EDIT: Forgive the horrible grammar in the title, I apparently changed thought process halfway through and didn't realize it...

So, I started running the Beginner box game for some friends recently, and have a number of them hooked and wanting a campaign eventually. So I've been starting to piece together some plot ideas on how to get a crew of misfits together, what they will do to stay together, and stuff like that. Problem is, as of right now, I'm looking at somewhere around 8 potential PC's wanting to play. I'm a newer GM, and this spooks me a bit, and I'm wondering how to handle this. On one hand, I see just capping the number of players to 6, and make it first come, first serve for whoever completes their characters first. Or something along those lines... The other idea I had was to allow the 8 (or possibly more) to make characters, and have them all part of a crew, but limit the individual play sessions to 6 PC's. Storywise, certain people are on the job that night, and people who aren't there IRL, their PC's are on supply runs or something.

The other question I had is about ships. Since I'm planning on having a large group, I'd like a ship with plenty of room to grow. One of the things I'm interested in is something with a big enough hold that it can convert to a hanger, or haul cargo from place to place in the interim of running adventures. The Wayfarer class is a frontrunner in my mind, but I see other ships like the Mobquet or the Xiytiar classes being interesting, with decent room for expansion. Problem is, I'm not sure if I'm spending an inordinate amount of time hashing out the character and backstory of each ship style, and should be spending time working on other aspects of their impending campaign.

Any advice would be helpful, thanks in advance!

8 is alot but it's not too many if the people involved can focus and not derail the table. You'd know better than us.

Give em whatever you want in regards to ships. I find ships to mostly be magic carpet rides to the next locations. In regards to fleshing that out, let them, if they don't then you'll know there was certainly no need for you to bother.

I have never tried this, and could be complex, and does double your work load....

Run two groups of 4.

Have the events of one group, potentially affect the other groups actions.

So really.. one campaign, but two threads. You could even have them working against one another 'in the background'

This could get complicated if the groups are progressing at different rates in the story.

But you could eventually, once you have more experience, have both groups come together, either in adversary or cooperatively, or similar.

I have NO idea how it would work though.

Group characteristics and the level of crunch you use in the game will make a big difference. Twenty years ago, I ran a weekly AD&D group that maintained eight players and briefly peaked at nine.

Two of the players were spectator types and a couple generally followed what the most active three decided to do, and we ran heavy on the fluff, so it was much easier to run than you'd expect. However, I enjoy smaller groups and wouldn't want to depend on someone's preference for non-participation.

One other consideration: how strongly "potential" players are committed. Even if you've smartly prepared for a large group, you may actually end up with just over half.

EDIT: Forgive the horrible grammar in the title, I apparently changed thought process halfway through and didn't realize it...

So, I started running the Beginner box game for some friends recently, and have a number of them hooked and wanting a campaign eventually. So I've been starting to piece together some plot ideas on how to get a crew of misfits together, what they will do to stay together, and stuff like that. Problem is, as of right now, I'm looking at somewhere around 8 potential PC's wanting to play. I'm a newer GM, and this spooks me a bit, and I'm wondering how to handle this. On one hand, I see just capping the number of players to 6, and make it first come, first serve for whoever completes their characters first. Or something along those lines... The other idea I had was to allow the 8 (or possibly more) to make characters, and have them all part of a crew, but limit the individual play sessions to 6 PC's. Storywise, certain people are on the job that night, and people who aren't there IRL, their PC's are on supply runs or something.

The other question I had is about ships. Since I'm planning on having a large group, I'd like a ship with plenty of room to grow. One of the things I'm interested in is something with a big enough hold that it can convert to a hanger, or haul cargo from place to place in the interim of running adventures. The Wayfarer class is a frontrunner in my mind, but I see other ships like the Mobquet or the Xiytiar classes being interesting, with decent room for expansion. Problem is, I'm not sure if I'm spending an inordinate amount of time hashing out the character and backstory of each ship style, and should be spending time working on other aspects of their impending campaign.

