Just thought I'd share my experience with a large group as I have seen people ask about this on this site, multiple reddit threads and other websites fairly frequently.
First off, I see a lot of recommendations for people not to do it. This is a shame because large groups can be a blast and not necessarily a lot more work. I know I have a great time with my group and they have had a fun enough time that they went 20+ sessions without a single person missing a week!
A little overview to begin with and then I'll go in to my adjustments I've made: My party of 8 is primarily running a slightly modified modules online. I first started with a couple 100% custom sessions/encounters to introduce them to the world and give them a reason to head down to Phandalin. From there I ran some DoIP quests then took them to Candlekeep for some Confrontation at Candlekeep. After that it's back north to Leilon for Storm's Lord Wrath.
When I first started I tried a few things like splitting the party into two groups of four. With DoIP these worked good running multiple quests and them being size right but as best I tried to "flip scenes" it still felt like too much time went between turns and I wasn't satisfied with the results.
I then tried using the Encounter Builder on here to up size encounters and run as one large party. This actually worked really well as adding the base encounter was easy and then adjusting it and keeping an eye on the encounter difficulty only took seconds.
Time between participation was still more than I wanted so the next adjustment was group initiative. The way I do group initiative is have everyone role for initiative individually and then I roll for the creatures. Any "grouping" of consecutive sides get to collaborate which I feel ups the fun as the players work on fighting a little more cooperatively. Also, I will plan and set up the next creature or group of creatures moves while they are figuring out their turn. When they are done it's roll, roll, roll in execution and I can quickly go with only adjusting what I need to based on what they did.
I have most currently stopped adjusting creatures in encounters but have up'd the encounter levels I am running by 3 levels. So my fourth level players are running encounters made for level 7 players. I have looked at a few of the encounters in the Encounter Builder and the difficulty for 4 level 7 players vs 8 level 4 players is about the same. So they are just progressing by milestone in order to lag behind the encounters by 3 levels.
Lastly, I think the main thing to know is I do not do too much more pre-planning work, other than thinking about individual players goals in the big story arc, but impromptu adjustments like deciding if a creature which hits real hard gives avg dmg versus rolled dmg to avoid one hit kills. Trying to keep the fight challenging without being too hard to be fun. I think another important piece is giving players options to end an encounter in multiple ways besides fighting it out to the end.
Hope this helps encourage those who may have felt apprehensive to trying a large group. This potentially could be more challenging with strangers who may not as patient in the beginning but if you have friends who all want to play don't be too discouraged to give it a try!
Your party is only level 4 - they are about to hit the big power jump point, and this is where big parties become problematic.
After level 5, combat gets a lot more complicated as the characters have way more options. Their turns will take longer. Creature turns and spells being used by NPCs will take longer.
The hard thing about being a player in a campaign where there are 7+ characters on the board is that even if each of the 8 players takes just 3 minutes over their turn, that's 24 minutes just for the characters to move and take actions. If all they're doing is making a single attack roll, it can take less, but once you're asking for 6 saving throws against your Fireball, or you're asking the DM a question, looking up and clarifying a spell ruling, or you're conducting complex combat actions, 3 minutes is at the low end. Factor in that you then will probably have one monster per character, and those monsters will have multiattacks at higher level, and that's another 24 minutes added, and before you know it, your players are getting one turn per hour of gameplay. If each of your 8 players takes 5 minutes for a turn, that's a whopping 40 minutes even without the monsters having moved.
Smaller combats are over faster as well because there are fewer enemies, and they get killed earlier in the battle's time-frame, thereby leaving you fewer monster turns to take.
This time increase goes up not just because there are a lot of players, but because as DM you're having to add in more creatures. You can't just run them against higher level monsters, because as the CR of monsters goes up, their damage goes up enormously to the point where it will one-shot characters from full health.
For all it's wonders, the current version of D&D has to make a large set of assumptions. It's deigned around a party size of no less than three and no more than five, none of them with magic items, nor feats, nor multi-classed, and it expects the kinds of characters you get with Point Buy. Those have kind of mediocre scores compared to rolling randomly.
I wish I could handle 8 players at the same time. The fact that you can is awesome. :-)
I think there are a few things letting me 'handle it".
