I have about 8 people including myself wanting to play, and that is excluding their girlfriends who mostly just want to hang out, I have played many rpgs and found more then 5-6 including GM can be troublesome, adivce?

limit the group to about half your max, maybe try to rp with one group one day or one another day, if you are up for a challenge half a sub gm do the other half of the group, the sub can work with you to have say both groups seek out a common goal and add competition to the game.

Another potential idea.

Have half yuor group play a rogue trader crew and have the other half play and Inquisitorial team who have commandeered the Crew's ship. This way you can alternate the focus from one team to the other.

If it,s well done and making sure both get equal amount of play time, it should be enjoyable.

For Exemple Space combat the main focus s the Trader's crew and the Inquisitarial team play a more secondary role, maybe helping against boarder. And on the lfip side when the Inquisitorial team are doing their thing, the Rogue trader's might either help as extra muscle or take care of business Elsewhere on the planet -refueling, trade, business dealing, etc..

Generally having gmed a lot I have a few opinions.

0)You have to keep focus and control. It's alright to talk and hang out before, after, and on break. But during the game it's just rude, and disruptive.

1)Girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands are not allowed. Players are. If a girl/friend wants to be a player that's wonderful. But it's disruptive to have them hanging out and bored. That said if a wife or girlfriend wants check out the game. It's generally a good idea to encourage that. She/he might become a player, or it might allay fears, and suspicions. (IE their SO is cheating on them, or RP folks are dangerous...)

2)More than 4 people are hard to manage, but you can assume that one or two people won't show so a group of 6 is often great.

3)People flake and out early on. People are annoying and get kicked out. So 8 people saying they want to play could easily mean 4-5 people in a few sessions.

Also be prepared for sillyness. A large group is a lot more likely to crack jokes about what should be a serious in-game moment, or try and throw off action-hero one-liners.Significant NPCs won't have names as such, more like consistent nicknames.

Be ready, and let the game be light-hearted. Start them off with some Ork blasting rather than political intrigue.

It does depend on the type of players you have; my group is large (8 players, plus myself; that's my absolute maximum), but every single player in the group bar one has years of GMing experience, they are all dedicated and reasonable roleplayers (not a power gamer or rules lawyer amongst them), and all of them are extremely familiar with the 40k universe, all of which make my job easier when it comes to running the game.

Good players make a game run more smoothly, particularly if they're willing to take up some of the burden of running the game from time to time.

I run a fairly large game (8 Players) and I find the biggest challenge is to make sure everyone is engaged.

I try to make mental notes about when the last time someone has participated. I play as well (in a advisor type role) and will engage PCs that haven't said anything in a while.

When I write my scenarios I look at the character sheets and try to incorporate something special for everyone so they feel like they made a difference.

As said above, a group of 5-6 players shouldn't pose that much of a problem. Actually it's a pretty comfortable group-size, since it gives you a bit more freedom for your adventures. You can and should create greater challenges with a more diverse range of skills/talents needed to overcome them. You should have an eye on getting everybodies talents envolved at some time during the game, which shouldn't be that hard.

Yes, larger groups might tend to wander off a bit with jokes and the like, but hey, you are all there to have fun, right? Splitting up the group even as half Trader half Inquisitor-groups is nonsense in my opinion. With only 3 players/characters in a traders posse, you will miss important positions, especially since one allready has to play a rogue trader. So you got 1 trader, probably 1 seneschal and 1 additional class. That's pretty tight, if you want to be ready for everything. Just imagine a little scrimish in space. Who is piloting the ship? Who can read the scanners? Who will man the guns? Oh you want to give some extended orders?

Mixing up with an inquisitor-posse won't help much, since those folks are mere guests on board the traders ship and no real rogue trader would allow them to give orders on HIS ship, inquisitor or not. Additionally the goals of traders and inquisitors won't really mix up as well. Sure, they might have some common goals, but that won't last very long. A true rogue trader won't want an inquisitor watch his every steps for any longer than necessary, since that cannot be very profitable. And the inquisitor might find himself in way to many situations, where he would be forced to act against either his own order or against the rogue trader, who might do things like actually trading with xenos, criminals or even heretics just for profit. Not a very good position for any long term partnership.

