Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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You cant. A scenario can be played with 6 players. A seventh sometimes is allowed if that persone otherwise would need to be send home without playing, but it is not adviced.
The only way you can play in the same game together would be to attend one of the multi table specials. You wont be seated at the same table, but the specials are made that everyone works towards the same goal. So you and your friends would still contribute to the same goal, and can assist eachother.
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Or, how about this?
Set up two tables, side by side, each with their own set of players and GMs. When the event is reported, two slots will be reported.
Everyone RPs together, and advances through the story at the same time, but when combat breaks out each group has their own fight to handle (complete with their own map and set of enemies).
Which would mean you'd need a balanced group at each table, but I imagine with ten players you could probably achieve that easily.
I don't see why that couldn't happen.
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As long as no assistance passed between the two groups -- healing, buffing, figuring out puzzles, etc. then that would work, but I think it would be a little difficult if there wasn't separation between the tables. I've had a GM run the same scenario as another GM at the immediately next table, and it works reasonably well, but there has to be that separation.
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Healing and buffing, no doubt, should remain segregated to each table.
Once combat breaks out for one group, each GM would redirect their PCs into their own battle.
But figuring out puzzles should be something the group as a whole could do, I'd think. Same goes for negotiating with NPCs, or any RP in general.
Right? I just can't see why that would matter in the grand scheme of things.
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I would think that in that case it would be even more important for the table to be broken up, not so much for mechanical benefit but for role playing enjoyment. 10 people is just too many vying for the attention of the NPC (or GM) at one time, and it would be difficult to make sure that the players get an equal share of the spotlight in that interaction.
You could probably keep the tables together if you really wanted, and some people might enjoy it, but I would be very careful that everybody gets some time to roleplay.
Developer
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Healing and buffing, no doubt, should remain segregated to each table.
Once combat breaks out for one group, each GM would redirect their PCs into their own battle.
But figuring out puzzles should be something the group as a whole could do, I'd think. Same goes for negotiating with NPCs, or any RP in general.
Right? I just can't see why that would matter in the grand scheme of things.
One big issue is negotiate-or-fight scenes (e.g. the PCs can talk down this NPC to avoid a fight), which really should rely on separate skill checks for each table; the skill check result of a party face at Table 1 should not also stand in as the result of Table 2's skill check. I could see the two tables doing the roleplay together but then having to split up to attempt the actual skill checks. If Table 1 succeeds and Table 2 fails, the tempo is thrown off for the whole group.
The same goes for traps. Can a trap-finding rogue at Table 2 disable the trap for both tables? Can a character who succeeds at a Knowledge check to identify a creature share that with both groups? If the answer to any of these is "yes," then the two-table method has a clear advantage for having even greater depth of roles and skill coverage.
These are significant differences from the expectations of the organized play campaign. They would need to be addressed for any such multi-table play.
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Fair enough.
After PaizoCon officially concluded, you ran a game for a group in one of the back rooms, and I was playing at the other table in that room.
At our table, we had two GMs (but still just one group of players).
The GMs could divide their attention to different players, and gameplay sped right along. If one had a question, they could counsel the other.
It was really fantastic, so I was taking that experience and trying to apply it to the OP's question.
So, I suppose, when it comes down to dice hitting the table, that should still remain segregated, in addition to resources being expended.
(but, obviously, the best situation is to play different games. This would be purely for the corner case situation of a close group of gamers, who also happened to have two GMs willing to run for them)
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Designer
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I once ran A Sanctum of a Lost Age as an incredibly trippy experience with two tables, one the initial Pathfinder squad and the other the squad sent to go rescue the first squad when they failed to report back, potentially retrieving the bodies for 2 prestige. The two tables couldn't interact with each other directly, and they both completed all their own challenges, but there were...signs of the other group and a bunch of other special effects related to the second table that are normally up to the GM in that module anyway.
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Developer
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John, is this clarification that running an AP in campaign mode allows a table to break the six player limit as well?
The question has never really come up for me, as I can only think of one time that to run a table with more than seven players in a good, long time.
In this case, GMs running the Adventure Path are not bound to the rules of the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign (such as 20-point buy, unavailability of hero points, etc.) when running the campaign or the sanctioned portion of the adventure.
It would seem that virtually no restrictions are in place in the selection above, meaning that there would be no restriction on table size (barring a GM's personal sanity and player satisfaction). Thinking about it for a moment, I'm not seeing any undesirable repercussions of this clarification—especially since this "campaign mode" has traditionally taken place outside the realm of typical Pathfinder Society play.
Can you see any difficulties arising from this?
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But figuring out puzzles should be something the group as a whole could do, I'd think. Same goes for negotiating with NPCs, or any RP in general.
What if figuring out a puzzle gives you the secondary success condition? Or, likewise, diplomancing an NPC to 'helpful' or something.
(Say, that gives me an idea for a scenario where your goal is to FAIL diplomacy checks and make an NPC hostile to you and the PFS. I'd have to think about why this would be a goal, though.)