1. We are still a first tier group so to Sanvael's point I am sure it will need more time and tweaks to keep it fun and engaging when moving up. 2. The group initiative means players aren't waiting for their turns long. It's usually 1st group of PCs, 1st group of creatures, 2nd group of PCs, 2nd group of creatures per round.. I can usually play off the group of creatures in just a minute or two knowing my rules in advance for who they'll attack, how they'll attack and rolling quickly through DDB. So players only wait for the other group with a slight pause between. 3. We are all friends so there is friendly chat discourse going on in discord when it is others turns (often joking about what the other players are doing or how bad/good they are rolling)
Geann, To your point I think I have a couple comments. With 8 players the action economy is a monster is not getting hit twice as often per turn. If you choose a higher CR monster to take the hits then their attacks can quickly kill a lower level player. One answer to this is magical items that bump the defense side of characters and not the offense. Now the tougher creature can take the 8 player hit but also doesn't take them out too easily.
DennisThePeasant, I think bullet points 2 and 3 addresses your concerns on player engagement for my group but I totally get it wouldn't help for all groups. No magical cure to please everyone.
If anyone finds this thread helpful or encouraging I'll try to update it on lessons learned and tips that work for us and I welcome ALL feedback!
I've been a player in a 7 player game that stalled out at level 8. There were a number of reasons, but a major reason was just that combat became unbearably slow. We had been forced online through covid, and I recall one five hour game, which was the second half of a combat that started the previous session, during which I got six turns. There really aren't that many options on what to do as a level 7 Fighter. After the first 3 hours, I turned the TV on and watched something else while I waited for my turn to come round.
It's not just combat. Every decision on where to go and what to do next takes well over twice as long with eight as it is with four. When the characters separate to go do stuff around town, it's twice as long. Every player needs time to interact with NPCs, to consider the puzzle, even to go off and have a bathroom break IRL. Perhaps worst of all is shopping, which is already the slowest and most boring part of the game; expect 2 hour long shopping trips to eat up half a session.
Part of the problem is that the multiplication of time for all these activities isn't linear. It doesn't go "A 2 player combat takes 20 minutes, 4 players take 40, 8 players take 1h20." It's an exponential increase, more like 2 = 20m, 4 = 1h20, 8 = 4h.
I am running an 8 player online game currently they are level 10, the players love it, combat takes a little longer but the players remain engaged and involved in every dice roll. I don’t bother with things like group initiative but I do make use of DnD beyond and avrae on discord to streamline dice rolls for players (I make all dice rolls physically).
What I do do to speed things up is pre roll things like rolls to hit, so if I know who my monsters will be hitting, either because they are engaged already or they are the obvious target, I will make those rolls while other players are having there turn and then note them down, then on the Monsters round I can just describe the hits and roll for damage.
I'm running a game for five players right now. I have banned shopping in session, and it works great. My campaign is focused around a single city. They city has a large marketplace, and I just tell the players they can buy any common gear they want at PHB prices between sessions and between adventures. I have also made them aware of a number of specialty shops that might have more exotic items or services. We are all on discord, so they can just message me if they want something unusual, and we can work it out between sessions. The only time the party sets foot in a store is if it is directly related to the adventure at hand.
I have also had some success in moving other parts of downtime "off camera" Players and I message each other about plans and do some rolls one on one, and then only the most consequential and entertaining parts are done in session. I think this also gives my players a sense that their characters have lives outside of the party and the adventures.
Of course, this strategy might not work for every campaign, but I do recommend moving minor stuff "off camera" when appropriate to speed up large and large-ish groups.
I've been a player in a 7 player game that stalled out at level 8. There were a number of reasons, but a major reason was just that combat became unbearably slow. We had been forced online through covid, and I recall one five hour game, which was the second half of a combat that started the previous session, during which I got six turns. There really aren't that many options on what to do as a level 7 Fighter. After the first 3 hours, I turned the TV on and watched something else while I waited for my turn to come round.
It's not just combat. Every decision on where to go and what to do next takes well over twice as long with eight as it is with four. When the characters separate to go do stuff around town, it's twice as long. Every player needs time to interact with NPCs, to consider the puzzle, even to go off and have a bathroom break IRL. Perhaps worst of all is shopping, which is already the slowest and most boring part of the game; expect 2 hour long shopping trips to eat up half a session.
Part of the problem is that the multiplication of time for all these activities isn't linear. It doesn't go "A 2 player combat takes 20 minutes, 4 players take 40, 8 players take 1h20." It's an exponential increase, more like 2 = 20m, 4 = 1h20, 8 = 4h.
