So, I got a group together. It was going to be 7 in all, but unlikely they could all make it to one session. 6 came to our first session; a lot, but awesome. Well, they all can make it to our second session, and 2 more! For reasons, I can't say no to anyone or split the party yet, so there will be me as GM and 9 PCs on Wednesday. Woof!
Tips on driving this flying umbrella, at least for this session? Thanks!
My group at times numbers 9, for the very reason you mention: some can’t make it each session. It’s tough, but it can be done. Have your threats easily scalable in either direction, and make sure everyone understands that, with a group that large, while not everyone may have a moment to shine in each session, everyone will get their moments. Then make your plans with that promise in mind.
Don't. That's too many. Rounds of combat will be ridiculously long. People will get bored. Too many side conversations. Too much bookkeeping for you. You need to cut that back.
I've done it. I made it work. 8 out of the 9 came back for several sessions after that. The main thing is that you're gonna get zero time for any individual character development. It's going to be all about the overarching story. Give them a scenario (something like a heist, or a raid on a military base, or a rescue mission, something with lots of action) and let them cook up a plan. Set a timer. If they don't come up with a plan on that set time, then it's go time anyway and they only get to work with whatever plan they have worked up. It's preferable if they split up into teams.
Then, try to allow for every chartacter to make at least three skill checks. Set the difficulties easier than you would normally. Have them make combined checks whenever possible and work together to describe the outcome of their efforts.
The key is keeping up the pressure. Start en media res. Make hesitations unappealing. Present choices as A or B options, not open-ended ones. If a player is taking too long figuring out what he wants to do on his turn, tell him you'll come back to him and go on to the next player. Describe things in concise and clear terms, and then ask the player how she responds ("The Imperial stormtrooper draws his riot baton and rushes at you. He's almost upon you, what do you do?"). And so on and so forth. It's gonna feel a little railroady at times, perhaps...but as long as you give them choices, make "yes, and..." your default, and narrate them being as awesome as possible, you should weather the session just fine 
Either that, or you will discover that you have a max player cap, and it's less than 9 
19 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:I've done it. I made it work. 8 out of the 9 came back for several sessions after that. The main thing is that you're gonna get zero time for any individual character development. It's going to be all about the overarching story. Give them a scenario (something like a heist, or a raid on a military base, or a rescue mission, something with lots of action) and let them cook up a plan. Set a timer. If they don't come up with a plan on that set time, then it's go time anyway and they only get to work with whatever plan they have worked up. It's preferable if they split up into teams.
Then, try to allow for every chartacter to make at least three skill checks. Set the difficulties easier than you would normally. Have them make combined checks whenever possible and work together to describe the outcome of their efforts.
The key is keeping up the pressure. Start en media res. Make hesitations unappealing. Present choices as A or B options, not open-ended ones. If a player is taking too long figuring out what he wants to do on his turn, tell him you'll come back to him and go on to the next player. Describe things in concise and clear terms, and then ask the player how she responds ("The Imperial stormtrooper draws his riot baton and rushes at you. He's almost upon you, what do you do?"). And so on and so forth. It's gonna feel a little railroady at times, perhaps...but as long as you give them choices, make "yes, and..." your default, and narrate them being as awesome as possible, you should weather the session just fine
Either that, or you will discover that you have a max player cap, and it's less than 9
Epically helpful. I'll be printing this out and have it next to me as we play, it's that helpful! Thanks for the game plan.
No problem! I hope you have a fun time.
12 hours ago, 2P51 said:Don't. That's too many. Rounds of combat will be ridiculously long. People will get bored. Too many side conversations. Too much bookkeeping for you. You need to cut that back.
Thiiiis sooooo muuuuch.
Personally I think this game should top out at 5 players and a GM at the very most and has a sweet spot of 3-4 players + GM. Once you hit 6 is when things start to drag on with structured encounters and it's so much harder to make a game that satisfies the likes of 6+ players and the GM. I ran a group of 6 (sometimes 7) players for 2 years and for 2 years structured encounters were awful. Like pulling teeth with some of them. We had a ship combat once that lasted 6 rounds and took 1 hr per round. <_>
I recently started forming up a new group after I moved. 3 players interested. Then we got 2 more and I said that's it, we can't take on others. Then spouses that previously didn't want to be a part of it wanted in on it and I said we need to split to 2 groups but that is entirely doable. I just can't run a group larger than 5 again. We can have the older generation of couples in one and the younger generation in the other. Said spouses decided to opt out of playing instead.
Don't let people pressure you into taking on more than you can handle! The GM is a player too and you need to make sure everyone including yourself has fun! If you start off already not having fun, it won't last.
If you end up with 9 one option is recruiting someone that might be willing to co GM. Run both groups but separately and maybe just have them overlap occasionally to bring it together.
Let us know if any of the advice above helped. I have none to offer as it has been about a decade since I ran a group that size.
I find that a player group of 4-6 is my comfort zone as a GM.
