Dealing With Large Parties

Part 2: Handling All Those Players

In Part 1 of this article, I looked at developing encounters for large groups. This, however, is only half the challenge of running a game with a large group of players. The other main task is dealing with the players themselves.

Even in a normal-sized group, or a small group, players want attention. They want to be "on stage," in the action. They don't want to sit around while other people do things, or -- worst of all -- nothing happens. This becomes harder with a large group, obviously, because you've got more people demanding your attention. Even the most patient of players can get tired of waiting while you resolve the actions of six or seven other players.

Speed Things Along in Combat
First and foremost, keep things moving. In a combat situation, encourage your players to decide what they going to do before it's actually their turn. The really good ones will actually make their rolls ahead of time, so as soon as you say, "Okay, Bruce, it's your turn," Bruce says to you, "I move into a flanking position around the other side of the hell hound and attack. Does a 16 hit? If it does, I inflict 7 points of damage."

Don't let the game get bogged down with a rules discussion that affects only one of the large group of people. If a player has a rules question, have him or her look it up -- don't stop the game to look it up yourself. Better yet, encourage players to have the appropriate page open when the initiative order comes around to them.

Be aware that this method ends up "rewarding" those who aren't helping you by being efficient. The players who are on the ball, ready to go on their turn, their dice already cast, end up getting the least amount of attention, while the players who hem and haw about what to do and sit and shake their dice for 30 seconds while everyone watches get the most. To counteract this, reward the efficient players in other ways. Give them small experience point bonuses for helping you (and tell them why they got them). Praise them for being efficient and on the ball, preferably in front of the whole group. Or just offer to pay for their share of the pizza one night.

Even while you're speeding things along, don't forget all the good aspects of DMing. Remember to still provide evocative descriptions of people, places, and events. Don't let your need to get from person to person in a combat situation force you into skimping on interesting imagery of the maneuvers, strikes, misses, spells, and monsters involved in the combat.

Speeding Things Along out of Combat
A good DM can keep a combat situation moving at a good pace. One other nice thing about combat is that it makes sure that everyone gets a turn, and no one gets more turns than anyone else. What's actually harder is managing time when the group isn't in combat. It's easy to get involved with a single person's actions (searching through a chest or gathering information in a marketplace) and ignore the other players. Without an initiative sequence, you can inadvertently give one or two players multiple "turns" to do something without giving your attention to the other players at all.

Sometimes, that just can't be helped. What you can do to make sure that no one's sitting around for too long getting bored is to always have a clock in a place handy for you to see it while you're running the game. Glance at it when someone starts an action. Make sure that no more than a couple of minutes go by before you engage at least one other player with something of interest.

One thing that can help you do this is to handle actions concurrently. Say the rogue goes to a chest to open it. He searches for traps, and finds one. He disarms it. Now he says he wants to pick the lock. Tell him to wait, and ask the other players what they are doing. If another character is searching through an interesting tapestry on the wall, deal with that. Now go back to the rogue. He tries to open the lock, and fails. He says he wants to take 20. Now turn to the other players and ask if they're doing anything during those two minutes. If someone announces she'll stand by the door and watch for trouble, have her make a spot check. Now go back to the rogue. Tell him he manages to open the chest, then tell him what he finds.

There are also times when you can see ahead of time that one player is about to engage in an action which will monopolize a lot of playing time -- 10 minutes or more.

Say, for example, that one player has a character with a mystery in her background. She wants to go to a temple to ask around about some aspect of the mystery. This is cool character development, but it unfortunately doesn't concern the other players in the group at all. The trip to the temple might only take 10 minutes, but that's 10 minutes that everyone else just has to sit there.

Instead, offer to meet with that player and play out the exchange for 10 minutes right after the game, or right before the next game. Or, you can handle the whole thing via an email exchange.

Email, in fact, is a great way to handle any aspect of the game that doesn't concern the whole group or doesn't require the whole group to actually be face to face. Email has become my preferred way of handling the "selling and/or dividing the loot" portion of each adventure, for example. Not everyone has access to email, I suppose, but if you're reading this, you almost certainly do, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Splitting the Party
Similar to one character going off on her own, sometimes large groups like to split up either when in town or on an adventure. When in doubt, discourage the splitting of the party. It's too easy to get drawn into what one group is doing and ignore the other.

If you do allow the party to split, use the technique described above of handling concurrent actions. Continually go back and forth between the groups to find out what everyone's doing. This can actually enhance play sometimes, if you leave each group on a mini-"cliffhanger" to go to the other group. Novelists sometimes make use of this technique in books, where they alternate point of view between two different characters from chapter to chapter, ending each in a pivotal situation so you want to keep reading more. Use this technique, but switch back and forth much faster than a novelist would. A better analogy for a roleplaying game might be a television show with a large cast and multiple plotlines. Give each group only a small scene or part of a scene before switching to the other group.

If one (or both) of the offshoots of the party gets into a combat situation, force everyone to roll initiative and handle all actions round by round like everyone's in a combat. This allows you to play off the natural "everyone gets a turn" structure and make sure that no one gets left out.

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
Lastly, the best thing you can do for your large group is prepare really well. Get yourself ready enough so that you don't have to look things up in the middle of the game, or, at the very least, use sticky notes or bookmarks to mark pages you know ahead of time you're going to have to reference. If you know that the PCs are going into a desert, mark the starvation and thirst section of the DMG as well as the heat dangers section. Maybe even the create water spell in the Player's Handbook. If you know that they're going to encounter a lamia out there, mark that page in the MM too. If you know you're going to need to show the players a sketch of the layout of a lost desert temple, draw it out ahead of time.

If you can keep things moving in a large group without anyone getting bored, all the while presenting them with interesting and appropriate challenges, your players will thank you for it, and brag about you to other gamers they meet.

At least, they'd better.