I'm running a game soon, the five players my best friends.
Currently I am playing a game of which the GM will be a player in mine, and so will all the other players, except for one.
Originally, the current players A, K and the GM would be my players too, joined by M and S. Unfortunately S dropped out so one of the players (L) of the current campaign kind of invited himself into mine, which I was glad of because I needed someone to fill S's story role.
But the fifth player of the current campaign, J, and I have grown pretty close and I don't want him to be left out, plus I won't actually see him as much. So I really want to bring him in, making the players A, K, L, M, the current GM and J.
But our group is (too) talkative as it is, and I dunno if I'll be able to keep everyone under control.
Anyone else had experience with a larger group? How did it work out? Thanks!!
@kanejax: Oh my goodness that's a fantastic idea hahaah! Thank you!
@Skeld: Thanks very much, I'll look through it now. :)
1. One player should run Init. He will announce who is Up and who is Next. When you are UP, you must have your spell out and ready, or whatever needs looked at ready to go. Six seconds then you Delay. Dice should be rolled, computations made, etc. For example, if you have 4 attacks, by your turn you should just announce "I hit him twice for 42 points". Once the Monster has been hit, the AC needs to be announced.
2. Only one Pet/summoned monster/eidolon/cohort per person.
We normally run with six players.
We have a gentleman's agreement to not bog things down with pets. If the group gets to more than 4, we don't do master summoners of summoning focused druids. If you have a pet or summons you dang well better know its stats and what it is doing, otherwise it does nothing.
Other than that, last time I just made a statement to the group.
"Look, running for 7 people is really hard on the GM. It is nearly impossible without your cooperation. I'm more than willing to GM this group but I need your help, organization, and attention.
I am NOT going to be repeating everything 3 times. So if your talking and don't hear the briefing or description, then your character wasn't paying attention. You can take your turn to in-character ask the others what is going on.
Look up your stuff before your turn. If you can't tell me what you are doing pretty quickly, your character is confused and takes no action while he tries to figure out a course of action."
Give different ones different jobs sometimes helps.
Jim, tonight you take notes for the group on what is seen, who is met, where you've been, and what you've done. You will give the recap at the start next week. Then someone else will take notes.
Matt, you are the initiative tracker.
Dave, you can write down loot and who is carrying what.
Tom, find some mini's close to what I describe.
I would purposely leave 1 or 2 without a job each week so they can have a break (not feel like work) and pay more attention to the plot.
Take breaks every so often so they can get the yakking out of their system.
As kanejax said standing up usually helps them focus on you. (I personally do not like to stand up that long, but it helps.)
Every once in a while if they are getting out of control, ask what their perception check or will save modifiers are. then roll a few dice behind the screen. Don't say anything about it. If they ask, "You don't notice anything right now." Don't do this too often, or it will lose it's effectiveness.
Awesome stuff. I really appreciate all this.:) Feeling pretty confident about the whole thing now.
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I've always found the best groups have 3-4 players (ie. excluding the GM), with 4 people pushing it.
5-6 is overwhelming for everyone (not just the GM), and 7 pretty much always over-burdens the table. If you get more than 4 players, see if you can work out a way to split it into two groups of 3-4 players.
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We have a six people group, and the DM started with some house rules.
One: NO combat pets, this came about as in the previous campaign with the same six players the fighter wasn't able to contribute because the large animal companions kept taking up the melee space. And the player's turn takes twice as long.
Two: When you get up to multiple attacks, roll all your D20s at once, designating different colours to each attack. This really speeds up combat. (this is more a general rule, but is more critical in large parties)
Three: Know your spell lists, or don't play a spell caster.
Some of these sound harsh when written down, but they were suggestions made by the whole group.
One other little thing is that we have a couple of people who can't do fast mental arithmetic, they are just not wired that way. So we have made some laminated cheat cards which list all the effects they could have in place, such as prayer, haste, multi-shot etc, and they tick what they are using with a whiteboard marker and can easily calculate, or have others calculate, their to hits and damage. Sometimes we also do the dice maths as well....but only with permission.
My experiences with groups larger than 5 for PF have all been poor... BUT that doesn't mean it can't work.
A lot of people have addressed the time concern, which is important, but I have another concern that keeps me from going over 5: combat balance.
When you have a lot more PCs than the game was designed for (and I believe 4 is the baseline, recommended number), creating fun, balanced encounters becomes exponentially more difficult. One of several things starts happening more and more often:
1. Your players easily overwhelm your BBEGs by sheer numbers, and the last characters to act don't get to do as much.
2. Your BBEG is strong enough to resist that many players but is so much stronger than them individually that he easily floors some characters with a couple hits, which might hurt the fun.
3. You have multiple moderately-strong enemies in an encounter, but now an already slow combat takes even longer.
Group composition can get around this, and certain players may not be bothered by some of them, but it's important to be aware of these pitfalls.