Forgot to mention, if you manage to get the player characters to split into different groups, bounce the narrative between the two groups as often as possible. Sometimes you can even go between skill checks if you have enough dice. Keeps it fast-paced. "You guys are attacking this group of stormtroopers over here? Great, here's your Difficulty, go ahead and form your attack pool. Okay, while they're doing that, what are you guys doing? ...Okay, make me a combined Computers check, your Intellect and her Computers skill rank. Here's your Difficulty." And then back to the stormtroopers scene, etc.
Thanks so much for the advice, everyone. I am pleased to say, it turned out great! Total success! Long story short... it was Empire Day on Naboo, and stuff. went. down.
Here are the top seven points of your advice that I most used:
1. Focus on the overarching story. What I will say here, however, is that this did not mean there was no individual character development, I just couldn’t focus on fostering it, I had to present quick situations that might allow for it and see what happened. They were ready for the challenge and almost everyone had significant character development during the three-hour session!
2. Give them a scenario, like a heist or a rescue with lots of action, and let them cook up the plan. This is essential for a big group, and leads to a lot of the most fun. The kind of big scenario for this evening was, it’s Empire Day on Naboo, and that’s simultaneously a) a major celebration and b) an opportunity for the Empire to deal out brutal retribution for a recent Rebel insurrection. So the players went from trying to sell a ship and meet a mentor to suddenly having to figure out how to get back to the other ship in one piece and bust out of Theed.
3. Keep up the pressure. This goes along with the previous point, but basically, whatever big plan they have to make, they are threatened and have to make these plans quick. I took the advice very literally of basically moving forward with what was happening to and around them if they took a long time to make their decisions.
4. Set the difficulties easier than normal. This was a funny piece of advice, but made a lot of sense in the moment, and I did this on many occasions. I didn’t shy away from giving harder difficulties, and I presented challenges as huge and very threatening, but actual dice difficulties I kept very low, just because it could have taken three times as long if they had to figure out “Ok, that didn’t work... what to try next?” all the time.
5. Present choices as A and B options and/or describe things concisely and ask directly “How do you respond?” This did make it a little railroaded at times, but I avoided this in large part by basically saying “A or B? Ok, wow, C, that sounds great, great thinking.” A concrete example: “There’s an AT-AT outside the warehouse and a legion of stormtroopers, they’re about to break in. There’s tons of ships and vehicles in here, and... what do you think is the main sport going on in the Empire Day celebration? Podracing? Great idea. Well, there are three podracers here...” And they created the plan of using the podracers to enter the race and hide in plain sight.
6.Avoid getting bogged down in structured combat. I took this advice mainly from GroggyGolem and 2P51. Their greatest point of concern, and one I already feared, was getting bogged down in structured combat. So, I worked to avoid this by only allowing one small group to play structured combat, and bouncing back and forth between the two groups every round. And I played very fast and loose with wound thresholds for minions, what advantage allowed players to do, et cetera.
Finally, @awayputurwpn, your last point was fantastic; funny enough, I didn’t see it before running the session, but I did it and it was probably the most successful piece:
7. If the party splits, bounce the narrative between the two groups as often as possible. Like I said above with structured combat, I bounced the narrative back and forth every combat round between the two groups when the party did split. While the one group spent time hanging out in and eventually brawling with stormtroopers in a cafe on the campus of the University of Theed, the other group made a sale of their ship, escaped from a ships and vehicles warehouse in podracers, and took those podracers into the Empire Day podrace through Theed. After a round of action in the cafe or a stretch of the warehouse scene and podrace, I would mention they heard a knock at the door, or they saw the course ahead, or stormtroopers burst into the cafe and started bashing aliens, or something more subtle, and then “cut back to the other scene,” and there would be groans of enjoyable tension. This also gave them time to plan their next actions and they were ready to go when we came back to them.
And there was another point of my own, I think, that I had in mind and that worked really well:
8. Try to involve two or three PCs together in nearly every action. If the ship needed fixing up, I asked “Would two of you want to work on the ship together?” Same for negotiating a price, charming a prisoner, or launching a missile tube. The whole evening was one long series of different PCs teaming up in groups of two or three to roll and roleplay. A lot of the characterization came out through these different personalities being just very different together and complimentary or clashing. Multiple friendships between PCs were created and fostered, and some tensions. Those will be what we take away most from the session.
It’s late, but I hope that gives you a picture of what points were best to keep in mind! Thanks again! Not sure that I will indeed keep all nine in the same group, but I know I can do it, just will be more a matter of do we want to tell other stories that necessitate a smaller, more intimate group.
By the way... one of the podracers, piloted by a human PC and a BB-unit PC, won the podrace and at the winner’s dais came face to face with Lord Vader for a few minutes. His comment to them: “Now that was podracing.” Needless to say, it made for an epic night.
On 1/16/2018 at 11:19 AM, 2P51 said:If you end up with 9 one option is recruiting someone that might be willing to co GM. Run both groups but separately and maybe just have them overlap occasionally to bring it together.
I dunno. I think if I tried that (not that I have even close to that many players) I would just end up with two nine player games
