8 players moving counters round a map is dreadfull, you wont get all the players ina room and it will exclude players from a lot of activity - with theatre of the mind just ignore this, everyones in the room no matter what. Combat rounds for D&D with 8 players (especially new players) is also dreadfull, players will be bored rigid.
If you absolutely must have 10 players I'd try and go with lots of RP and minimise rolls - are you able to split the group at all? Having two groups of 5 is a bigger time commit for you but will make for MUCH happier players.
As far as gameplay goes, you may consider breaking the cardinal rule and in areas where combat might happen, find a way to split the party. That way you can have a few characters in a combat, flash over to what the other group are doing at the end of the round, flash back to the combat, finish it off, then have the groups reunite, maybe split again, have the other group get in a scrap, reunite, puzzle, then BBEG boss fight with everyone.
Rather than a full split, you could also consider a scenario where some of the party are working on the final puzzle/skill challenges/whatever -- and set it up so that only a certain number can work on it -- and the rest are in combat keeping the enemy off the backs of the ones trying to solve the puzzle
If you watched the recent Crit Role Exandria Unlimited mini-series DMed by Brennan Lee Mulligan, the final fight was set up in that way. A few characters were trying to get the McGuffin to work, and the rest were just trying to buy them enough time to do it
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I've settled on a puzzle that requires multiple characters working in tandem to solve. I actually ran this puzzle for my group of 6 and will be modifying it to accommodate the party level and size.
It took my players about 40 minutes to solve it the first time, and it's a numbers-based logic puzzle with hidden clues scattered in the locked room, so I'm fairly confident 3 hours will be plenty of time for my students. Zero combat involved, skills checks only, and opportunities aplenty to get creative with items in their inventories. A tiny D&D teaser that requires tons of teamwork, adaptability, creativity and communication! :-)
I've settled on a puzzle that requires multiple characters working in tandem to solve. I actually ran this puzzle for my group of 6 and will be modifying it to accommodate the party level and size.
It took my players about 40 minutes to solve it the first time, and it's a numbers-based logic puzzle with hidden clues scattered in the locked room, so I'm fairly confident 3 hours will be plenty of time for my students. Zero combat involved, skills checks only, and opportunities aplenty to get creative with items in their inventories. A tiny D&D teaser that requires tons of teamwork, adaptability, creativity and communication! :-)
My one reservation about zero combat is that while casters have plenty of spells for use outside of combat, any martials may walk away with the feeling their character never actually got to do the thing they're good at, staring wistfully at the sword they've been carrying around that whole time.
I would pepper in maybe one or two REALLY EASY combats, that way they don't eat up all your time and all characters get to contribute.
I've settled on a puzzle that requires multiple characters working in tandem to solve. I actually ran this puzzle for my group of 6 and will be modifying it to accommodate the party level and size.
It took my players about 40 minutes to solve it the first time, and it's a numbers-based logic puzzle with hidden clues scattered in the locked room, so I'm fairly confident 3 hours will be plenty of time for my students. Zero combat involved, skills checks only, and opportunities aplenty to get creative with items in their inventories. A tiny D&D teaser that requires tons of teamwork, adaptability, creativity and communication! :-)
95% of the rules in D&D are combat rules, so what you're really running is free-form roleplay with ability checks that will feel weird because there's no other use for the rules.
Think about chucking in at least one combat but simply make it that you tell them what to roll, and if they roll that number, they hit and kill an enemy (the way that TV shows like to make it out to be).
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I work at a university and am running an orientation for new student workers in my department. We needed a teambuilding exercise and I figured there's never going to be a better opportunity to play D&D on the job than this, so I explained the virtues of the game (woo, soft skills!) to my boss and got the green light. Now comes the hard part.
I will have 3 hours and 10 players, all of whom I will assume for preparation's sake have never touched a set of polyhedral dice. Combat with 10 people who don't know D&D is out of the question, so I intend to make this more of a skills-based heist or locked-room encounter. I'm also going to run it at level 1 and have pregen characters, just to simplify things. They'll be sent a quick "how to play" email prior to the game.
My call to aid is for this:
- Advice on handling parties of that size (the largest group I've DMed for was 6)
- Ideas for puzzles/MacGuffin retrievals/locked rooms that wouldn't be unreasonable to run with a group that size
Thanks!
I'm going to straight up say the sad thing: there is no way to run an enjoyable game for a group of 10 players. There's even less way to run an enjoyable game for 10 new players in 3 hours, of whom it's possible that none might be interested in D&D at all. This is because, mathematically, you don't have time to enable anyone to really play.
