The More the Merrier...

The closest I've come is running a B/X game with about 6 players, each controlling two characters in the Caves of Chaos, and that was sufficient bedlam for me. I can't imagine running a game with 10 players, much less 20.

Thanks for the input, guys. Remember though, we're flashing back to the era of the caller.

Imagine breaking 20 players into four five-man squads, each led by the most seasoned role-players. Suddenly makes things seem more manageable, doesn't it?

The "squad leaders" would also be responsible for helping their charges roll new characters after the inevitable early losses.

I mean, you need some fresh faces (as opposed to a house full of gamer egos) to make it work. But it sounds like a blast to me.

Here’s my take. Though you do hear stories of parties of dozens, requiring two DMs and definitely a “killer DM” mentality, I don’t think that’s what Gary had in mind. An average party would still be 1-8 players, even in those days. There wouldn’t be 20-50 players per party, there would be 20-50 players in the campaign. You could have a “Wednesday group” and a “Friday group”, for example maybe with some overlap or intermix, containing both stalwarts and casual players who joined in from time to time.

That is where you have a truly “sandbox”, living campaign. When a group visits the dungeon, or about the city, they see what other groups have done. Maybe they find a magic mouth or receive letters from other players. Maybe they visit a shop (or castle!) run by another player, and you have to get that player on the phone to do a transaction with him (if you can’t get a hold of him, well, he’s off on a business trip or something).

Read the DMG’s section on “Time in the Campaign” with this in mind. It’s pretty inspirational.

What my copy of Men & Magic says is this:



I want to emphasize that the lower end of the range was FOUR. Thinking that every DM would have had 50 players is just silly -- it was set as a theoretical upper limit.

Tavis, your campaign sounds like a blast, pretty much exactly the kind of game I was envisioning. Thanks for posting that.

As to BITD games, I recently noticed this nugget while reading a Bob Bledsaw reminiscence of his pre-Wilderlands campaign:

"I had a gigantic dining room table which was filled with gamers and around thirty or more spectators from the local college and high schools. My original group began to beg me to run a session every night and even tried chasing me down the road in automobiles when on family outings. Some all night sessions did not end until dawn..."

Sure, more spectators than players, but seems like Bob had some impressive turnouts nonetheless.

My Moria campaign is just getting underway on these boards with a modestly impressive expeditionary force of thirty one Men, Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits.

Of these, thirteen are 3rd and 4th level PCs and 18 are their hirelings -- near enough to half of which are 1st level fighters.

And they also have a glorious train of mules, ponies and horses, and one hound -- all in play at once! And that's not counting the bad guys ;D

Just a random musing, as I never gamed in groups of more than 6 or so myself. In The First Fantasy Campaign there is an illustration of a "...single overview shot where the Tomb of the Grey Dragon is located inGlendower. This set up was used down at the local hobby shop several times for semi outdoor town adventures." (TFFC 2nd ed. pg 63) Now this set up by Arneson obviously implies that his Glendower group adventured on a wargame set up, so a group of 50 characters and NPC henchmen etc. isn't too far out of line. I think the comments about 50 players gaming in different groups makes a lot of sense considering the large stable of gamers cited as playtestrs in all of TSR's stuff from the 70's and early 80's. Has anybody here done an outdoor campaign complete with wargame terrain? I know I pulled lots of trees and hills for some skirmishes we gamed.

I've DM'd with groups of 10+ the key to success is keep records. keep track of time and place, don't' over plan as DM. Learn to do cliff hangers.

A campaign with 20+ players and multiple related sessions is a dream for me.

With the easy access of paper figs and terrain, a large campaign like this seems fairly accessible with all of the trimings!

BITD in my experience all of the players were college students in the range of 18-23 years old. We played usually played twice per week with breaks around midterms and finals. Friday night games usually ran from about 500pm to 300am to 400am and Saturday games usually ran from about 200pm to about 300am to 400am. So about 20-22 hours per week. A few times we had games that ran up to 30 or so hours straight through.

I went from being a player the first 10 weeks we played to sharing the refereeing with the guy who taught us. He liked to play and he liked my refereeing and eventually I did about 80% of the refereeing by the end of the second year. One of the biggest differences (and he admitted it) was that he had a tendency to mainly referee for the people who he was closest too and other players could feel a bit left out now and then, where I had a talent for not letting that happen regardless of how big the group got. BITD I always felt that ten to twelve was the perfect group size (of active players) and as noted below now that is a bit of a stretch for me.

We started out with about six to eight players and within a couple of months that had grown to ten to twelve players every game session. The room we played in was not very large but by the time we reached ten to twelve players we generally had 30-36 people total in the room and those not playing were spectators and that was a tightly packed room. Over a four year period we had 13 to 20 players at the same time about six times a year. and we had one truly epic game in which everyone played with no pure spectators and that was the full 30-36 players.

We never used a caller and I don't remember having any real difficulty running the game regardless of the number of players. We did have a 50-50 split of men and women and I do recall that having women in the game completely changes the game dynamics from an all guy game which I never played in until later on. I do remember that we had an unusually well-mannered group so we seldom had anyone talking while someone else was, it was very orderly.

I contrast all of that to my current campaign where we play once per month for about five to six hours because that is all I can fit in. So far at 26 straight months and counting I have had one game with one player and one game with eleven players and an average of about five to seven per game. The age range is from seven to fifty-five years old and it is all guys except for three girls that occasionally play ranging from nine to eleven years old. I have a few players in the game that had previously played one or more of BECMI, 1st & 2nd ED AD&D, 3E&3.5E, MMO and MMORPG games. I have no one else that ever previously played OD&D.

I have noted that playing with kids is much more difficult than with all adults and playing with a couple of people who are very indecisive is more difficult. With kids having a lot of OOC and off topic talk from time to time is part of playing with kids. Sometimes they go off on tangents, from time to time some of the adults go with them. On the other hand playing with kids and seeing their growth as players is awesome.

One PC has, as the result of a rescue and his high Charisma, four followers that are 4th level Sergeants who each lead ten men. Currently the party is separated from these followers, but we have played a couple of games with these 44 followers as part of the party. There are some other followers also.

I limit my game fairly strictly to the original 3 LBBs with a minor amount of material from other places through a few house rules. I roll up all the stats and give them to the players. I let them pick what they are going to play. No thieves in this game and we might have a paladin someday.

I would love to be able to play twice per month and the thought of twice per week would be fantastic. But right now once per month is it. I have noted that at 55 years old I am not as mentally agile as I was at in my college years and the game with eleven players stretched me, partly because of the kids. I am certain that the perfect storm is going to happen sooner or later and I will have 15-16 players for a single game and that will really stretch me. It makes me wonder how I did it BITD with the larger groups, I guess it is 30 years of trying to earn a living and not playing for a good chunk of that and my mind has kind of ossified in a few areas.

On the other hand, I am having a blast creating a huge multi-dimensional campaign world, multiple mega-dungeons, creating it all on the fly each game and having it enjoyed by such a disparate group. I hope that if at anytime they don't enjoy something they will let me know.

One of my players frequents this board and so I have to be careful in some of the forums not to post and give things away, when I would really like to post. This player is one of the experienced guys I game with.

I apologize if this has rambled a bit, but I have played fairly consistently with larger groups and did so BITD. Where the younger me used to think ten to twelve was perfect, the older me now prefers six to eight; however, I will not turn players away if I don't have to and will referee as many as show up.