Shopping trips are a key part in our campaigns both me as a dm and my players love them, a real chance to roleplay, create interesting characters the players can bounce off of, have a mini adventure as my halfling warlock goes hunting round the market for some colored beads to sew in her hair, or the Barbarian Minotaur looks for a tattoo parlor to continue his sleeve tattoo. The group love them and love listening in as an audience even if the party splits, they can span 2-3 sessions sometimes and no one gets bored, but if you want to streamline them then let the players know. Next session is shopping and downtime tell me ahead of time what you want to look for and buy.
I'm running a game for five players right now. I have banned shopping in session, and it works great. My campaign is focused around a single city. They city has a large marketplace, and I just tell the players they can buy any common gear they want at PHB prices between sessions and between adventures. I have also made them aware of a number of specialty shops that might have more exotic items or services. We are all on discord, so they can just message me if they want something unusual, and we can work it out between sessions. The only time the party sets foot in a store is if it is directly related to the adventure at hand.
I have also had some success in moving other parts of downtime "off camera" Players and I message each other about plans and do some rolls one on one, and then only the most consequential and entertaining parts are done in session. I think this also gives my players a sense that their characters have lives outside of the party and the adventures.
Of course, this strategy might not work for every campaign, but I do recommend moving minor stuff "off camera" when appropriate to speed up large and large-ish groups.
For me and my players in 20 years of roleplaying these downtime moments are as enjoyable if not more so then the combat and adventuring. My players love roleplaying out shopping expeditions and it lets me get more and more practice at creating NPC’s and situations on the fly, every town the party go to at some point they will tell me they want to go see the butcher (a running joke with the players), but they will also try and come up with the most random, mundane thing they want to try and buy and I will then off the top of my head create a shop/market, put people in it and roleplay out the scene. If the party splits then my players love sitting back and watching, one told me it is like watching an online ole play game just being able to be the audience for a while knowing they don’t need to interact because they are not there and they don’t need to get stressed because there shouldn’t be a moment it looks like people might die because the party split.
Some of our funniest moments have come during shopping expeditions. But it serves a second purpose as well, as players they have no idea who in game may or may not be important to the story because I don’t gloss over a single character. I have played in campaigns where the DM did shopping offline which meant the moment they told you they where roleplaying out a shop visit you knew this NPC was not just background, the more of your world you roleplay the easier it is to surprise and trick players and therefore there characters.
I remember someone made a joke where they said; "The definition of an Adventure is when you watch somebody else having a really hard time, while you sit there watching them do it, and eating popcorn."
Don't treat your players, or their characters like you're sitting there and eating popcorn.
Shopping is essentially mundane. It's something everyone does. Ask why people who are supposed to be the main characters of a story are in a store. Scarloc Stormcall has a perfectly good reason for having the players shop. They enjoy it a lot. Apparently they run a kind of silly game. There's nothing wrong with that.
I like games with a moderately serious tone that run at a moderate pace. I can't expect my players to have fun with mistaken assumptions, like having a monster known to be evil act friendly, or player characters who are smaller or bigger than normal, Wizards that like to get into melee with a great big maul who cast healing spells...
I manage to have fun, but I have to work for it. There's another game I'm in with 6 player characters including my own, and I'm having to work for my fun there too.
I remember someone made a joke where they said; "The definition of an Adventure is when you watch somebody else having a really hard time, while you sit there watching them do it, and eating popcorn."
Don't treat your players, or their characters like you're sitting there and eating popcorn.
Shopping is essentially mundane. It's something everyone does. Ask why people who are supposed to be the main characters of a story are in a store. Scarloc Stormcall has a perfectly good reason for having the players shop. They enjoy it a lot. Apparently they run a kind of silly game. There's nothing wrong with that.
I like games with a moderately serious tone that run at a moderate pace. I can't expect my players to have fun with mistaken assumptions, like having a monster known to be evil act friendly, or player characters who are smaller or bigger than normal, Wizards that like to get into melee with a great big maul who cast healing spells...
I manage to have fun, but I have to work for it. There's another game I'm in with 6 player characters including my own, and I'm having to work for my fun there too.