So 5 to 6 players plus you as GM should work pretty well. You should give it a try.

One thing to possibly be wary of is the bonuses of 8 pc's doing stuff on a ship in space combat. Could add up to them "punching above their weight" quite significantly.

Do what you feel you are comfortable with GM'ing. 8 people are a lot and most campaigns trying to keep up with so many players fail. It is a rare GM who can manage that many players. So splitting the party seems a good idea to me. You can even run the same endeaver to both groups and keep em both aware of the competition. Nothing upsets a team more then seeing his competitor getting ahead of him

As a long time (8 or so years) GM i've rarely had a roleplay group with less than 6 people as a maximum (at the moment we have 9 in our DH group) plus me as the GM.

Now i will admit this does cause all sorts of problems on occasion, but the sheer diversity of skills in the group means you have alot more scope when planning your campaign. But the flip side of this is I have now had to put a minimum turn-out on our session for me to actually run one, as several of our group are only around once a week and a few are around all week we were starting to get 2 or 3 experience groups froming within the roleplay group despite the characters having been around for the same length of time.

The biggest sticking point I have found with a large group is combat, you have to make sure you strictly stick to the initiative order as you will always find someone who is so focused on what they want to do that they jump the que.

All in all the most important thing to remember is that its down to the GM's comfort level above everything else. If a GM is pushed to accept more players than they want then the quality of the roleplay will suffer. A couping tactic for this is start with a core group (about 3-4) who you know well and know the background, then after a few weeks slowly introduce the rest of the players as your confidence grows. This method allows the core players to help ease in the newer, less experienced, players and put less strain on the GM.

Just my thoughts

Surak

Just my two cents, split the group in two and run two campaigns, or even have someone else run the second and then you can play in that one.

One thing I have learned...

Learn to say no =p

Another solution is to cycle players out. If it's once a week type thing, have 4ish players on a rotating schedule (the ones who will tend to out or be to busy to commit to every session to begin with). This game is very easy to compensate why someone isn't present currently and why another one just showed up. They have less burden to commit (once every other week is easier than once a week) and keeps your group fun.

I would be interesting to host a series of campaigns directly opposing it's opposite. This way you might have a two or three dynasties competing with one another. If you're feeling comfortable later you could easily run a few sessions where all the groups have to work together. This should be uncommon enough that you have adequate time to prepare.

Man I wish I had all the players you have. I barely have three consistent players and one part time fellow.

Nocturne said:

Indeed, learn to say no. The first Game I ever ran had 8 players, I finally put my foot down when a friend of one the players turned up randomly and assumed she was in the game too! (oddly enough, I later married her).

8 players plus hangers on = disaster. find someone else who can also GM and run two games simultaneously.

I'm currently running 3 games due to having too many starters. It's wonderful fun but I do miss my weekends.

The Ginger Bearded GM here,

What I have learned in many years of running games is life happens. No matter what your player do sooner or later some of them will be dragged back to their real lives.

So when I tell my player base I want to run a game. If everyone or only half of them say they want to play I run the game. I have tried splitting the games but ended up on more than one situation I turned the two groups into one. Also running two games I ended up running the same game more than once a week for each party and for me it lost its excitement. A normal equation I go by is for every player you have there is a 5% chance that a player won't show up each game. So if you 4 players there is a 20% chance someone won't show. For you if you have 8 players its high 40% chance.

A good tool to use when running big groups is to figure good cliff hangers before each game. So when you end the game for the night you will have everyone thinking of the game for the rest of the week. This gives you a better chance of bringing your players back each game.

Ohh yeah and make sure you get a food/drink cash bowl! Big groups will raid your kitchen and clean you out. So make sure they are bringing money or their only meals.