How do I run a game for a larger group?

Question

I am currently running a Dungeons and Dragons 4 campaign for a group of 9 players. Whittling the group down to a more manageable size is not really an option since they are all family. When we do combat it takes forever even if I have one player help me and allow them to go 2 at a time. When we do story based adventure there are 2-3 players that do most of the talking and the others twiddle their thumbs.

I've tried encounters with many foes, encounters with only a few tough foes, dialog only encounters, social puzzle encounters, everything I can think of. What else can I try to get this group more engaged?

Answer 1

Seems to me you have two areas where you want to optimise; I've run large games before (8 players in a Rolemaster campaign, I must have been mad!) and keeping all the players involved is tough, here's what I learnt from it.

Combat

• Preparation; I don't know about AD&D 4e but I do know about complicated systems and preparation can save you loads of time. Make a carddeck of monster information you can quickly refer to, no referencing is quicker play.
• Numbering. Number everything and order them and write a short name after it for fluff. Get a bit of paper and write down the initiative order for everyone in a fight and list your monsters as numbers; then track resources next to their name. While a player is deciding you can decide what the next monster is doing.
• Tracking: Monsters can be very complicated to track with multiple resources, hit points, abilities and so on. So keep them simple, put check boxes in your initiative list to mark what they've used so you don't have to keep checking; if it helps. Also you can do the same for the players; make a table where you track each players hits, ac and so on so you don't have to keep asking if you've hit, if they're at 50% hits or whatever.
• Mooks and minions. It's been mentioned before and it's a great timesaver; Splat the 2 hit point Kobold really has only two states, annoying and dead. Don't bother counting.
• Simplify, simplify, simplify: Round monsters stats off, ignore time consuming abilities, if they're nearly dead make them really dead. If a monster is unconscious don't bother with stabilisation rolls (for example) fudge things away dramatically to save time, keeping the fight flowing is more important.
• Rounding: If maths isn't your forte round damage to the nearest five or ten either way and it'll save you a lot of headaches and counting; you can even then use a simple bar/gate system to add on damage in blocks of five to count damage.
• Poke players in order, tell the player who's next after whoever's deciding to get ready each time. "Bob you're up, Eric start thinking of what you want to do."
• If you really want to harsh it, give players a decision time frame; 1 minute per turn, maybe less. This will encourage them to prep their decisions!

Social

I notice in your question you have When we do story based adventure there are 2-3 players that do most of the talking and the others twiddle their thumbs. To me, social situations are where a GM can be the most lazy, especially with a big group.

• Encourage PC to PC interaction, backstories are gold for this; players should be talking to each other and deciding stuff as much as possible.
• Draw out the quiet ones, it's been said before but "victimise" those who keep quiet, encourage them, drop bits from background into their story "Bob you notice an old book on the shelf that is titled 'A history of Bobland' where your old village Bobford was" and so on.
• Round Robin it. Break the group into smaller ones and give each one a bit of time; Two groups are out buying stuff? Tell the first about the shop, do a bit of interaction then switch to the other group for a bit - this can take a bit of getting used to but I've found it very helpful in stopping players sitting around being bored - just switch every few sentences or so between groups, the other group gets a chance to think some more and the previously waiting group gets a go.
• By the same dint give NPCs in social situations more people. How intimidating is it for 8 people to try and talk to the same person at the same time? Add in the Wizards familiar to talk to, another shop assistant, add in extra NPC's to situations so you can use the Round Robin tactic.

Answer 2

Have you thought about breaking it up into two groups in the same campaign setting? That might be a way to make it more manageable. To get the quieter people involved, you will have to give their character information or knowledge that no one else has and get them to share it. This requires a bit of enforcement regarding what is in-character vs. out-of-character knowledge.

Answer 3

One 4e specific option is what I've seen referred to as "Brutal 4e." It's a way of speeding up combat while also making a bit more "swingy." People do different variations, but in my game we do the following:

1. Monster HP is halved.
2. Monsters do +1 damage for every 2 levels (e.g., a level 5 monster does 3 extra damage on hits)
3. Critical hits do max damage plus 1W (roll the 1W)

I'd say this cuts combat time roughly in half without upsetting the balance in any way I've noticed. Monsters equal to the party's level usually go down in two hits or so, and an encounter power can take them down in one.

Answer 4

I was in a Shadowrun campaign in college that had 8-10 players. The characters would often break up into 2-3 smaller groups at different parts of the adventure. We had multiple GMs that would run each smaller group. It was like have 2-3 constantly changing groups in the same adventure. If the whole group was in a single combat it still seemed to break into smaller skirmishes.

Answer 5

Combat takes forever even if I have one player help me and allow them to go 2 at a time.

I applaud you for tackling this from a traditional D&D approach. That said, I recommend a war game. Pull ideas in from the 3.5 Heroes of Battle or any other mass combat game. Specifically:

• For ranged attacks like fireballs or artillery that could affect the whole party, roll damage dice ahead of time and note it.
• Flesh out types of enemies instead of specific enemies. Ie. "goblin," "goblin guard" (3rd level warrior?), "goblin prince" (6th level fighter?). Then not only is prep simpler but you'll be juggling less varied creatures in combat.
• Green screen! For overwhelming numbers, use the 'scrubs' concept from GURPS (where I first encountered it, at least). Some enemies are just pawns to be tossed aside, so a single hit will suffice. Added bonus, used sparingly this can make the fighter/paladin/barbarian feel like they're just that cool. Just up the amount of minions used, in a 4e game.
• Consider having multiple choke points for PCs and enemies alike. Then you could maintain you multiple-turns-simultaneously approach and give it an in-game reason.

When we do story based adventure there are 2-3 players that do most of the talking and the others twiddle their thumbs.

Grant each (or even subgroups) of PCs separate 'orders' or intentions. For example, in any given roleplay this group of sorcerors could be looking to replenish the parties consumable items and the paladin and cleric could be gathering intelligence about what undead are about. If everyone has their own distinct goal, or at least multiple shared goals, everyone can get more of the spotlight since they'll have different concerns.

Expanding on the above, focus each encounter on **whoever spoke least in the last one. The paladin didn't get to talk with the guildmage much? Well, the wizard might not have much to say to the archdeacon of the paladin's church - at least not as much as the paladin would. In this way you can bring even shy/passive players to the front of the party. While my group has been big but not as big as yours, I've tried this and it works.

I've tried encounters with many foes, encounters with only a few tough foes, dialog only encounters, social puzzle encounters, everything I can think of. What else can I try to get this group more engaged?

If I were to go with such a large group, I'd definitely try out a Dirty Dozen war campaign at least once. Some of HoB is RAW 3.5 mechanics, but even that might be easy to translate to your 4e game. A lot of it is simply DM tactics to use with the group, from planning encounters to designing a battlefield to handling large scale battles.

Note it doesn't take into account large parties (anywhere I know of) but with a bit of tweaking, tactics to handle large parties on the NPC end can be applied elsewhere. Maybe your wizard could roll their spell damage when they prepare their spells, even?