Any advice would be helpful, thanks in advance!

Unless they're all hard core committed you'll probably have some out weekly anyway, so you probably won't have a consistent 8 to contend with.

Eight is not an unreasonable number to run with. If your group is like mine, at least one person won't be able to make any given game, just due to life commitments. And as Wilsch stated, you will probably have a couple of "spectators", people who want to participate, but don't tend to drive the story. The only real problem you might run into is if you have a group of 8 fully dedicated, Type A, drive the bus personalities, that don't agree on how to proceed. But that isn't likely. More likely they will split themselves up into sub-parties.

I ran AD&D weekly 20 years ago as a college club. I would accept any player who showed, whichever week they showed. I had a hardcore group of about 8 that made most sessions. But I topped out at 16 one session. That was rather tough, but the group we had was able to make it work. They ended up as a 2 or 3 cliques in the game, where each clique had their own agenda, but would generally work together when a "mission" was presented. It only started to collapse when the different groups finally became aware of what the others had done (after about 2 years of game play), and quite naturally ended up fighting each other (one clique was responsible for starting a war, and connecting the sewers to the Underdark, etc., while the other was more classically heroic).

EDIT: Forgive the horrible grammar in the title, I apparently changed thought process halfway through and didn't realize it...

So, I started running the Beginner box game for some friends recently, and have a number of them hooked and wanting a campaign eventually. So I've been starting to piece together some plot ideas on how to get a crew of misfits together, what they will do to stay together, and stuff like that. Problem is, as of right now, I'm looking at somewhere around 8 potential PC's wanting to play. I'm a newer GM, and this spooks me a bit, and I'm wondering how to handle this. On one hand, I see just capping the number of players to 6, and make it first come, first serve for whoever completes their characters first. Or something along those lines... The other idea I had was to allow the 8 (or possibly more) to make characters, and have them all part of a crew, but limit the individual play sessions to 6 PC's. Storywise, certain people are on the job that night, and people who aren't there IRL, their PC's are on supply runs or something.

The other question I had is about ships. Since I'm planning on having a large group, I'd like a ship with plenty of room to grow. One of the things I'm interested in is something with a big enough hold that it can convert to a hanger, or haul cargo from place to place in the interim of running adventures. The Wayfarer class is a frontrunner in my mind, but I see other ships like the Mobquet or the Xiytiar classes being interesting, with decent room for expansion. Problem is, I'm not sure if I'm spending an inordinate amount of time hashing out the character and backstory of each ship style, and should be spending time working on other aspects of their impending campaign.

Any advice would be helpful, thanks in advance!

Unless they're all hard core committed you'll probably have some out weekly anyway, so you probably won't have a consistent 8 to contend with.

Exactly what I was going to say.

My current group started out with 8. Of that 8, 4 are consistent in their attendance. One is available most games. One quit after the second session. One wants to play badly, but has extenuating circumstances that prevent him from coming often. And the last quit after cancelling at the last minute several sessions in a row. So, with a group that size, the odds of everyone being there every session are slim.

As for a ship to accommodate them all...we've got a Wayfarer. Plenty of cargo space, plenty of bunk space.

Although I do like that idea of two separate but simultaneous groups. I'm in several campaigns as a player, run by the same GM. He runs five different groups. Three of them are set in the same continuity. The one that I'm part of is set a few years further back in the timeline, but we've been told we're about to have a time-jump to get them all synced up. He's already done a crossover session between the two groups at the same point in time; the time jump is to facilitate a big three-group crossover of this (already altered) timeline's Battle of Endor.

For a group of that size, I'd consider a Gozanti. You might need some hired help to fully crew it, but it's not unreasonable in that area.

EDIT: Forgive the horrible grammar in the title, I apparently changed thought process halfway through and didn't realize it...

