Great Scott! I have a group of 10 players! It's pure chaos, they always talk amongst each other and it takes some serious shouting to contain the lot of them. What do I do? It's a group at school, so I can't kick anyone out, although I'd prefer not having a couple of them. Luckily, at this time of posting I've only had 7 of them, but 7 is overwhelming in its own, and I'm pretty sure the other character I'm skeptical on (who wasn't able to play because he had to leave while we were finishing characters before we could start) will spur more chaos. I'm just completely worried on the subject.

So, there're 10 players in all, with 2 being very jokster-like and the other 8 being serious (more or less). What I'm currently curious on is how I should say that any of them has to leave. I've made it clear right now that being joking will get you out of the group, but it's a schools club, like I said, and inclusion is important. Not to mention I'd rather not have anyone be upset about anything.

Is there anyone else that is interested in GMing? It would be convenient if you could split the game into 2 groups and having someone else run the 2nd group.

If you were really ambitious you could try splitting them into 2 groups and switch out groups every other week. You could have the 2 parties affect the story and one group gets to see the consequences of the other.

Geeze, 10 people, can't prune the group down, have troublemakers (or at least inattentive ones) - and they're kids. Sorry man, you're screwed!

(:

Yeah, the only thing I could think to do is cut the group in two, or if you cant do that, split the game up - meaning you'll have to run more, but have half meet on Tuesdays and the others meet on Thursdays.

Yup. You gotta cut the group in two.

I run games at my FLGS, and so we are inclusive of whoever shows up, desirable or not. You have to accept that, for starters.

As to splitting the group, that is your choice. Talk to the serious ones and create a rotating GM seat. For example, everyone gets to GM one "Adventure." Limit it by number of encounters, number of sessions, whatever. Then when you have gone through the rotation once, see who likes it the best and who hates it (it's really not for everyone), then shorten the list and increase the rotation criteria.

That way you give the table 2 GMs a chance to really expand their own universe.

If you are running this at a school, then you already know the personal and social benefits of RPGing, but what an opportunity to teach the benefits of running the game! Leadership, organisational skill development, confidence, small scale public speaking....

Geez I love this hobby.

Question: are you a teacher, or did you approach the school? How did you make it happen? I am suddenly interested...

I am in a similar situation. I run games at our local library. I have to take a very laid back approach to a lot of the game. Very light on plot, NPC interactions, character development, etc. but the kids are having a great time.

I am hoping that as we play more we can tighten up a bit. Splitting the group has occurred to me too. Ten players is a lot!

Erk! I think I was overreacting in that first post. Let me rephrase it a bit, now that I have time:

So, at my school we are doing an RPG club three days a month on Thursdays (we technically meet every Thursday, but one day a month half the players play a kind of pony RPG). I'm the main, accessible GM, as the other willing GM tends to railroad the game, and the rest aren't too good a GMing. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm fine with having a larger group, it's mainly that I wasn't expecting the pure chaos I had to settle, and I'm annoyed by two of the players, since one is notoriously annoying and does dumb stuff in the Mae, and the other is stubborn and does dumb stuff in the game. It will probably be worse if they both get in the same game, because they both wanted to be Wookies (a bad sign in my eyes, since they only recognize it as a brute race due to their lacking knowledge on Star Wars), and one of them said he needed a Han Solo. The other one said he wanted to be a human now, but I coerced him into not by saying if he named himself Han Solo, he might as well leave. I'm still trying to get them to order, and I've set a rule of if you goof off, you leave. I'm hoping they settle down, but I'm geussing they'll goof off and I'll have to kick them out.

Other than that, I just need to know how to control the chaos. I want to play with all the players I have, but I want to know some ways to keep the peace without coming out as a stern teacher, basically, because I'd rather just have a good old fashioned fun time than command them to play the game. How do I get them to be quiet on their own accord outside of yelling?

Another opinion that you should split the group, although I did successfully run a 20-person CP2020 game for several sessions by having an "assistant GM" - it was terribly fun but man it was a lot of work!

