I went backpacking through Europe for a month back in 1996. I was 23 years old, had a couple of hundred bucks saved up, so I decided to take the plunge. I went with 3 other friends, and spent the month traveling from hostel to hostel aboard rickety old trains. It was a great time, but spending a month with three other guys while sleeping in smelly hostels and gyms got old quickly. We were getting sick of each other and towards the end we were at each others necks more often than not.
Imagine if that were the case with 7 adventurers, travelling by foot and horse accross the plains of a dangerous world, where monsters and dragons wait in the dark, ready to pounce on unsuspecting folks. The stress of having to watch your back every night would surely get to the closest of companions over time, no? I think this may be happening in my game.
"No, you stupid, pointy ear wench. North is that way. You suck."
There are certain players that tend to stick together, there are others that for some reason or other smile a bit when another fails, it’s really bizarre. You’d think that by the upper reaches of the heroic tier, they would have built a true Fellowship, but alas, not in my game. Complaints about who has what and who does what, along with personality clashes tend to creep into the game. I still think we have a good group, and for the most part they tend to get along well, but the issues are there. Now, this post isn’t really to talk about my home game, but about what can be done about it, for my table and yours as well. If you’re a newbie DM out there with these problems, then keep reading and let’s try to figure out a solution together.
1. Talk to the players involved, outside the game. It may be the quickest way to get the problems fixed, although it causes you to extend table drama outside the context of the game. Me personally? I’d rather deal with stuff in-game, but some would consider this solution the quickest.
2. Make them have to learn to value each others abilities. You are the DM, you are the director in a fantasy flick with an unlimited budget! Use it. You can create set pieces and dramatic scenes that highlite every single one of your player’s abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Make the other players realize that they are all as important to the party as the next guy. The party is caught in a situation where only one of them can get them out of it. They won’t be smirking if he fails now.
3. Let them go at each other. This could go either way, but it just may make it obvious to the players that lack of unity won’t get them very far. If the player’s truly are at a boiling point with each other, and the dwarf really wants the elf’s head, let them go at it. See what happens. See how the outcome affects yours story, chances are the “winner” won’t have much to celebrate about later. Teach them a lesson.
4. Try to really understand what’s causing the issues. Maybe it’s you as a DM. Maybe you are creating situations that are causing the situation. I know in my case, I’ve gimped the party on magical items, and there are players walking around shining like beacons of magic while others are pulling out rusty swords to battle with. It’s caused issues that I’m trying to rectify now. Look at your style, your interactions with players, and your player “spotlight” time. Everyone wants to shine, so offer them all the chance.
5. Last but not least, use your DM authority as a last resort. You are the guy running the show, and if a guy is really making your table uncomfortable, then do something about it. If you have to tell him you want him out, do it. Don’t let the group’s enjoyment be affected by one guy being a jerk. It’s not necessary. By simply volunteering to run these games you’ve earned some respect. Cash it in if you have to.
This is the advise I could think of. I’m sure more experienced DM’s will post below and leave some very knowledgeable comments… 🙂
www. Newbie DM .com 
Neal Hebert
June 22, 2009
I think the biggest proof against this sort of thing is to limit your game to fewer people. I’m been DMing for quite a while now, and that’s the best advice I can throw your way.
Niche protection is very important in D&D – and limiting your game to one player per party role mechanically ensures everyone gets their moment to shine. The guy playing the striker is the dude that tears monsters up; the guy playing the defender holds the front line against impossible odds; the girl playing the cleric destroys undead with her faith and keeps the party standing; and the girl playing the controller dictates the way the fight is going to play out.
I know D&D assumes there’ll be five players and thus some redundancy (I think that’s a mistake, actually), but my group of four is having more fun with 4e than any of my groups have had in the past. Everyone is important! Everyone contributes equally to the group’s success (or failure)!
Most importantly, though, we don’t have to deal with the charop BS – my group’s striker is a warlock. Perhaps the warlock is the worst striker of the bunch – but it doesn’t really matter because, no matter what, he’s the best striker in our group.
In my experience, smaller groups make players happier – the less people there are competing for spotlight time, the more your players can feel like protagonists of their own personal fantasy story.
To be a hero, the character needs enough screen-time and personal attention to be a protagonist – and if you’ve got lots of people then there’s less attention and spotlight time to go around.
I had a lot of games crash and burn – PvPs, bad feelings, gradual lack of interest from the players – because I wouldn’t turn people away from the gaming table when I ran a game. But now that I’ve got a limited number of slots available in a campaign, I find that everyone has more fun and the campaigns go much, much better.
