fifty players and a 1:20 DM to PC ratio?

[tetramorph]

I read this from M&M:

"from four to fifty players . . . the ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabout" for DM to PCs.

Wow.

How would that even be possible?

Has anyone ever experienced a session anything comparable to this? Say, something where there were more than 20 PCs?

How did it go?

[cleverkobold]

It shocked me too, but then I read this and it gave me a better idea of how it was done.

[cooper]

Different groups in a shared world run by a single computer (DM). The first mmorpg. This is why the game calendar is stressed so heavily in gygax's DMG.

What done now is what is also done now in online gaming. Instead of an open sandbox. Everyone at a convention of gaming club runs the same "instance" or dungeon. Shared world but in alternate dimensions. This is how everyone can run B2 keep on the borderlands without stumbling upon it and finding it owned by a group of players who got there months before you (which could have happened in Gary/arnesons games).

[Deleted]

From my upcoming book:

"FOUR TO FIFTY

The original D&D books said you could have “four to fifty players” but recommended “twenty or thereabouts.” This has caused tremendous amounts of confusion as well as the imagined situation of Gary somehow packing 20 people into his 6 x 8 foot spare bedroom that he used for his “office.”

Once again, if you were a wargamer who had played in even a single campaign, you would realize that not all players would be present at once. For instance, in a Napoleonic era campaign, the French players may want to talk to the referee, and certainly would not want the British or other enemy players around.

Under that assumption, it’s not hard to figure out that the 20 to 50 players would be several groups. In fact, this is how both Dave and Gary played from the get-go; they both had more players than could be accommodated in a single session, so they ran a number of different sessions, with various players at various times.

I played more with Gary, so I will focus mainly on that. Gary had somewhere around fifteen players. Now, this is Lake Geneva, WI, in 1972; a pathetic little small town of 5000. If Gary can find that many players under those circumstances, people in this day and age who complain that they cannot find players even though they live in a town of 50,000 have no sympathy from me.

Anyway, Gary would give you a call and invite you to a game a few days hence. He typically had three to five players per session, and every session ended at a “rest area;” in town, at an inn, something. That way if somebody could not make a session, the rest of us could play anyway.

There was also no “PARTY OF HEROES TRIED AND TRUE.” I don’t think I ever played with the same exact group of people in the two years or so I played in Greyhawk, and neither did anybody else. Party composition was “whoever was there.” There was also no guarantee that everyone was the same level.

Let me rephrase that. In the entire time I played in Greyhawk, and then in Blackmoor, never once did I play in a session with the same players twice, and never once did I play in a session where all the player characters were the same level. Two to three levels of difference were common; we usually tried to avoid disparities greater than that. That was one reason that people had multiple PCs. Also, if a player had one or more henchmen, henchmen were often played in lower-level groups. Let me rephrase that; EVERYBODY had henchmen, not “if.” For one thing, the highest, most prized form of play was SOLO; just you and Gary. Best of all was if you had a PC high enough level that you didn’t need henchmen, but we ALL had henchmen in case we needed them, either for solo or group play.

Of course, new PCs always started at first level. If nobody else had a character or henchman lower than fourth or fifth level, we sometimes took advantage of the “one GP = one XP” rule. Essentially, wander around the first level for a bit with the new player in the front rank. Find something on the first level… goblins, bandits, whatever… and fight them. Let the first level PC fight in the front rank, at least until they hit something or were wounded, at which point somebody behind them would swap places. Finish the battle, collect the treasure, and when there was at least 2500 GP, go back to town… and give it all to the first level PC, who would get full experience for it, and level up.

You might ask “Why not just start the PC at second level?” The answer is that what I describe above is players interacting with the world, rather than the referee deciding that something was so. There was no obligation to do this, it was something the players did spontaneously.

I also don’t remember who first thought of it, but it seemed bloody obvious to us."

[jakdethe]

When I first got into OD&D (only a few years ago, I started with Runequest), I had read a lot of material relating the same experience as gronan is recalling. Being a youngster I drew the mmo correlation cooper pointed out, and ran my game taking hints from games I'd played. I have to say it ended up playing exactly as gronan described, and it was in fact the best, most exciting, and most fun I've ever had refereeing a campaign.

[Finarvyn]

We had nowhere near 50 players, but I'd say I had at least two dozen players who drifted in and out of my campaign at one point. Sometimes the group shifted its demographic based on whether a miniatures battle was planned (the kingdom at war) versus a dungeon crawl. I had a few core players who were there pretty much all of the time and a bunch of others who were in and out from game to game.

[tetramorph]

Thanks to all for all your helpful replies. I think I "get it" a lot better now.

It is really exciting to me, this idea that a referee could have multiple and even varying parties roaming about within the same campaign world.

cleverkobold: thanks for that awesome link: what a great document. I am going to have to spend some time with it.