Don’t think it’s a silly game it really isn’t, there are moments of real tension in the past players have almost been in tears over story moments, but to counteract that you need moments of levity. Shopping can be a moment of light relief but we are in a fantasy world with magic and potions and different races, it is the best moment to input life into a world. In star wars the Cantina Scene shows you for the first time that the galaxy is not just human, it shows you a glimpse of the world.
When my players are shopping they are interacting with the world around them, but also there are plot points I can drop. That city they decided to leave instead of tracking down the criminal gang, I can give news that it fell to an outside invader, or its ruler was assasinated.
When they talk to an old women selling Knick knacks she might tell them a tale about a strange artifact that a statue depicts, it might be nothing a story to sell the ornament, or it might be the start of an adventure. They might look at the strange turtle type creature selling trinkets from a far away land and instantly learn what a tortle is and where they come from.
When they shop they learn the insignificant details of a world, learning of an alchemist who wants to make enough money to buy a diamond for his boyfriends engagement ring, or the seamstress who used to work for a king until he was usurped and so now keeps her head down. They form connections and contacts that later on they might try and track down hoping they have information that might help them. I populate my world with characters so it feels constantly alive and moving and this is why it works for our table. Then the party go off to try and stop the child killing cultists who slaughtered a baby in front of them, or they go and try and prevent a princess killing herself because her lover has been cast to hell and she sees it as her only way to be with him.
The stories I tell can be dark, emotional and deep so the levity is needed to slow things down and let all of us breathe a moment, but those shopping trips can get important to so many story threads have begun over the years with a character asking a question from left field that led to an adventure. Like the wizard who asked a potion maker what ingredient they needed to make a specific potion (the lung of a red dragon and the sting of a manticore). That led to a monster hunt that led to a quest that led to about 15 sessions of tracking that potion maker back down and finding out those ingredients where for something very different.
I understand and respect those who don’t enjoy running shopping expeditions, for a long time I thought it was only me and the 40 or so players I have dmd for over the years, but some of the best roleplay moments on the streams I watch online also happen in those in between shopping moments because it allows the players to improv and just have fun with no consequences.
And it is perfectly ok as a player and a dm to sometimes sit back and just enjoy watching players play and engage and roleplay. The number of times I have sat back and barely said a word as the party engage in some in depth conversation with each other, or debate the next course of action, only stepping in when it felt the moment had come to a conclusion and was becoming cyclical. Sometimes as a dm you don’t need to call out a target to roll against, or describe a scene you just need to give your players space to talk and roleplay and interact with each other.
I remember someone made a joke where they said; "The definition of an Adventure is when you watch somebody else having a really hard time, while you sit there watching them do it, and eating popcorn."
Don't treat your players, or their characters like you're sitting there and eating popcorn.
Shopping is essentially mundane. It's something everyone does. Ask why people who are supposed to be the main characters of a story are in a store. Scarloc Stormcall has a perfectly good reason for having the players shop. They enjoy it a lot. Apparently they run a kind of silly game. There's nothing wrong with that.
I like games with a moderately serious tone that run at a moderate pace. I can't expect my players to have fun with mistaken assumptions, like having a monster known to be evil act friendly, or player characters who are smaller or bigger than normal, Wizards that like to get into melee with a great big maul who cast healing spells...
I manage to have fun, but I have to work for it. There's another game I'm in with 6 player characters including my own, and I'm having to work for my fun there too.
Shopping is indeed mundane, and even though Scarloc says his players love watching/listening to others actually play the game, well, let's just say I find that situation "unique". If as a player, if I showed up for a 4 hour session, and half of it was burned with me doing exactly nothing, because I had no interest/need to buy anything in town, I would not be long for that game. If a player can quite literally check out for more than 5 minutes, and by that their actions or attention needed for future actions is not required at the table, then that game has a big problem.
It is one thing to run a table where players have to wait 10 or 15 minutes for their turn during combat(that alone is a huge problem). It is far far worse for them to totally walk away, make dinner, and come back and have not missed something because some chars had split from the main party for a shopping expedition. By definition, that player who is not involved in that extended shopping SHOULD walk away from the table, because any important information gained by the splinter party is not available to the rest of the group until the splinter group rejoins the rest of the party.
And this is another thing I do differently to speed up my large 8 player game, certain things are assumed, unless a player specifically says I don’t share x with the group we don’t have characters repeating to other characters what just happened, you just watched it take place and heard it, so why waste game time repeating it. We also do t roleplay out every moment in game conversations happen round camp fires etc you don’t see.