Erk! I think I was overreacting in that first post. Let me rephrase it a bit, now that I have time:

So, at my school we are doing an RPG club three days a month on Thursdays (we technically meet every Thursday, but one day a month half the players play a kind of pony RPG). I'm the main, accessible GM, as the other willing GM tends to railroad the game, and the rest aren't too good a GMing. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm fine with having a larger group, it's mainly that I wasn't expecting the pure chaos I had to settle, and I'm annoyed by two of the players, since one is notoriously annoying and does dumb stuff in the Mae, and the other is stubborn and does dumb stuff in the game. It will probably be worse if they both get in the same game, because they both wanted to be Wookies (a bad sign in my eyes, since they only recognize it as a brute race due to their lacking knowledge on Star Wars), and one of them said he needed a Han Solo. The other one said he wanted to be a human now, but I coerced him into not by saying if he named himself Han Solo, he might as well leave. I'm still trying to get them to order, and I've set a rule of if you goof off, you leave. I'm hoping they settle down, but I'm geussing they'll goof off and I'll have to kick them out.

Other than that, I just need to know how to control the chaos. I want to play with all the players I have, but I want to know some ways to keep the peace without coming out as a stern teacher, basically, because I'd rather just have a good old fashioned fun time than command them to play the game. How do I get them to be quiet on their own accord outside of yelling?

Being firm with them is a good idea. The best advice is before players ever touch dice, before character concepts are ever said, you need to give them all your "speech".

Every GM's speech is different, and most of the time, it rarely has to do with the specific game you are playing.

Basically, you need to tell them what it is you expect out of the game, what you expect from your players, and what your players should expect from you. For me, if I am with new players, I use this as an opportunity to establish the "trust". I tell my players that I may deviate from the rules, from the story, or even from canon (in the case of SW), but it's all for the purpose of playing a fun game and telling a fun story.

Be honest, tell your players that this is a huge group, and in order for this to work, you need them to pay attention, and be courteous.

Have regular breaks (if playing more than an hour or 2), and let them know that you can talk about life and stuff during those breaks, but between now and then, you need their attention.

4th wall jokes and puns will always happen, and they're great, don't discourage that, but let them know that it cannot devolve beyond that.

Absolutely you should give them the stink eye if they start acting up in a way that makes the game not fun. You could try coming up with some sort of cue that will let the players know they need to straighten up. This would be the 2 year-old equivalent of mommy counting down. On one podcast I listen to, the GM has an "hourglass" that counts down 1 minute. He turns it over whenever the players or the characters are wasting time. Once he turns it over, the players have 1 minute to decide what their characters are going to do otherwise the GM will decide and it may be a good, or it may be a bad outcome.

I've never experienced a group that size so I can't give you any anecdotal advice. Just some advice I have heard from others.

I think it would be hard to run more than 5 people because if something is going on, only one person's rolls are being handled at a time, which means, in your case, all the self-centred fidgety types will be bored 90% of the time. So...

+1 on splitting the group.

If your campaign is mission oriented, maybe there's a way to split the mission, so you're all in the same story and working on the same problem, but one group is handled temporarily by a different GM. Maybe group A is relying on group B to cut the power to the blast doors or something, while group B is relying on group A to fulfill their part...you could set goals for real-time, and it could make for some fun rivalry between groups. Just make sure group membership is rotated to prevent the rivalries bleeding out into real life.

I ran an open gaming group in college, so I understand what you are going through. It was D&D, but had a similar problem. I had a regular core of about 8 players with about 4 occasional, and the occasional drop ins. I think my maximum game was 16 players. A lot of the problem worked itself out as the less serious players either wouldn't return, or would understand that they get less attention than they are used to. In fact, my group had a bunch of things that occurred a lot like a LARP, where characters would be interacting with themselves, making plans and whatnot. They would come to me when they needed ruling or to advance a plot. I just had to keep an ear on everyone to make sure they didn't run too far off the rails. Basically, if you can get them to split into subgroups, and interact among themselves while you deal with the other one, it works well. Then you have a main plot which includes them all at once. It was a pain at times, but this group basically made 90% of my plots for me. I really only set the stage, then told them what happened to the world in response to their self made disasters.

