I'm starting a new campaign with friends, and lots of them. The total number of characters is 15, and I've been looking around and people say that even groups of 8 start to become too big to handle. Everyone, including myself, is a beginner but we aren't looking for a strict and serious game-play. For combat, I have the players in 3 groups of 5 for regular encounters, so combat isn't the biggest problem. Just some general tips and some advice would be great.
I've never ran a game this big but, I have played in games that we have had up to 13 players. It's not that it's difficult from what I've seen but it does take a while to get through everybody on what they want to do and the table can get noisy and hard to hear. Being beginners isn't going to help things go smoothly, but as long as you establish some ground rules you can get it to run fairly smooth. Some rules might include: keep talking to a minimum when it's not your turn, and pay attention so you can come up with what you are going to do on your turn. These 2 rules should help keep things running smoothly. I'd also think about limiting what is allowed at the table. For instance food and cell phones aren't permitted at the table to help maintain focus. If they are using apps for the character, tell them that they can't use apps not pertaining to the game. If you think it will be too much, talk with them and see if they would be willing to split up into 2 or even 3 groups to help smooth things out until everybody gets some experience playing and you DMing. The biggest downside to big groups is that everybody starts to get bored waiting for the others to do what they are going to do, so keeping their focus will be hard. Being a DM, the other downside for you is making the encounters challenging enough for the group, but not too strong or too weak for the size of the group. Kobold Fight Club could help but it only goes up to 12 party members so you might still have to modify the encounters. We are here for you and if you have any more questions when it comes to the game or you run into a scenario and advice just ask. I hope I was of some help.
Thank you for the advice, You have been very helpful and I will keep your words in mind. Things should be fine as long as they don't start making murderous cults.
To help speed things along, have everyone roll damage at the same time as the attack roll if possible. Rolling can take a long time if it is one roll at a time. Look into developing a spreadsheet to expand the difficulty of the encounters. I figured out what the exp would be per monster, multiplied it by the number of players and then adjusted the encounter based on that pool. The DMG gives some guidelines on adjusting encounters. Also, consider having the players also responsible for rolls for monsters. If you don't already, roll for initiative after each rest and stick with it until the next. For the actual initiative count, put the players names on a 3×5 card or something and cycle through them.
I'm DMing a group of 8 kids through Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and my best experience was to divide their party - or manage to get them to split up - and then it was GREAT. We'd to part of an encounter, get to a cliffhangery moment, and then I'd interrupt it with "MEANWHILE!" and go back to a different group. We did a three hour session split three ways like this, and everybody was on the edge of their seats.
The difficulty, of course, is finding the alternate quests for the groups, AND not letting anybody know who is on the "main" storyline. Every mission needs to feel important. If you can weave together several threads, it'll be amazing. (I tried to do two very non-action filled, unrelated threads last Saturday, and it fell flat.)
Your characters may need some custom magic items, depending on the distances between them. I'm getting ready to give them "Sending stones" so they can communicate - a very little bit! - between groups. I also had to give them a teleportation scroll in order to allow one group to reach another... Anyway, if you went this route, you might want some sort of teleportation item that they can use to get between groups - with limited charges per day.
Anyway, good luck! Please keep us posted on how it goes!
I've been DMing for ten eleven year old kids. I've tried to simplify battle mechanics. For example, I don't roll for initiative, I just choose who has initiative.
In a couple battles, they've taken place in small tunnels where only a few characters could engage at a time.
I try to prepare as much as possible ahead of time. For example, instead of generating characters I pre-made twenty characters and had them choose. We also use rotating leaders for speaking parts to reduce the chaos.
I disagree about snacks. A bunch of snacks in the middle of the table occupied unengaged people and made the whole session run more smoothly.
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I'm starting a new campaign with friends, and lots of them. The total number of characters is 15, and I've been looking around and people say that even groups of 8 start to become too big to handle. Everyone, including myself, is a beginner but we aren't looking for a strict and serious game-play. For combat, I have the players in 3 groups of 5 for regular encounters, so combat isn't the biggest problem. Just some general tips and some advice would be great.
I've never ran a game this big but, I have played in games that we have had up to 13 players. It's not that it's difficult from what I've seen but it does take a while to get through everybody on what they want to do and the table can get noisy and hard to hear. Being beginners isn't going to help things go smoothly, but as long as you establish some ground rules you can get it to run fairly smooth. Some rules might include: keep talking to a minimum when it's not your turn, and pay attention so you can come up with what you are going to do on your turn. These 2 rules should help keep things running smoothly. I'd also think about limiting what is allowed at the table. For instance food and cell phones aren't permitted at the table to help maintain focus. If they are using apps for the character, tell them that they can't use apps not pertaining to the game. If you think it will be too much, talk with them and see if they would be willing to split up into 2 or even 3 groups to help smooth things out until everybody gets some experience playing and you DMing. The biggest downside to big groups is that everybody starts to get bored waiting for the others to do what they are going to do, so keeping their focus will be hard. Being a DM, the other downside for you is making the encounters challenging enough for the group, but not too strong or too weak for the size of the group. Kobold Fight Club could help but it only goes up to 12 party members so you might still have to modify the encounters. We are here for you and if you have any more questions when it comes to the game or you run into a scenario and advice just ask. I hope I was of some help.
Kobold Fight Club: http://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder
Remember this is a game and it's suppose to be fun for everybody. Let's all have fun and kill monsters.
Thank you for the advice, You have been very helpful and I will keep your words in mind. Things should be fine as long as they don't start making murderous cults.
To help speed things along, have everyone roll damage at the same time as the attack roll if possible. Rolling can take a long time if it is one roll at a time. Look into developing a spreadsheet to expand the difficulty of the encounters. I figured out what the exp would be per monster, multiplied it by the number of players and then adjusted the encounter based on that pool. The DMG gives some guidelines on adjusting encounters. Also, consider having the players also responsible for rolls for monsters. If you don't already, roll for initiative after each rest and stick with it until the next. For the actual initiative count, put the players names on a 3×5 card or something and cycle through them.
I'm DMing a group of 8 kids through Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and my best experience was to divide their party - or manage to get them to split up - and then it was GREAT. We'd to part of an encounter, get to a cliffhangery moment, and then I'd interrupt it with "MEANWHILE!" and go back to a different group. We did a three hour session split three ways like this, and everybody was on the edge of their seats.
The difficulty, of course, is finding the alternate quests for the groups, AND not letting anybody know who is on the "main" storyline. Every mission needs to feel important. If you can weave together several threads, it'll be amazing. (I tried to do two very non-action filled, unrelated threads last Saturday, and it fell flat.)
Your characters may need some custom magic items, depending on the distances between them. I'm getting ready to give them "Sending stones" so they can communicate - a very little bit! - between groups. I also had to give them a teleportation scroll in order to allow one group to reach another... Anyway, if you went this route, you might want some sort of teleportation item that they can use to get between groups - with limited charges per day.
Anyway, good luck! Please keep us posted on how it goes!
I've been DMing for ten eleven year old kids. I've tried to simplify battle mechanics. For example, I don't roll for initiative, I just choose who has initiative.
In a couple battles, they've taken place in small tunnels where only a few characters could engage at a time.
I try to prepare as much as possible ahead of time. For example, instead of generating characters I pre-made twenty characters and had them choose. We also use rotating leaders for speaking parts to reduce the chaos.
I disagree about snacks. A bunch of snacks in the middle of the table occupied unengaged people and made the whole session run more smoothly.