A few friends asked me to run a dnd session for new years. Just a one shot for fun. They've never played before and they want everyone who will be there to play. This may be closer to 10 ppl. This sounds crazy and potentially really boring for combat etc. But i do want the game to happen so that everyone can experience dnd. Its all couples. I was thinking of having two ppl run one character. Thoughts?
Let everyone run their own character. It’s more about the companionship from what you described than anything else. Sure, the game will drag and be slow, but it’s a party. Roll with the flow and have fun.
If my first D&D experience involved sharing a character with my spouse, it would be both confusing and frustrating, lol.
Let everyone have a proper go of it. It's a one-shot, the stakes are low. A newbie's first combat is bound to go slow anyway, and they'll hopefully be having too much fun to realize they're bogged down.
Good luck! I've found six to be unwieldy--I cannot imagine playing ten!
As noted above, your biggest problem is going to be combat--sitting around waiting on other players to finish their turn can get boring even with three other players; nine is going to be a bit tax on your players' focus. You cannot fully remove this problem, but you can do some things to alleviate the problem:
1. Keep the party level relatively low. At higher levels, multi attacks, complex spells that require lots of dice rolls, and things like twinning spells, haste, etc. can all cause a single player's turn to drag on.
2. Make sure everyone creates their character ahead of time. That gives them time to familiarize themselves with the character and vet it for anything that might cause the game to drag on. I would not be afraid to tell your players "This would be A-okay in a regular game, but we need to streamline some things given our player count."
3. If you have any new players, do a trial run of combat with them ahead of time. That way they are not struggling to learn how to do combat during their turn. I might also recommend steering new players toward simpler races/classes, like Barbarian or Eldritch Blast Warlock.
4. You can try to be creative with initiative. Let's say you have three monsters (A, B, and C), and your ten players (0-9). Initiative results in 0 1 2 3 A 4 5 B 6 7 C 8 9. You could group the players together based on their going before monsters, and split their turn into three parts--movement, bonus action, regular action. Group 1 [0 1 2 3] would go in order--0 could either move, bonus action or regular action, 1 would choose one of the three, etc. Once each player has taken a single one of the three choices, you go to the top of that group, and each does one of the remaining choices, then repeat again for the third option. Monster A would go, then Group 2 would perform the same cyclical set of actions. It might have some balance issues, but it will ensure no has to wait nine whole turns before they get to go/go again.
Out of combat, be sure to build in extra time for party bickering and/or roleplaying. After all, a party of four always takes longer to make a decision than the DM expects--a party of ten is going to take exponentially longer.
They are all new players so I am bringing in premade character sheets. Especially because its just a one shot. So its not like they will have to play that character for a long time.
It ended up being 8 players total. But 2 didn't seem that interested so they kind of did their own thing and it was basically 6 players. Which is what I am used to anyway. Everyone else had a lot of fun!
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Hello,
A few friends asked me to run a dnd session for new years. Just a one shot for fun. They've never played before and they want everyone who will be there to play. This may be closer to 10 ppl. This sounds crazy and potentially really boring for combat etc. But i do want the game to happen so that everyone can experience dnd. Its all couples. I was thinking of having two ppl run one character. Thoughts?
Let everyone run their own character. It’s more about the companionship from what you described than anything else. Sure, the game will drag and be slow, but it’s a party. Roll with the flow and have fun.
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If my first D&D experience involved sharing a character with my spouse, it would be both confusing and frustrating, lol.
Let everyone have a proper go of it. It's a one-shot, the stakes are low. A newbie's first combat is bound to go slow anyway, and they'll hopefully be having too much fun to realize they're bogged down.
Thanks guys. All i needed was a go ahead. lol!
Good luck! I've found six to be unwieldy--I cannot imagine playing ten!
As noted above, your biggest problem is going to be combat--sitting around waiting on other players to finish their turn can get boring even with three other players; nine is going to be a bit tax on your players' focus. You cannot fully remove this problem, but you can do some things to alleviate the problem:
1. Keep the party level relatively low. At higher levels, multi attacks, complex spells that require lots of dice rolls, and things like twinning spells, haste, etc. can all cause a single player's turn to drag on.
2. Make sure everyone creates their character ahead of time. That gives them time to familiarize themselves with the character and vet it for anything that might cause the game to drag on. I would not be afraid to tell your players "This would be A-okay in a regular game, but we need to streamline some things given our player count."
3. If you have any new players, do a trial run of combat with them ahead of time. That way they are not struggling to learn how to do combat during their turn. I might also recommend steering new players toward simpler races/classes, like Barbarian or
Eldritch BlastWarlock.4. You can try to be creative with initiative. Let's say you have three monsters (A, B, and C), and your ten players (0-9). Initiative results in 0 1 2 3 A 4 5 B 6 7 C 8 9. You could group the players together based on their going before monsters, and split their turn into three parts--movement, bonus action, regular action. Group 1 [0 1 2 3] would go in order--0 could either move, bonus action or regular action, 1 would choose one of the three, etc. Once each player has taken a single one of the three choices, you go to the top of that group, and each does one of the remaining choices, then repeat again for the third option. Monster A would go, then Group 2 would perform the same cyclical set of actions. It might have some balance issues, but it will ensure no has to wait nine whole turns before they get to go/go again.
Out of combat, be sure to build in extra time for party bickering and/or roleplaying. After all, a party of four always takes longer to make a decision than the DM expects--a party of ten is going to take exponentially longer.
Thats great advice! Thank you!
They are all new players so I am bringing in premade character sheets. Especially because its just a one shot. So its not like they will have to play that character for a long time.
Out of curiosity, how did it end up working out for you?
It ended up being 8 players total. But 2 didn't seem that interested so they kind of did their own thing and it was basically 6 players. Which is what I am used to anyway. Everyone else had a lot of fun!