Large party tips and tricks

[hoganbball23]

Hi all. So my fantasy campaign is looking like it is going to have a very healthy number of PC's (potentially 11 or 12 people). Is gurps possible/fun at that number? How do you mitigate the 20 minute round of combat? Has anyone tried that many people before in a fantasy setting? Thanks.

[TorgSmith]

I have not. I have read about people saying it is hard to keep all the people engaged so side conversations lead to distractions. You would want all the players to be on the same page about avoiding side conversations and staying focused.

You probably want to set a time limit on how long somebodies turn can take. Make sure each player has a default action they perform if no other comes to mind on their round.

Keep your NPCs simple to run so you don't need to spend a lot of time deciding what they are going to do.

[brianfb]

Even in a small group I use a 40 second shot clock in combat. If you haven't declared your action in that time its a do nothing, very generous given 1 second rounds lol.

[DAT]

Originally Posted by brianfb

Even in a small group I use a 40 second shot clock in combat. If you haven't declared your action in that time its a do nothing, very generous given 1 second rounds lol.

40 seconds is way too generous for 11 or 12 people.

I would say 3 seconds for experienced GURPS players, 5 seconds for new to GURPS but experienced TTRPGers, and 10 seconds for TTRPG newbies, to declare their action, and another 5 to 10 seconds for resolution of the action.

I would consider dropping normal initiative and just go clockwise around the table. Let the party leader's Basic Speed be the parties's order vs apponents.

I would also have pages of prerolled 3d6 numbers to speed up your time with rolls. Just cross them off as you use them.

Is this a DF or other type fantasy?

[Joe]

A few thoughts:

1) This is a good problem to have! Much better to have too many available players than too few!

2) 11-12 players at a time would be too much for me to manage as a GM, and I wouldn't even attempt it. (But maybe that's just me!)

3) If I was absolutely confident that all 11-12 people were going to be regular players, I'd strongly consider running two groups of 5-6 (which is really a perfect number!). I'd run them in the same world, so that the actions of one group would have effects that the other group would notice, have to deal with, etc. Then I'd bring them all together very occasionally for one-off "Team-up!" sessions.

4) If I felt that some of the 11-12 were likely to be very reliable regulars, whereas others were more likely to be occasional drop-ins, then I'd try to run a pick-up game.

Classic example: a Dungeon Fantasy game, where each session is its own independent delve, possibly into a Megadungeon, Peter dell'Orto style. (Or here's another good reference for you, though somewhat outside the GURPS fold: the excellent Justin Alexander has an very fine post about running an "open gaming table" for drop-in megadungeon play, if you're interested.)

Those are my thoughts, anyway. Naturally your mileage may vary!

[(E)]

A while ago now but I ran one many player game with a second GM doing the NPCs. It helped, but I only did it the one time so I don't know if it was a fluke or not.

[whswhs]

I would never run that large a group. My maximum size is seven players, or six players plus one guest in a supporting role. So I'm afraid I can't offer any particularly useful advice.

I actually have twelve players right now. But they're split into two campaigns with six players each, meeting alternately.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Joe

4) If I felt that some of the 11-12 were likely to be very reliable regulars, whereas others were more likely to be occasional drop-ins, then I'd try to run a pick-up game.

Classic example: a Dungeon Fantasy game, where each session is its own independent delve, possibly into a Megadungeon, Peter dell'Orto style. (Or here's another good reference for you, though somewhat outside the GURPS fold: the excellent Justin Alexander has an very fine post about running an "open gaming table" for drop-in megadungeon play, if you're interested.)

Those are my thoughts, anyway. Naturally your mileage may vary!

As an addendum to the above I'd suggest that each session runs for a fixed amount of XP, so that players know how much they have to spend after each session. This shouldn't include XP for things they aren't guaranteed to do, like finding a secret area or something but.

[corwyn]

My suggestion would be either follow Mr. Stoddard's method (always good advice) or convince one of your dozen players to run a parallel table in the same setting and let the two groups play off each other.

Or just make a clean split into two different games.

[T.K.]

- Combat Cards

Make ALL OF THEM make combat cards with their "go-to" actions.

They have 20seconds to deliver their combat card or perform a modified action that's not covered by their existing combat cards.

This will lead to a game with "signature moves" since they'll tend to keep to their cards but allows quick modified actions to be done, specially considering they have a bazillion of off-time during others turns.

- Heavily emphasize group play and tactics

Even if you speed up turns and combat, with that many people a FAST round will take 10-15min till someone gets his turn again...so people are bound to loose track or derail into sideways conversation even if it's campaign related stuff.

That gets diminished a lot if everyones positioning and actions have correlation to each other, so that tends to make people pay attention on what everyone else is doing, moving and attacking/casting whatever...

- Make Spotlight situations for everyone

It's inevitable that some players will expect more combat scenes and some will expect more RP scenes.

Make sure that everyone gets their spotlight time so that even if they get a little absent during other times, like combat with the many turns and time it takes, it gets compensated with good intrigue/politics/RP scenes where they can shine and enjoy,.

This will lead to times with half the group more away than the other, but normally tend to be acceptable with the mentality of "My character is the Face of the group...I'm the shield..." and so on