Maybe I have been lucky with my players, I would say I have DMd about 40 or so over the last 10 or so years and all of them loved the way I run downtime and shopping. Or maybe it is the way I do it, it isn’t about having a list of items to buy and then just going off and buying them it is about describing a scene, interacting with the characters as a npc, making each one unique and different and players having NPCs they want to go back to and visit and interact with over and over. Characters who have nothing to do with the story but have lives and loves and dreams and ambitions that the players actually care about learning about. I once had a party teleport to the other side of the continent because they wanted to check in on how Abigail was doing, a barmaid who had been jilted at the alter by her fiancé, left with a baby. 6 months had passed in game and the players cared enough about a random NPC I created on the fly to travel away from the main adventure just to see if she was ok, I didn’t make her part of the main narriative didn’t make her suddenly important to the story, I didn’t kill her off or make her dramatic, they returned, she was surviving, they babysat her child so she could go on a date (I kind of cut scenes that bit) and then the next day after a long rest had reset the spell, they teleported back to the main story thread and carried on.
For me those moments are what make a ttrpg different to a film, movie of computer game, being able to just interact with the world in a mundane way fills it with life. But also can add to the sense of magic and wonder, I play high magic games, there are magic shops all over, every town and larger has a magic user of some description, my players love experiencing that in there sessions they also love learning about Abigail because while she wasn’t important to the story, she was a reason why they wanted to stop the bbeg, that’s why they took that day out a day or normalcy before the next potentially TPK fight they knew they where heading into.
I ran campaigns and also playtest sessions with large groups. I find the time and complexity just get bigger and bigger as level get highier. The more characters there is in play, the more enemies you usually have and thse turn into mimi mass combat which also become problematic with areas of maps that are indoor rather than outdoor in the open, dungeons have small rooms, corridors etc. not necessarily design with 16+ creatures on board. Also player's interactions get twice as more traffic and sometime decision stretch into debate etc.. Simply put, everything take longer, turn, dice rolling, plans, execution, even treasure share!
I prefer nowadays runing with 4-5 players max. Things just run smoother on the long run.
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Just thought I'd share my experience with a large group as I have seen people ask about this on this site, multiple reddit threads and other websites fairly frequently.
First off, I see a lot of recommendations for people not to do it. This is a shame because large groups can be a blast and not necessarily a lot more work. I know I have a great time with my group and they have had a fun enough time that they went 20+ sessions without a single person missing a week!
A little overview to begin with and then I'll go in to my adjustments I've made:
My party of 8 is primarily running a slightly modified modules online. I first started with a couple 100% custom sessions/encounters to introduce them to the world and give them a reason to head down to Phandalin. From there I ran some DoIP quests then took them to Candlekeep for some Confrontation at Candlekeep. After that it's back north to Leilon for Storm's Lord Wrath.
When I first started I tried a few things like splitting the party into two groups of four. With DoIP these worked good running multiple quests and them being size right but as best I tried to "flip scenes" it still felt like too much time went between turns and I wasn't satisfied with the results.
I then tried using the Encounter Builder on here to up size encounters and run as one large party. This actually worked really well as adding the base encounter was easy and then adjusting it and keeping an eye on the encounter difficulty only took seconds.
Time between participation was still more than I wanted so the next adjustment was group initiative. The way I do group initiative is have everyone role for initiative individually and then I roll for the creatures. Any "grouping" of consecutive sides get to collaborate which I feel ups the fun as the players work on fighting a little more cooperatively. Also, I will plan and set up the next creature or group of creatures moves while they are figuring out their turn. When they are done it's roll, roll, roll in execution and I can quickly go with only adjusting what I need to based on what they did.
I have most currently stopped adjusting creatures in encounters but have up'd the encounter levels I am running by 3 levels. So my fourth level players are running encounters made for level 7 players. I have looked at a few of the encounters in the Encounter Builder and the difficulty for 4 level 7 players vs 8 level 4 players is about the same. So they are just progressing by milestone in order to lag behind the encounters by 3 levels.
Lastly, I think the main thing to know is I do not do too much more pre-planning work, other than thinking about individual players goals in the big story arc, but impromptu adjustments like deciding if a creature which hits real hard gives avg dmg versus rolled dmg to avoid one hit kills. Trying to keep the fight challenging without being too hard to be fun. I think another important piece is giving players options to end an encounter in multiple ways besides fighting it out to the end.