So, I started running the Beginner box game for some friends recently, and have a number of them hooked and wanting a campaign eventually. So I've been starting to piece together some plot ideas on how to get a crew of misfits together, what they will do to stay together, and stuff like that. Problem is, as of right now, I'm looking at somewhere around 8 potential PC's wanting to play. I'm a newer GM, and this spooks me a bit, and I'm wondering how to handle this. On one hand, I see just capping the number of players to 6, and make it first come, first serve for whoever completes their characters first. Or something along those lines... The other idea I had was to allow the 8 (or possibly more) to make characters, and have them all part of a crew, but limit the individual play sessions to 6 PC's. Storywise, certain people are on the job that night, and people who aren't there IRL, their PC's are on supply runs or something.

The other question I had is about ships. Since I'm planning on having a large group, I'd like a ship with plenty of room to grow. One of the things I'm interested in is something with a big enough hold that it can convert to a hanger, or haul cargo from place to place in the interim of running adventures. The Wayfarer class is a frontrunner in my mind, but I see other ships like the Mobquet or the Xiytiar classes being interesting, with decent room for expansion. Problem is, I'm not sure if I'm spending an inordinate amount of time hashing out the character and backstory of each ship style, and should be spending time working on other aspects of their impending campaign.

Any advice would be helpful, thanks in advance!

In my experience 8 is too many for this system. If you have a full table you will inevitably end up with bored players who won't have anything to do. Granted, not everyone might be available for a game, but even if you even out at 6 per session that can still be a lot to handle, especially for a new GM.

I prefer to limit games to 5 (6 at the very most). My sessions average at about 4 attendees and that is the sweet spot. You can easily keep everyone engaged and keep the action flowing. With more than that you can start to find your players getting restless or bored more easily while another player is in the spotlight.

Also, I don't know about anyone else but I would feel like with 8 players the balance would be really hard to maintain. You would have to start throwing enough enemies at them to keep them all challenged in a combat encounter. In my experience, huge combats with many initiative slots to keep track of can become a slog very quickly. If combats end too quickly the poor chump with the crappy cool/vigilance scores might never get a turn.

Personally, I like RebelDave's idea. I have always wanted to do something like that but the logistics of it are fairly intimidating

I run 5 groups. This is the only system I have GM'd for. I have been GMing for a year now.

Group 1 is the one I shall speak of, as it is most appropriate.

I told every group 6 is the absolute max I will have playing in any given session. Group 1 started with 5. One player could not make it consistently and we had a 4 month break after only 1 session. That person was removed and we continued on with another 5th. Then we added a 6th. When some of the group was starting to not make it consistently or had tough schedules to work around, we scrapped the campaign I was running, instead opting to have more "episodic" adventures and we brought in 3 more players. That was done with the idea that, eventually, we'd kick out those who could not make it. As soon as the changes were made and new people brought in, suddenly everyone can make it almost every time. I now have a group of 9 that rotates people in and out, depending on their schedules and circumstances. There's definitely a "core" part of the group, consisting of around 3-4 players. After a session, I discuss when to schedule the next one with the core, then email everyone about it and tend to just slot in those who respond first, every now and then suggesting people rotate out so those that haven't made the last 2 or so sessions can play one. We try to play a couple times a month, sometimes we just play once a month. It's a bit much with 9 people and I would definitely never run a game with more than 6 players at the table due to how much time a single combat already takes and how distracted people can get.

For kicks, the other groups:

Have you thought of the Spacemaster for a ship... Plenty of room for the crew plus interchangeable cargo pods that can be converted into hanger bays (or whatever you require).

I ran a campaign with 8 players once (with all the inherent issues of people not being able to attend all sessions). The captain of the ship was an NPC & the players were his crew! He was a fixer/scoundrel type who sent his crew out to complete missions for him... Made it far easier to explain that some characters were missing in any given session as they were either "not selected" for the current mission or "away" completing other business.