So I'm currently DMing for the first time and I'm running RotRL. It's been an awesome campaign so far, and I've personally had a lot of fun being on the other side of the screen.
Normally, the group is comprised of a group of friends, and because we're all student-aged, we've got friends who are returning home for the summer from their studies, a few of which have asked to play with us. I personally have no issue with it, and everyone in the group agreed that we didn't want to exclude anyone.
Now, the group has doubled from its usual four to eight. We recently had our first session with seven, and I have to say that it was a little hectic (not that we weren't expecting it to be), and unfortunately, some issues that existed beforehand within the group dynamic have now been amplified due to the strain of having more people in the room.
1. One of the players frequently browses the internet on his phone/laptop during the game and seems generally disinterested when it's not his turn in combat (which means he basically excludes himself from the in-between dialogue and RP altogether). We've tried adopting a "no laptops at the table except the DM" rule, but this is inconvenient because we frequently need to look up spells or rules, and I personally don't want to be the one to have to do this as I usually have statblocks and the like open on my screen. This generally leads to a huge lag whenever the player's turn comes around, as combat comes to a complete crawl because he hasn't been paying attention to who's done what or what's going on.
2. Player turns seem to take way too long overall. Some of our players can complete their turns in seconds, while others can take several minutes to figure out their abilities/stats/bonuses or otherwise don't know what they should be doing and wait until it's their turn to ask the other players.
3. Generally the table environment is pretty laid back, but chatter has become a noticeable issue with the amount of people that we have in the room at one time.
My overall question is this: how can I curb this behaviour and streamline combat without becoming a fascist dictator? I don't mind telling people to shut up at the table, but I feel like the table environment will quickly become hostile if I'm forced to do so on a constant basis.
Feedback from a DM/player who has been in this position before would be helpful, as well as any tips for making turns faster, keeping players focused, etc.
1. Let everyone know to have their actions ready when their turn comes up. Some people that are still learning the game will take longer for now. Normally they get better.
2. To reduce the amount of laptops, have 1 or 2 players to be your researchers to look rules up. That way everyone does not need to have one out.
3. Let one of the players handle initiative tracking. That gives them something to do, and keeps them in the game.
4. You have may have to bring the focus back to the game if side topics go on for too long. Ask the players to try to stay focused also, before the game begins. For many people the game is secondary to being a social get together, especially if that is the only time they see each other.
I would assign to 2 and 3 to the players most likely to not pay attention.
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I am probably about not to be helpful. Just so you're warned.
Here's a way not to handle it. I had a game where I'd reached 8+ players. I split them into two groups, each of which had 3-5 players. (It varied a bit from week to week.)
I couldn't keep it going. It was great for four or five sessions; I had two different games, each of which was manageable. What's more, I divided the people up so that people who wanted one kind of game were all in one group, and those who wanted another were in the other group. It was great... but preparing for two FtF games each week, and then the 8-hour marathon session every Saturday, was just something I couldn't keep doing.
I resolved it after that by resorting to what ultimately people probably have to resort to, as distasteful as it is: excluding people. I cropped the group down to six, and just ran one group. I talked to everybody about it, and got people to be honest about how much they wanted to play, and managed to avoid bringing in any bad feelings.
For context: I'm a prof at a Uni, that has a weird schedule that means that students are usually around three weeks out of four. 2-3 of my other players are other profs here. (In fact, now that I have identified 4 other profs, I could probably ignore students altogether....) What I did was make a Kingmaker group with four students and two profs. A fifth student hung out for various social reasons-- it ended up working out, because most weeks somebody wasn't there, so she would pinch-hit. (By the end of the school year, she'd played everybody else's character at least once.)
Next year, I'm thinking of doing it slightly differently. I will run Kingmaker twice a month, and then once a month run PFS. PFS will be first-come, first-serve. That way, everybody who wants to play can play at least sometimes, and those who want to take a break can take a break without leaving the campaign in the lurch.
(Over the summer, when most of the students who were in the Kingmaker campaign are gone, I've been running PFS scenarios, with a different batch of people each time. Some weeks there aren't enough people around to make a game (like this week), but overall it's been working pretty well.)
I guess ultimately what I'm trying to say is: if you have a game with too many people and it's not all that much fun for everybody, in the long run it's better to exclude some people and maintain a manageable game. If you can find a way to do it without bad feelings (I was very lucky to be able to do that), that's probably the best thing to do.
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We sometimes do what I call the "stumbling rule". What the stumbling rule is that you have 30seconds, a minute, a min and a half etc. Etc. To take your turn. If you have not started to take your turn that is you haven't decided what you're going to be doing and started to roll or tell the DM what he/she has to roll than your PC stumbles and loses his turn.
This makes casters learn their spells well so they know what they do so they don't have to look them up as often and if they do have too they will do so on someone else's turn. It also keeps everyone more involved since if they aren't paying attention than they end up losing their turn.
I usually make it so that the higher lv you are the more time you have to decide what you do because crunch wise you have more options as to what you can do with your PC and fluff wise your PC is more battle ready and experienced so he/she can see more possibilities in less time.
My time limit (if I use it) is lv 1-5 you have 30seconds otherwise you lose your turn, 6-10 you have 45seconds, 11-15 you have 1 minute so on and so forth.
Now I realize that this makes it harder to be a caster than a fighter since it scales with a full BAB but I believe that a caster should be doing home work and learn his spells because it is usually a caster that will muddy up combat. While I know that this is not always true sine I currently have a PC who is a full BAB who takes more time than the caster but traditionally it is the casters that slow things down.
And I also realize that the above makes it look like I don't like casters but really I love them my favorite classes to play usually but I can't stand when the PC doesn't do their prep work for one thing and slow down the game while I the DM have to do prep work for the entire game otherwise we can't play.
Luckily I don't really have to use the stumbling rule anymore since all my players have experience and they don't take that long to make their choices anymore.
I will also add this I don't use the stumbling rule when fighting a BBEG(big bad evil guy) as I feel you deserve more time in that situation to think things out. Although I won't give you a 30min turn either unless it really does matter what you do and the other players are helping you out with your turn since someone dies and you need to figure out how to breath of life them back or something like that.
How much time you give the PCs and how often(if at all) you use the "stumbling rule" is up to you and should be based off your group dynamics. And you should probably discuss it with your group before using it if you do since you might be seem as the a$$%~@$ DM if they don't agree that combat is slow and that this might help speed things along.
My version of the stumbling rule only means you have ___ to decide an action. We won't time you on getting the action completed.
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That's what I meant by the "If you have not started to take your turn that is you haven't decided what you're going to be doing and started to roll or tell the DM what he/she has to roll than your PC stumbles and loses his turn." part.
Good news is, with a party this big, not only is it okay to split the party, it can actually be beneficial to do so.
I run rather large numbers myself these days. Minimum 6 and up. I find combats can be more dynamic when some of the group are in one location, and some are in another, and you "cut" back and forth cinematically.
Now, I have not run Rise, so I do not know how easily it lends itself to this sort of thing, but in general, it can be a very good thing. I know it seems counterintuitive - you would think that not being involved in the same combat can divide a large party's attention, but that is not my experience. If you can navigate the adventure so that each group is investigating simultaneously, or fighting simultaneously, you can set up a situation where cutting back and forth provides more room for profound revelation or delays resolution for a turn or two, leaving players on the edge. It's like having a line of little cliffhangers popping up every few minutes.
Also seems to speed up the slow effect that large parties can create. Probably because nobody wants to wait so long to get back to what happens to their group next, so they happily snap-to when their turn comes up.