Hope this helps encourage those who may have felt apprehensive to trying a large group. This potentially could be more challenging with strangers who may not as patient in the beginning but if you have friends who all want to play don't be too discouraged to give it a try!
Your party is only level 4 - they are about to hit the big power jump point, and this is where big parties become problematic.
After level 5, combat gets a lot more complicated as the characters have way more options. Their turns will take longer. Creature turns and spells being used by NPCs will take longer.
The hard thing about being a player in a campaign where there are 7+ characters on the board is that even if each of the 8 players takes just 3 minutes over their turn, that's 24 minutes just for the characters to move and take actions. If all they're doing is making a single attack roll, it can take less, but once you're asking for 6 saving throws against your Fireball, or you're asking the DM a question, looking up and clarifying a spell ruling, or you're conducting complex combat actions, 3 minutes is at the low end. Factor in that you then will probably have one monster per character, and those monsters will have multiattacks at higher level, and that's another 24 minutes added, and before you know it, your players are getting one turn per hour of gameplay. If each of your 8 players takes 5 minutes for a turn, that's a whopping 40 minutes even without the monsters having moved.
Smaller combats are over faster as well because there are fewer enemies, and they get killed earlier in the battle's time-frame, thereby leaving you fewer monster turns to take.
This time increase goes up not just because there are a lot of players, but because as DM you're having to add in more creatures. You can't just run them against higher level monsters, because as the CR of monsters goes up, their damage goes up enormously to the point where it will one-shot characters from full health.
For all it's wonders, the current version of D&D has to make a large set of assumptions. It's deigned around a party size of no less than three and no more than five, none of them with magic items, nor feats, nor multi-classed, and it expects the kinds of characters you get with Point Buy. Those have kind of mediocre scores compared to rolling randomly.
I wish I could handle 8 players at the same time. The fact that you can is awesome. :-)
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Great comments everybody.
I think there are a few things letting me 'handle it".
1. We are still a first tier group so to Sanvael's point I am sure it will need more time and tweaks to keep it fun and engaging when moving up.
2. The group initiative means players aren't waiting for their turns long. It's usually 1st group of PCs, 1st group of creatures, 2nd group of PCs, 2nd group of creatures per round..
I can usually play off the group of creatures in just a minute or two knowing my rules in advance for who they'll attack, how they'll attack and rolling quickly through DDB.
So players only wait for the other group with a slight pause between.
3. We are all friends so there is friendly chat discourse going on in discord when it is others turns (often joking about what the other players are doing or how bad/good they are rolling)
Geann,
To your point I think I have a couple comments. With 8 players the action economy is a monster is not getting hit twice as often per turn. If you choose a higher CR monster to take the hits then their attacks can quickly kill a lower level player. One answer to this is magical items that bump the defense side of characters and not the offense. Now the tougher creature can take the 8 player hit but also doesn't take them out too easily.
DennisThePeasant,
I think bullet points 2 and 3 addresses your concerns on player engagement for my group but I totally get it wouldn't help for all groups. No magical cure to please everyone.
If anyone finds this thread helpful or encouraging I'll try to update it on lessons learned and tips that work for us and I welcome ALL feedback!
I've been a player in a 7 player game that stalled out at level 8. There were a number of reasons, but a major reason was just that combat became unbearably slow. We had been forced online through covid, and I recall one five hour game, which was the second half of a combat that started the previous session, during which I got six turns. There really aren't that many options on what to do as a level 7 Fighter. After the first 3 hours, I turned the TV on and watched something else while I waited for my turn to come round.
It's not just combat. Every decision on where to go and what to do next takes well over twice as long with eight as it is with four. When the characters separate to go do stuff around town, it's twice as long. Every player needs time to interact with NPCs, to consider the puzzle, even to go off and have a bathroom break IRL. Perhaps worst of all is shopping, which is already the slowest and most boring part of the game; expect 2 hour long shopping trips to eat up half a session.
Part of the problem is that the multiplication of time for all these activities isn't linear. It doesn't go "A 2 player combat takes 20 minutes, 4 players take 40, 8 players take 1h20." It's an exponential increase, more like 2 = 20m, 4 = 1h20, 8 = 4h.
