So when I bought the 4th Ed. books, I was itching to play D&D. I was out of it a while, and really wanted to find a group to play with. I thought I’d be out of luck, as most of the guys I used to play with had their own things going on, and I didn’t think they’d be available.
Well I”ll be damned.
This Saturday night I’ll be running 9 guys+me at the table. Loud, rowdy, mid-30’s smack-talking, ball-busting, “legends in their own mind” type players. How many players is too much? Normally, we end up with 6 or 7 players, as usually someone drops out and cannot make it. Not this weekend. Everyone said yes.
This will be the largest group I’ve run yet! Yikes!
My wife is going to kill me. We’ve got a baby and a 3 year old who have to sleep.
My gut tells me to tell some guys not to come, but I know how much it sucks to want to play, and not be able to. Those of you in Miami might agree with me that gaming is a little limited here. You take what you can get. But 9 players is a lot to keep track of in an already slow-as-it-is combat system. Of course, I say that based only on my experience playing these past few months….
When do you guys start turning people away? How much is too much? Are there ever too many players at the table?
www. Newbie DM .com 
reveal74
January 9, 2009
I ran a campaign that lasted 1.5 years with 7 players and at times, especially at higher levels, it felt like too much. To me, a group of 5-6 people is enough to let everyone play what they want without the others thinking they have to “fill a role” while not becoming unmanageable.
Hammer
January 9, 2009
9 players with 4e slow combat? That could get painful 😉
I generally look for a group of 4-5+GM and I would be very loath to ever go over that, although I can sympathise with taking what you can get.
You also have the advantage of being able to make up for people dropping out at later stages.
viricordova
January 9, 2009
I won’t take more than 6 in a game. After that I just lose track too often of what they’re doing. I can multitask, I’m not god 😛
Kenneth Newquist
January 9, 2009
Is there another GM in the group (or someone who might be willing to try? Nine’s a good number to split into smaller groups. You could run two tables or — if you had a willing assistant — occasionally split the group into two parties within the same adventure and let the other DM handle that side quest.
We’ve used that technique a few times, but it’s a lot to do on short notice.
Swordgleam
January 10, 2009
The first game I was ever in was 1st ed D&D with a group of 10. Since I was the 10th, I couldn’t really complain, but we did spend as much time trying to get people on track as we did gaming.
I’ve never had to turn people away from a session – I just don’t let them into a campaign if I think I’ll have too many. Turning people away from a session would suck.
I’d say, figure out a way for the party to split. Or, have a one-off night, and run something like Wushu or Toon or anything silly and rules-light. Or, figure out a way to work a time limit into your adventure. That’s one way to make everyone stay focused and go fast: have a timer sitting in front of them.
Since you’re not used to everyone showing up, you must have a way to get characters in and out of the story without much effort. You could have three people at a time off playing a board game or something, and then rotate which three people it is.
I’m sure if you let your players know that you didn’t want to kick anyone out, but can’t handle all nine of them at once, they’ll be understanding and help you come up with solutions.
amatriain
January 10, 2009
For me, 5 is a comfortable size. 6 is a little too much, there is a lot of white noise (people start talking among them out of character) and as a GM I have to repeat things several times (and even then, there’s always someone who didn’t listen to me and didn’t hear that the guy they were talking with just shapeshifted into a giant rat).
Anything beyond that is basically unmanageable. I’ve had groups of 7 or 8 a couple of times, because I didn’t have the heart to leave a couple friends out of the game, but it’s really tired. It’s come to the point where the standard game size for GMs in my area is 6 people, and you have to secure a slot when the campaign is announced, otherwise you’re out of it. We’ve all been doing this for years and people generally understand. Of course, there is always some “influence trafficing” (I will let you sit in my game if you let me sit in yours) but what can you do.
OTOH, for me at least there is also a minimum enjoyable group size. For me it’s 3 people; anything under that means there is too little character interaction, too little friction to create really enjoyable sessions. I understand there are people GMing to a group of 1 player (their wives usually), but I dont’t thing I would find it interesting.
newbiedm
January 10, 2009
@swordgleam: the way we handle character absences is with a wave of the hand they are suddenly there or not… like if they were there all along…
@amatriain: When I’m gaming I want my wife out of the house. she wouldn’t know an dwarf from gary coleman
I’m going to shorten my email distribution list for next session
R. A. Paez
February 7, 2009
I’ve GM a session of 10 people once and I had things under control in the sense that if somebody strated to distract or detract from the gaming a random trap or monster would appear to get the party’s attention once more. I even did an underhanded thing as having the next attack against one that was detracting from the game get hit with a critical no matter what the true roll was. It gets there attention right away because they all knew I did it on purpose. Funny thing about that is they didn’t get mad at me. They knew I had to keep them in line.
I play with newbiedm now and back in the day in high school and played with his brother even after high school, and the thing is even though we are now 30+ years old and with wives and kids you would think we would keep our kid like behavior to a minim considering that some of our wives (mine included) don’t mind us playing but regulate the amount of time we can play.
Oh, btw, you can also penalize the ones that disrupt too much. Sometimes the disruption is hilarious, like one playing singing a ballad of another player’s real life while we wait for him to do his attack, but other times it is annoying considering we only have usually 4 hours to play.
elopingcamel
June 26, 2009
Now I’m interested to ask…
I am new to D&D; I just played my first game a week and a half ago and loved it. I ran a couple of 3.5 Starter Set games last summer (as the DM) for some friends that knew nothing about D&D. We all had a lot of fun despite my not knowing what I was doing (especially when it came to role playing…the dice rolling and mechanics I understood well enough). Time constraints and my brother moving (with his son which meant about half of the group) cut us off early so we didn’t even get past the 4th encounter.
Since then, I have tried to run a sort of solo “practice game” with my wife so we both could learn the rules better, but I didn’t feel like it was all that enjoyable for her. Has anyone found it possible to make a solo game fun (either 3.5 or 4e)? Any advice?
(In case I wasn’t clear, we are playing in a 3.5 Eberron game now that a friend, that I recently made) invited us to join. I want to try out 4e too, so I thought I could test it out on my wife.)
newbiedm
June 26, 2009
@elopingcamel: I have never played solo D&D. There is a blog called Chgowiz Old Guy RPG Blog where he plays solo games with his wife. Check it out:
http://oldguyrpg.blogspot.com/search/label/solo%20game
elopingcamel
June 26, 2009
Wow. That was a very fast response. Thanks! I’ll go check out his blog.