Thanks for the advice. However, I sort of want a larger group that I'll eventually be able to narrow down to more serious players. I suppose that not many others have been able to do the same, so I might have to wing it. Of course, that will be in four weeks, because of the already present once a month group split and Christmas break.

I ran SLA Industries for about 4 months before we picked up EotE, all of my players were coworkers who brought their spouses, so excluding anyone was out of the question, all of them were new to the hobby, so finding any other GM for a split group was out of question, and with the exception of one couple, all of us are 30+ years old, this actually helped.

What happened was I ran a particular style of game, and over time, those who weren't really interested in the game so much as socializing activitiies kind of just fizzled out. About half of our players (there were about 12 total), just gave up and stopped playing.

The challenge of too many players kind of self-corrected itself. But running a game for that many people actually made me adjust my game style. Combat was too slow, turns were taking too long (and EtoE's combat turns are leaps and bounds over the system for turns in SLA Industires), and I ended up running a less combat-heavy game in favor of roleplay interaction and investigation type missions.

With that many players, I probably would not run minions in EtoE, my baddies would exclusively be Nemesees and the occasional rival difficulty. I found that fewer, but stronger, in the case of 12 players, MUCH stronger NPCs was really way to go for combat.

So beef up your baddies, run fewer, harder NPCs in fights, and then pile some extra-strength awesome on your combat NPCs. The idea is to control fewer NPCs with much, much larger stat blocks, it will make your job much easier and allow your game to run faster.

I've got an 8-player game of Black Crusade going right now. My best advice for keeping them concentrated is to use a timer of some kind. I just set a spare d10 on the table. If I feel like they're being too rowdy, taking too long, or metagaming too hard, I'll turn it to the next lower face. If it reaches zero, a new complication arises, whether that be enemy reinforcements in combat, mechanical breakdown, whatever. The tension will help keep them focused.

Take breaks to chat and blow off steam. In a usual 4-6 hour session, we'll probably play for no more than 2 hours before pausing for 15 minutes or so.

Most importantly, recognize when to throw your hands up in the air in (hopefully) mock agony. Nobody can be serious all the time. When something truly ridiculous happens, sit back and laugh along with them.

I lied in my last post, because we already had another game the week before break.

So, there are plenty of complications, since we can only meet once a week for two hours tops one Thursdays. We're currently still trying to fix that part, and the teacher hosting it thinks we might be able to meet twice a week at some point.

Also, we had two meets already in one week due to a during school dance where we were able to meet, since we'd rather roleplay than sit around in a gym. It got so chaotic that one of the players said that this was enough, and we needed to have a system of talking, so we'd never override each other. I also plan to more heavily enforce some aspects of my style (no goofing off, no slaughtering, and much roleplaying), which I think should root out poor players by a default.

My plan is to have them all arrive on Tatooine. On Tatooine, they will have to split up in order to not appear conspicuous (the group will split in two), or else they will be mistaken for members of a gang and will be constantly harassed by stormtroopers.

They currently have a mission to kill a certain individual on Tatooine, but once they get there they mistake their target for someone else. It ends up turning out that their target was an Imperial figure, and he passed by this town recently. However, he used a decoy to allow him to make secret dealings, and then left the planet unbeknownst to anyone, with the decoy staying around to keep up the image for a while. This decoy is spending his time flaunting his money about and giving off the image of a puffed up Imperial bureaucrat put to the lowly position of sector patrolling, so he's taking some time off in this 'lovely' town.

The decoy is pretty easy to kill, or at least should be for the group, but his guards consist of highly trained Imperial officials, and he has a spy in the area to notify the actual Imperial should the decoy get attacked or killed. The decoy himself appears to be very fat and ungainly, but he can handle himself well with a gun.

This will be where common sense comes into play. If the players walk in as a huge group of a dozen rag tag scoundrels, they'll be shot on sight and seen as a bunch of pirates. But if they act cunningly and split up, they'll seem less of a threat.

After Tatooine, I plan for the game to continue to Nar Shadaa, and then to Coruscant as they hunt down this Imperial. I'm expecting for someone to do something amazingly stupid somewhere along the way, so I'm planning up some encounters for them.