I am running an 8 player online game currently they are level 10, the players love it, combat takes a little longer but the players remain engaged and involved in every dice roll. I don’t bother with things like group initiative but I do make use of DnD beyond and avrae on discord to streamline dice rolls for players (I make all dice rolls physically).
What I do do to speed things up is pre roll things like rolls to hit, so if I know who my monsters will be hitting, either because they are engaged already or they are the obvious target, I will make those rolls while other players are having there turn and then note them down, then on the Monsters round I can just describe the hits and roll for damage.
Sanvael,
I feel your pain about the shopping trips.
I'm running a game for five players right now. I have banned shopping in session, and it works great. My campaign is focused around a single city. They city has a large marketplace, and I just tell the players they can buy any common gear they want at PHB prices between sessions and between adventures. I have also made them aware of a number of specialty shops that might have more exotic items or services. We are all on discord, so they can just message me if they want something unusual, and we can work it out between sessions. The only time the party sets foot in a store is if it is directly related to the adventure at hand.
I have also had some success in moving other parts of downtime "off camera" Players and I message each other about plans and do some rolls one on one, and then only the most consequential and entertaining parts are done in session. I think this also gives my players a sense that their characters have lives outside of the party and the adventures.
Of course, this strategy might not work for every campaign, but I do recommend moving minor stuff "off camera" when appropriate to speed up large and large-ish groups.
Shopping trips are a key part in our campaigns both me as a dm and my players love them, a real chance to roleplay, create interesting characters the players can bounce off of, have a mini adventure as my halfling warlock goes hunting round the market for some colored beads to sew in her hair, or the Barbarian Minotaur looks for a tattoo parlor to continue his sleeve tattoo. The group love them and love listening in as an audience even if the party splits, they can span 2-3 sessions sometimes and no one gets bored, but if you want to streamline them then let the players know. Next session is shopping and downtime tell me ahead of time what you want to look for and buy.
For me and my players in 20 years of roleplaying these downtime moments are as enjoyable if not more so then the combat and adventuring. My players love roleplaying out shopping expeditions and it lets me get more and more practice at creating NPC’s and situations on the fly, every town the party go to at some point they will tell me they want to go see the butcher (a running joke with the players), but they will also try and come up with the most random, mundane thing they want to try and buy and I will then off the top of my head create a shop/market, put people in it and roleplay out the scene. If the party splits then my players love sitting back and watching, one told me it is like watching an online ole play game just being able to be the audience for a while knowing they don’t need to interact because they are not there and they don’t need to get stressed because there shouldn’t be a moment it looks like people might die because the party split.
Some of our funniest moments have come during shopping expeditions. But it serves a second purpose as well, as players they have no idea who in game may or may not be important to the story because I don’t gloss over a single character. I have played in campaigns where the DM did shopping offline which meant the moment they told you they where roleplaying out a shop visit you knew this NPC was not just background, the more of your world you roleplay the easier it is to surprise and trick players and therefore there characters.
I remember someone made a joke where they said; "The definition of an Adventure is when you watch somebody else having a really hard time, while you sit there watching them do it, and eating popcorn."
Don't treat your players, or their characters like you're sitting there and eating popcorn.
Shopping is essentially mundane. It's something everyone does. Ask why people who are supposed to be the main characters of a story are in a store. Scarloc Stormcall has a perfectly good reason for having the players shop. They enjoy it a lot. Apparently they run a kind of silly game. There's nothing wrong with that.
I like games with a moderately serious tone that run at a moderate pace. I can't expect my players to have fun with mistaken assumptions, like having a monster known to be evil act friendly, or player characters who are smaller or bigger than normal, Wizards that like to get into melee with a great big maul who cast healing spells...
I manage to have fun, but I have to work for it. There's another game I'm in with 6 player characters including my own, and I'm having to work for my fun there too.
<Insert clever signature here>
Don’t think it’s a silly game it really isn’t, there are moments of real tension in the past players have almost been in tears over story moments, but to counteract that you need moments of levity. Shopping can be a moment of light relief but we are in a fantasy world with magic and potions and different races, it is the best moment to input life into a world. In star wars the Cantina Scene shows you for the first time that the galaxy is not just human, it shows you a glimpse of the world.
When my players are shopping they are interacting with the world around them, but also there are plot points I can drop. That city they decided to leave instead of tracking down the criminal gang, I can give news that it fell to an outside invader, or its ruler was assasinated.