You have 3 hours; after everyone settles in, let's call it 2h45. That's 165 minutes. Assume that as the DM you'll need to do 50% of the talking, especially as they're new players and there won't really be roleplay because they're new and there's no time. That leaves 82.5 minutes for the 10 players, giving each player a total of just 8m30s to speak within the 3 hours.
Essentially you're suggesting that you'll run an escape room type scenario. I can see how that would work... kind of. But why do it using D&D? They're level 1, and there's no combat so nobody is going to have any useful abilities (why play a Fighter?). So basically it's an escape room, but only in their minds. You'd be better off making them an actual escape room.
Call out whoever has the next turn. So Player A starts their turn and then you call out "Player B is on deck" so that they start thinking about what they are going to do.
The first adventure from the recent Radiant Citadel book is a good RP / soft skills adventure.
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I was thinking about possible ways to actually run a game like this that would feel fun, and so I thought about how to address it as a super-simplified version of D&D. This is what I'd come up with:
Doing something like this keeps it all pretty brief, limits turns, gives a little story and should be fun for a bunch of people totally new to D&D. Killing each other at the end would make it extra fun.
I was also thinking of a Squid Game type thing. The problem is that if you go down that pathway, it stops being a team-building exercise. When the first person eats it, they have to twiddle their thumbs for three hours and everyone will be using one another as human shields and getting mad at each other.
I think this is a great idea for a con, but won't fit the bill for corporate icebreaking.
Maybe a superhero campaign where everyone plays a Marvel character and gangs up on Thanos?
Definitely definitely definitely play at level 1. Anything more is going to be too complicated for that number of new people.
Also consider using pre-generated character sheets, basic archetypal stuff, that the players can choose between without having to do character creation.
As far as gameplay goes, you may consider breaking the cardinal rule and in areas where combat might happen, find a way to split the party. That way you can have a few characters in a combat, flash over to what the other group are doing at the end of the round, flash back to the combat, finish it off, then have the groups reunite, maybe split again, have the other group get in a scrap, reunite, puzzle, then BBEG boss fight with everyone.
It's still a lot to run, but it was always going to be, and at least this way you don't have to run it all at once.
For that many players avoid trash combat at all cost, have a BBEG fight like CharlesThePlant suggests for sure but avoid the rest. Also you'll be better off with ToTM rather than mapping it out
My current group is 8 players that play add hoc with several younger players and we actually ending dropping D&D as a rule set and using Risus rules just for this group. Having 8 players moving counters round a map is dreadfull, you wont get all the players ina room and it will exclude players from a lot of activity - with theatre of the mind just ignore this, everyones in the room no matter what. Combat rounds for D&D with 8 players (especially new players) is also dreadfull, players will be bored rigid.
If you absolutely must have 10 players I'd try and go with lots of RP and minimise rolls - are you able to split the group at all? Having two groups of 5 is a bigger time commit for you but will make for MUCH happier players.
Rather than a full split, you could also consider a scenario where some of the party are working on the final puzzle/skill challenges/whatever -- and set it up so that only a certain number can work on it -- and the rest are in combat keeping the enemy off the backs of the ones trying to solve the puzzle
If you watched the recent Crit Role Exandria Unlimited mini-series DMed by Brennan Lee Mulligan, the final fight was set up in that way. A few characters were trying to get the McGuffin to work, and the rest were just trying to buy them enough time to do it
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Thanks all for the insights!
I've settled on a puzzle that requires multiple characters working in tandem to solve. I actually ran this puzzle for my group of 6 and will be modifying it to accommodate the party level and size.
It took my players about 40 minutes to solve it the first time, and it's a numbers-based logic puzzle with hidden clues scattered in the locked room, so I'm fairly confident 3 hours will be plenty of time for my students. Zero combat involved, skills checks only, and opportunities aplenty to get creative with items in their inventories. A tiny D&D teaser that requires tons of teamwork, adaptability, creativity and communication! :-)
My one reservation about zero combat is that while casters have plenty of spells for use outside of combat, any martials may walk away with the feeling their character never actually got to do the thing they're good at, staring wistfully at the sword they've been carrying around that whole time.
I would pepper in maybe one or two REALLY EASY combats, that way they don't eat up all your time and all characters get to contribute.
95% of the rules in D&D are combat rules, so what you're really running is free-form roleplay with ability checks that will feel weird because there's no other use for the rules.
Think about chucking in at least one combat but simply make it that you tell them what to roll, and if they roll that number, they hit and kill an enemy (the way that TV shows like to make it out to be).