Surviving Large Groups

I’m sure most of you have seen it: a gaming group that gets too large, a behemoth of a party that makes combat feel like you’re playing Starcraft.  It happens, but there are ways to keep the adventure from teetering over the edge.  My weekend gaming group has 7 players, my “family game” has 10.  It’s unwieldy, but I don’t have the heart to refuse someone on those grounds alone.  So, my players and I have worked out some ways to ease the pain.

 

Methods and Devices

Having a large group brings any rough spots in a gaming system to the spotlight.  There are a few tricks I’ve developed or scavenged from other DMs that can alleviate some of the frustration.

1. Initiative Cards – I cannot recommend these enough.  Whether you use index cards or elaborately decorated printouts, being able to flip through the initiative roster turn by turn makes it a lot easier to keep things straight.  With a large enough group, any initiative list becomes a frustrating episode of “whose turn was it again?”
2. Status Effect Indicators – There are many ways to do this.  I started off by making cards that I would hand out, with “dazed” or “bloodied” and so on written on them.  However, the cards quickly went missing or were stuffed under character sheets.  I’ve heard of people making origami-esque indicators to keep that from happening, but with the size of my group the table has enough clutter as is.
   My solution was to use magnetic tokens that attach to the bottom of our minis to indicate status.  I’ve color-coded them to keep things straight, but they do get a little pricey.  The advantage to this is that I can now make my own tokens for monsters instead of buying from WOTC or other miniatures retailers, so in the end it balances out quite nicely.
3. Many Many Dice – If every player has their own set of dice, things become much less hectic.  This is true of any sized group, as players tend to get attached to their dice, but it becomes a logistical nightmare trying to find out who had the d4 last, when there’s only 1d4 on the table!
4. A gamemat – After playing AD&D and 3E for years, this is almost heresy for me to suggest.  It’s nearly a requirement for 4E as is, but in a large group you absolutely must have a gamemat.  My recommendation is the Chessex Battlemat.  It is durable, portable, and feels wonderful against bare skin (just kidding).  I was lucky enough to find one at the Friendly Local Geek Shop for a decent price, but they can be ordered online at the link above. 
   For thrifty gamers, my previous solution was a posterboard with one-inch squares drawn by hand (we have a very patient group member who graciously took the task upon himself).  Laminated, this becomes pretty handy, but there are a few problems: marker echo and curling being the two big ones.
5. A Laptop – Again, this is almost heresy.  For the longest time, I was a member of the “no electronics at the table” camp.  However, if it weren’t for my laptop I’d be a wreck by now.  I don’t use anything truly outrageous like Campaign Cartographer or Maptools (although I’m looking at this one for a future project involving a projector), but there are a few handy applications that make my life easier.
   1. OneNote – This Office 2003/2007 application is my favorite thing since sliced pepper jack.  It is a digital notebook that allows nearly infinite nesting of section markers and sub-notebooks.  It automatically saves whatever you type, it supports every type of media I can think of (images, video, audio recordings, input from Excel (although it butchers it)), and it adds a nice screencap feature that allows you to screenshot one specific section of the screen very easily.  That last one combined with the D&D Compendium saves me so much aggravation.
   2. D&D Compendium – This requires a DDI subscription, which I go back and forth between glee and rage over, but it is incredibly useful.  When it works properly (there are a few database errors and missing entries) it saves much time when you just need to know the exact wording of a power or ritual, or the abilities a monster has.  It is also a good way to get access to monsters you might be missing if you skip a book or three.
   3. Excel – The encounter builder from WOTC leaves much to be desired, so I wrote up a simple Excel spreadsheet to help balance encounters.  If I can find a non-evil file hosting location I’ll link to it, but really it’s just a fancy calculator.

Well this article is getting a bit long-winded, looks like we have a two-parter on our hands.  Come back next week for some tips on how to deal with a large group from the player perspective.  I’ll give you a hint: lots of Mt. Dew (it’s in the fridge, no you cannot cast magic missile at the darkness).

Got any suggestions for making large (or even small) groups more efficient?  Post them in the comments.

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