When they talk to an old women selling Knick knacks she might tell them a tale about a strange artifact that a statue depicts, it might be nothing a story to sell the ornament, or it might be the start of an adventure. They might look at the strange turtle type creature selling trinkets from a far away land and instantly learn what a tortle is and where they come from.
When they shop they learn the insignificant details of a world, learning of an alchemist who wants to make enough money to buy a diamond for his boyfriends engagement ring, or the seamstress who used to work for a king until he was usurped and so now keeps her head down. They form connections and contacts that later on they might try and track down hoping they have information that might help them. I populate my world with characters so it feels constantly alive and moving and this is why it works for our table. Then the party go off to try and stop the child killing cultists who slaughtered a baby in front of them, or they go and try and prevent a princess killing herself because her lover has been cast to hell and she sees it as her only way to be with him.
The stories I tell can be dark, emotional and deep so the levity is needed to slow things down and let all of us breathe a moment, but those shopping trips can get important to so many story threads have begun over the years with a character asking a question from left field that led to an adventure. Like the wizard who asked a potion maker what ingredient they needed to make a specific potion (the lung of a red dragon and the sting of a manticore). That led to a monster hunt that led to a quest that led to about 15 sessions of tracking that potion maker back down and finding out those ingredients where for something very different.
I understand and respect those who don’t enjoy running shopping expeditions, for a long time I thought it was only me and the 40 or so players I have dmd for over the years, but some of the best roleplay moments on the streams I watch online also happen in those in between shopping moments because it allows the players to improv and just have fun with no consequences.
And it is perfectly ok as a player and a dm to sometimes sit back and just enjoy watching players play and engage and roleplay. The number of times I have sat back and barely said a word as the party engage in some in depth conversation with each other, or debate the next course of action, only stepping in when it felt the moment had come to a conclusion and was becoming cyclical. Sometimes as a dm you don’t need to call out a target to roll against, or describe a scene you just need to give your players space to talk and roleplay and interact with each other.
And this is another thing I do differently to speed up my large 8 player game, certain things are assumed, unless a player specifically says I don’t share x with the group we don’t have characters repeating to other characters what just happened, you just watched it take place and heard it, so why waste game time repeating it. We also do t roleplay out every moment in game conversations happen round camp fires etc you don’t see.
Maybe I have been lucky with my players, I would say I have DMd about 40 or so over the last 10 or so years and all of them loved the way I run downtime and shopping. Or maybe it is the way I do it, it isn’t about having a list of items to buy and then just going off and buying them it is about describing a scene, interacting with the characters as a npc, making each one unique and different and players having NPCs they want to go back to and visit and interact with over and over. Characters who have nothing to do with the story but have lives and loves and dreams and ambitions that the players actually care about learning about. I once had a party teleport to the other side of the continent because they wanted to check in on how Abigail was doing, a barmaid who had been jilted at the alter by her fiancé, left with a baby. 6 months had passed in game and the players cared enough about a random NPC I created on the fly to travel away from the main adventure just to see if she was ok, I didn’t make her part of the main narriative didn’t make her suddenly important to the story, I didn’t kill her off or make her dramatic, they returned, she was surviving, they babysat her child so she could go on a date (I kind of cut scenes that bit) and then the next day after a long rest had reset the spell, they teleported back to the main story thread and carried on.
For me those moments are what make a ttrpg different to a film, movie of computer game, being able to just interact with the world in a mundane way fills it with life. But also can add to the sense of magic and wonder, I play high magic games, there are magic shops all over, every town and larger has a magic user of some description, my players love experiencing that in there sessions they also love learning about Abigail because while she wasn’t important to the story, she was a reason why they wanted to stop the bbeg, that’s why they took that day out a day or normalcy before the next potentially TPK fight they knew they where heading into.
I ran campaigns and also playtest sessions with large groups. I find the time and complexity just get bigger and bigger as level get highier. The more characters there is in play, the more enemies you usually have and thse turn into mimi mass combat which also become problematic with areas of maps that are indoor rather than outdoor in the open, dungeons have small rooms, corridors etc. not necessarily design with 16+ creatures on board. Also player's interactions get twice as more traffic and sometime decision stretch into debate etc.. Simply put, everything take longer, turn, dice rolling, plans, execution, even treasure share!
I prefer nowadays runing with 4-5 players max. Things just run smoother on the long run.