Unplanned I ended up running a big table of nine for one of our open sessions recently - it can work, it is not to be feared and disdained as some might insist. I also got to play in a seven player, multi-faction brawl and ran a seven man table in the past months for other examples. Writing up notes as per Gorgon Bones best practices - Record your hobby experience.
I previously wrote up how I used to make it work in the 90s. In the past months I have run a table of seven and one of nine and it gave me a chance to re-test what I recalled as the way to do it and see was I kidding myself or suffering false memory.
What I remembered of my old methods were:
- make it easy for people to pay attention - either have people involved or make sure things are interesting to watch
- 'just use bears' - keep the monsters straightforward
- take breaks
- run a count down - hold people to making quick decisions
- ambush long discussions with random encounters
- Viking Hat DM'ing - strongly steering the table - though that was just how I ran things back in the day
Since the 90s things I picked up along the way that I thought would help are:
- Puzzles and terrain hazards are great
- Keeping the momentum going by telling people to be ready ahead of their turn
So from these recent sessions, things that stood out to me were:
Lots of bodies makes a mess of combat encounters - a lot of damage gets thrown out before a monster gets a second turn; add foes but keep those foes mechanically simple.
People mostly stuck together - everyone worked well except one or two 'self-centered' characters. Lone-wolves do not work as there is not the time for their running off alone. Getting the party moving through impulsive actions (just pulling the lever) can be fine to break debate-deadlock.
Weird, quirky characters are fine where the player knows how to play them so as not to be a drag. Large headcount tables live in the now, backgrounds are unlikely to feature strongly since there is not time to give everyone that kind of spotlight.
Vary between calling on everyone and letting some drive the action. Some players were happy to sit back and enjoy the ride, if things are being driven forward.
Watch the progress of the group as a whole - as long as things are generally moving forward you are doing ok. Some things get resolved quickly because of many bodies (combat), other things take longer (roleplay).
From the seven player table where sub groups split off regularly on mini-exploration runs, as long as people are doing entertaining things, others will be happy to 'watch the show' - a hub-and-spoke set up works where people do things and come back before doing another thing vs linear where people venture ever further away
From the nine player table - allow folk to run ahead with decisions, in particular being conscious of some players stopping to harvest or cast rituals or other time consuming stuff - note they are stopping to do a thing and see what everyone else is doing with their time. If the party feels it is critical, they will wait, if they feel it is indulgent they will move on and that gives a balance to 'bandwidth jamming'.
Pre-brief folk - recognise it is going to be a big table and ask their help keeping things moving - bring them inside the tent to help.
There was a cool puzzle as part of the nine player adventure, almost a toolbox for players to engage with as much as they wanted (programmable automata) and that worked well.
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