Gronan: your experience is so helpful and enlightening. And, well, just really exciting. I would love to get involved in a campaign run more along such lines: or try to run one myself (gulp).

[Deleted]

Glad to help.

Now buy my book when I announce the Kickstarter.

[mgtremaine]

I'll admit to playing in games with more then 10 people and 20+ PC. It was madness ;p but wonderful madness.

[Deleted]

Feb 14, 2014 16:11:49 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

I read this from M&M:

"from four to fifty players . . . the ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabout" for DM to PCs.

Wow.

How would that even be possible?

Has anyone ever experienced a session anything comparable to this? Say, something where there were more than 20 PCs?

How did it go?

When I played in college we had a core group of about 8 or 10 to 12 players that played in every game session. We had another 15 to 20 or so people that drifted in and out and played in some of the games. The first two years we probably had two or three games that we had 15 or more in one game, but during the second two years we had 15 to 20 or more in one game more often than not and we had a several games with 25 to 30 in one game and all with one Ref. When my friend that brought us the game reffed there were about seven of us that benefited greatly from being his closest friends and that bias was always present, but when I reffed I kept everyone involved and the benefits flowed to all, so the more I reffed the more players we had. I don't remember it being particularly difficult with the large groups, but a lot of that was my friend was a very, very good caller - sound or print he had a photographic memory and he was very even handed as a caller. He was also a great multi-tasker and was great at taking the input and then giving me the ref a quite summary of their actions/choices/decisions. Our games usually started about 5pm on Friday after our return from the cafeteria and then around 10pm we would order pizza and we played to around 3am. Then we usually resumed play about 1PM on Saturday and ran until about 3am. Since we were all adults and played about 20-24 hours a week, even with the biggest parties the combat went fast and decisions were usually made quickly.

We usually had about 40% humans, 30% elves, 20% dwarves and 10% hobbits and occasionally someone would play some other race. We usually had fighters, magic-users, clerics and thieves. Much rarer, but present from time to time, were paladins, rangers, bards, monks, druids, illusionists and etc. We had very little rules lawyering during games, but quite a bit between games. My friend that brought us the game was pretty stingy with magic when he was teaching us, so while everyone eventually wound up with a couple of items, you saw something with a bonus bigger than a +1 once in a blue moon.

[tetramorph]

Thanks for more, folks.

And Gronan: yes of course! That was already in the plans . . .

[jdjarvis]

I've had campaign where we had upwards to 14 players turning up, usually about 10 in those days. I prefer a campaign with 6+ players as opposed to one with 4 or 5 because with a larger number of players a campaign doesn't come to s screeching halt if one or two players have to drop out for a while. The more players at the table the less special snowflake O need attention shenanigans from player sin my experience. You do have to let players have some freedom to wander and learn to deal with the parry splitting up I once had characters spread all over the multiverse and in 3 time zones and it worked great just have to keep records as to location in time and space for characters and keep adventures with a plot to quickie affairs or grand sweeping things prone to surviving a herd of kleptomaniac cat's with vorpal swords.

[Falconer]

Yeah, I always get 9-11 people together for a campaign, and a given session will ideally have about 7 of us.

[scottyg]

Feb 14, 2014 21:09:43 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

From my upcoming book:

"FOUR TO FIFTY

The original D&D books said you could have “four to fifty players” but recommended “twenty or thereabouts.” This has caused tremendous amounts of confusion as well as the imagined situation of Gary somehow packing 20 people into his 6 x 8 foot spare bedroom that he used for his “office."..."

Mike, how concerned was Gary with the flow of time? Under the conditions it seems like there would be some time disparities between the players that showed up more often, and those that couldn't make it as often. Was that ever a concern?

Thanks,

Scott

[Deleted]

ABSOLUTELY! See the famous statement “YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.” Certain characters just couldn't adventure together because they were too time-separated.

On the other hand, we all had multiple characters.

[Merias]

I wonder if anyone has tried this type of campaign in play-by-post or play-by-email format? The Rythlondar document cleverkobold posted is amazing - I found the original blog post with the back-story here:

www.risusmonkey.com/2011/06/ryth-chronicle-1975-1977.html

[Deleted]

My saturday DM talks about running this sort of campaign on G+ here: initiativeone.blogspot.com/

He's got 10 characters that are currently alive, some in the Keep (of B2) and the others in a small town nearby. Those of us that play regularly are around 3rd level. I was 3rd but got killed by Raggi now I'm back at first level. Time keeping has never been an issue as we (usually) play once a week and a game week passes between session, so it's easy to justify any combination of PCs at either "base" as they are only a few days walk from each other.

One thing I like that I didn't expect was that because the characters move in and out of the games, you get a different party composition each time and rarely is it balanced. For awhile I was the only thief in a party that was heavy on fighters, now I'm an elf in a party that's heavy on thieves. This adds a nice variety.

G+ really suits this type of game as it's so easy just to drop in for a session or two even when you can't commit to be there every week.