Your mileage, of course, may vary. But everything you described above sounds like the sort of thing that happened in my campaigns until I realized that it’s OK to turn people away if it’ll make everyone have more fun.
Hungry
June 22, 2009
Remember that the path to the gaming table is a two-way street. People can use that street to be invited to the game for betterment of the group, but the GM (or the rest of the group) can also use that street to push someone away from the table to return when they have their act together. If they never get their act together, then the seat at the table is opened up for someone better to sit in.
Manny D (Geth lives on)
June 22, 2009
Actually, I see the things happening in newbie’s game that Neal has mentioned. I don’t think it is all newbie’s fault that the group has its problems. First for most of us, these characters are our 1st characters in 4e. We all came to 4e with preconcieved notions of what d&d is, either through prior editions or video games. Most of us made characters without knowing what role we would be fitting. For example, I made a warlord and I was taking feats that better fit a fighter when I first made my character. Most of us at the table are learning as we are playing. Some of us are learning faster than others and this may lead to the problems newbie is seeing at the table. I don’t see problems occuring where we end up pvping. We are grown adults playing a game. We just need to bring our “A” game to the table and we’ll be fine. BTW, I can’t empathize with dms on this subject because newbie won’t let me dm. Ha!
Vinicius Zoio
June 22, 2009
You know, I think Neal said something really important – group size matters. The more players you have, the more magnified are table problems and usually, the advantages of small groups dissapear as the number goes up – these latter don’t get intensified with larger number of PCs.
Larger groups need more incentive to keep working together and cohesively. That’s not easy, but I think that anyone able to get 7, 8 players to really work together will solve most of the problems in his table.
There is one thing however (that Neal pointed out) you’ll hardly solve when playing with large groups – game time. More players actually mean less play, in 99% of the time. I realized this the same way Neal has – I never said “no” to a friend who wanted to enter my campaigns. End result: With 7, 8 players in my games the story was always crawling, every decision took many hours to be made (as it was discussed by 8 different people), combat took a lot longer of our game time and there was no way to maintain 8 characters engaged in the same task at the same time at all times. That made one aspect of the game that I prize a lot to be made less significant – roleplaying. Since game time was already so scarce between little story tibits, combat, decision making and the inevitable party split, people ignored chances to roleplay any aspect of the game at all. If a player spent too much time developing his character through elaborate description or dialogue, he started getting side glances and remarks about taking too much spotlight.
It was a sad thing and after my campaign ended prematurely, I decided I wouldn’t DM to such large groups again. So far, it has worked with my current 4, 5 player party. Most of the problems I had in previous campaigns disappeared. Lets hope it stays this way until the very end! ^^
Neal Hebert
June 22, 2009
@Manny D,
The thing about stuff like I described and you confirmed is that it’s never the DM or players’ faults – when a group of adults only have a few hours to play every few weeks, everyone wants to get the most out of the session. And for most players, the way to get the most out of the session is to give their character lots of spotlight time.
This works mostly fine in my group of 4 right now – though with one player leaving the state after the next two sessions, everyone’s had to understand that their characters’ storyarcs are being put on temporary hold so we can give our friend the proper D&D send-off. But we’re all adults, and we want to give our friend something memorable to remember the game by. But in a group of 7 there will always be a few people who get left out.
We have a different problem in my group – we’re not playing enough. So far we’re meeting approximately once every 3 weeks – a situation that’s finally changing, we hope – and some of the strategies we’ve used to get us by during the interim might help you guys out.
I see that Newbie has a personal blog – but do you guys have a campaign blog? A place where the players who want to do more RP and get more spotlight time could maybe post their session summaries? A place where the group could come up with all sorts of cool stuff for Newbie to throw at you?
If you click on my name you’ll go to my campaign’s blog – which we’re using to build a homebrew world. And since blogspot is free and there are seven players in you guys’ group, I’d think in a few weeks you could amass a fun group of posts that’ll help people develop their characters between sessions. One of my players is very new to RPing – actually, he’s very old to RPing since he hasn’t played since 1e, but at this point he’s reinventing the wheel – and he has trouble RPing his character in the games the way he sees his character in his head.
So he now writes a lot of session summaries from his character’s point of view, editing it slightly so that the “official” chronicle of what happened reflects the character in his head.
I’m just saying, if there are social reasons why you guys can’t cut a few players loose then there are other options. They’re suboptimal solutions, but we live in a suboptimal world.
Lou
June 23, 2009
@Neal
Nice idea about the campaing blog. I’m also in Newbie’s campaign and aggree with Manny D.