If there's a puzzle that requires religious knowledge to figure out, and one party has a bard with all the knowledges and a cleric who happens to be part of the religion in question and has a holy text of the religion with her, while the other party barely has enough Knowledge(religion) to tell a ghoul from a ghast, the second party probably should do worse on the puzzle than the first.
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Can you see any difficulties arising from this?
Other than typical headaches of large tables with reduced enjoyment, no. (I feel that the freedom granted to houserule and edit the AP as needed counters that problem handily.)
It also helps immensely with player turnover, as my Skull and Shackles game can attest to. Of the original six, only myself and one other player are still participating. The others dropped out and were replaced with new participants. (The drop outs did not earn chronicles for anything they did not complete, and the add ins did not earn chronicles for sessions previous to their joining.)
So I am absolutely down for this and will report any actual issues that arise.
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APs probably become "too easy" if there are too many players. OTOH, the GM has the freedom to up the encounter level if the AP is being run in campaign mode, by the very same "not bound to the rules" clause.
I have to admit myself, I find that 3-4 is the idea number of players to have at a table in an RPG. 6 works, but starts to get a little cluttered. That's why I like that Paizo APs and Modules are written for 4 characters. A table of 10 players all trying to play in the same game at once sounds overwhelming to me, at least for a traditional tabletop RPG. (I have seen it work in a diceless Amber game where there was a GM and a co-GM, and the players would wander about and interact with each other, calling over GMs when adjudications were needed.)
(That being said, I fully understand the practical reason why PFS tables are of a standard size of 6 rather than 4.)
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I have to admit myself, I find that 3-4 is the idea number of players to have at a table in an RPG.
4 is my preferred table size, with 5 being a good compromise. Hence why my personal run of Eyes of the Ten is being limited to such, with hand-picked players groomed to the task. :) For an AP however, a cast of 6 is good so that sessions can proceed in the event that a player has a schedule conflict.
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I have to admit myself, I find that 3-4 is the idea number of players to have at a table in an RPG.4 is my preferred table size, with 5 being a good compromise. Hence why my personal run of Eyes of the Ten is being limited to such, with hand-picked players groomed to the task. :) For an AP however, a cast of 6 is good so that sessions can proceed in the event that a player has a schedule conflict.
Well, APs are written, RAW, for 4 PCs, so 5 would give that same leeway.
Now, to see if the second time to try running RotRL, online for once, works out.
Tried Shattered Star, locally, twice, too much player flake, not enough players to handle the flake.
Tried RotRL locally, once, too much player flake, not enough players to handle the flake.
Trying RotRL online, recruiting through PFSOC, planning to start this Friday. Got my self 5 players, two alts, so, hopefully, we can get past the first part of the first book.
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I have no problem keeping up with 10 players and giving them all a fair amount of limelight. and also, I have been multiplying everything by 2.5, IE the monsters, treasure and the XP. also, I increase the size of the rooms in the modules to double the size, this allows room for creatures and players to still be able to get a feel for the game other than everything stepping on each other toes.
what I was really concerned was, I wanted to see if we could do this sanctioned. it seems that we cant and will never get to run the games sanctioned which will not bother me. I wasn't too impressed with the sanctioned rules anyways, I just had players ask me about it.
I don't like to split my party up and we are all friends here and splitting up the group at the house would be bad. it would be different if we were at a hobby store, but we are a bunch of friends that have been gaming together for years.
well I guess I will keep doing what I have been doing and go from there. everyone is having fun and I should not fix something if it is not broken.
You can't run the regular scenarios sanctioned, but as mentioned above by Campaign staff you could run any of the sanctioned AP's or modules that offer "campaign mode" as you wish. Then the play could be reported and those of your players who want sanctioned content can get society rewards, and you still run as you see fit.
You don't even have to run campaign mode content in PF to get credit. There was one GM that was looking to trying to LARP on the of the modules in prior discussions...
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what I was really concerned was, I wanted to see if we could do this sanctioned. it seems that we cant and will never get to run the games sanctioned which will not bother me.
Nor should it. Organized play is not for everyone. Your group seems to be working just fine. If your players are truly interested in earning chronicles for PFS, AP campaign mode is the best way to serve your own campaign and their interests. They just won't be able to play their sanctioned characters with you and will need to find an alternate venue to play them in. Perhaps they might even GM their own scenarios with a subset of your group on other days.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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There was one GM that was looking to trying to LARP on the of the modules in prior discussions...
There was? I know that Mike stated that even LARP would be an acceptable way of playing through an AP, and I know I would be tempted to do so if I had the resources to build Sandpoint in RL (actually the first part of RotRL, up to the point when the goblins attack, is quite agood plot for a weekend of LARP).
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Can you see any difficulties arising from this?Other than typical headaches of large tables with reduced enjoyment, no. (I feel that the freedom granted to houserule and edit the AP as needed counters that problem handily.)
Though at what point does the flexibility end? A table with 10 people like the OP indicated?
Mike
