[Brother of the Nights Watch]

Allright, I have a little bit of a new problem here. I have always
had the problem of just trying to get four players together in one
place at one time on a regular basis. Now I have the exact opposite
problem, too many players.

I got a group of friends together and taught them how to play DnD
last year. There were six of them at that time. Now I can handle six
players, even with them all being newbies. I got them all through a
campaign I was running for them and then some quick one time
adventures. And all but one of them fell in love with the game. to
the point that three of them have been studying the books and have
been trying there own hand at DMing, and they are pretty good for
only playing for a year now. So that is five players I have on a regular
basis. Then I have another group of friends that have been playing
from birth. So with them I have eight players that all want in on my
next campaign that I am starting next month. i can handle eight players
but my campaign can not. It would ruin the flow and just slow the game
down way to much to be any fun.

So is there any one out there that has a high enough Intelligence or
Wisdom score that can figure something out? Cause I hate leaving
people out when they are haveing such a great time. Ant ideas are
welcome cause I am out of ideas. I guess i can take it as a compliment
that i have that many people want to be one of my campaigns i just cant
figure out how to decide who can play and who i have to leave out.
Thanks for any help.

[Rintaran]

Well, the easy solution would be to run two seperate games. Set one group of four for one day, and the other group of four for another day. They can even play every other week, which would give everyone a chance to relax between their adventures.

Now, these two parties of four don't have to be static either. Since they're playing in the same campaign world, it's possible they could be staying at the same inn and you could swap characters based on who might be interested (or available) in a certain part of the campaign. Different things will attract the attention of different people.

Alternately, if they have the same end goal, they could be competing against one another. Have the two parties start at different locations and work toward the central climax. When you are ready for that major climax, both parties should be about to burst upon it at the same time. This is an excellent excuse for a mega-session involving both parties. Will they get along? Or will they fight each other until they can figure out who will get the glory, or until it's too late and the villain has escaped! *gasp*

Honestly, there's a lot of different things you can do. It's all a question of how committed and determined you are. If you don't think you can run two simultaneous campaigns, then I would suggest a lottary system be devised, and that you select up to the number of players that you're comfortable with. Since some of the other players are looking into DMing, they can always run a game and bring in the people who were unfortunately left out (and however many they think they're comfortable with).

[ladyofdragons]

If you're interested in having everyone there together at once and playing, I might suggest choosing a co-GM or Assistant GM. there is an article about it here.

Basically, you choose someone you can trust as a partner who can also roleplay like they have no idea what's going to happen. The assistant GM can take care of party splits and look up rules so you're free to keep the game running.

[super sorcerer]

I would be glad to trade my problems with yours.
If you want all players all the time you can try afew tricks to quicken combat session:
Roll tons of d20 ahead and wrute the resolts. that way you could determine spot and listen check (and even initiative if you want) by using the already rolled results (if it is still too slow you may start appling them to attack rolls too). Ask your players to think of thier combat action quickly as a round is only 6 seconds long in game time. I have a friend who DMed a game with around 9 beginer players and he never said anything about slowing down the game.
If you want to quicken a role-play session you can always end it with diplomacy checks and this kind of things.
If you are playings with a party on levels higher than 5 than it is also wise to have preapared rolls of d6 so if the party is level 9 roll ahead 9d6 enough times so you can use it every fireball/lightningbolt/flamestrike becouse multiple damage dice is a thing that usualy take a lot of time. For every major opponent who use weapons you should roll a few weapon damage rolls ahead.
So I suggest to quicken the game by longer preparation.

[Rintaran]

From the sounds of it super sorceror, BotNW's players are more of the method actor or storyteller types than the buttkicker types. I don't think it's the combats that he's worried about. It appears as though he has a plot worked out that he'd like the players to run and fears the loss of control that generally comes with large parties of method actors and storytellers, which is to say, with only four of those, you could lose several hours to just talking at the tavern, without actually getting to the adventure...

Your suggestion is good for the combats when they would occur. However, I've always found it easier and to just roll the die than flip through a table to see where I am. Additionally, for massive rolls, finding a half-decent die-roller, if you have access to a laptop or a palm pilot, can take care of those much faster. In non-"buttkicker" style games, the release of massive damage spells doesn't come so often that having it rolled ahead would be of much use.

As far as prep is concerned though, I like to have the NPCs (whether baddies or not) collected into a single notebook for my sessions. You put in tabs and label them by NPC name. Now, these NPCs are laid out by whatever information you feel you're going to need (attack/defence info, feats, skills, and a few brief notes on attitudes usually suffices). This way, whenever the characters encounter one of these NPCs or Monsters, you've all the relevant information at your finger tips. It takes a lot less time having that info right there (including the knowledge that your villain has greater cleave, or that goblins automatically have mounted combat and a +6 to ride), than having to dig through a random pile of papers or flip pages in books (which has the added problem of some information being on the back-side of the page, as is the case with the goblin in the 3.0 version of the MM).

[Dthclaw]

Well, before I can offer you any advice (as a DM with an 8 person group), I have to ask: what precisely is your central problem with running an 8 person group? Is it balance? Story issues? Organization? All those can be conquered with a little finangling, but a better idea of what the main concern is would help tremendously.

[Brother of the Nights Watch]

WOW Rintaran...I love the idea of running two different adventures and haveing them go against each other in the end. That is such a great idea, it will add about another month of planning for me but in the end i think it is going to work out great. I was so concerned with how to not decide who was playing and who wasn't that i didn't even think of turning it in to a double campaign.

Dthclaw, my problem was basicly a little of everything you listed. I have run eight player games before and I find that they seem to drag on cause everyone has two put in there two cents. Plus you can get everyone talking at the same time. Or a couple of players feel left out cause they feel that they are being ignored and drowned out by the others. I hope I explained why I didn't want a eight player game a little better now.

[Dthclaw]

Well, the double-campaign approach seems to have been a home run with you, but I'll chip in on the 8 person tips.

Balancing an 8 person group as a DM in terms of game stat stuff is fairly simple to do. The key is to remember that larger groups require either tougher single opponents or multiple opponents per the rules (which are designed for 4). A good rule of thumb for balancing encounters is to increase the CR of the encounter by +1 per 2 extra people over 4. I use variant XP (gain XP per creature or obstacle instead of per encounter), and this works out to maintaining the balance of XP advancement and -theoretically- treasure.

Balancing high-number groups in terms of story is a bit more esoteric, but ultimately easier than statistical balance. All I can suggest, really, is that you try to create more intricate plot threads to bind the players together.

If dragging is an issue, get an egg timer. If decisions aren't made in that time (particularly in combat encounters), the player gets skipped. Your players will quickly learn to stay on the ball and keep things moving. Maybe hand everyone a chip or two per session that they can use for a continuance on their time or for some bonus of some kind - offer an incentive to keep things rolling.

As for being ignored, maybe have a rule that everyone has to be able to say at least one piece of uninterrupted input per situation. That and try to encourage vocalness

Organizing a campaign of larger scope requires some planning, but it can be done. My advice: put together a 'secret DM campaign setting' you can reference to. Can be notecards, can be a notebook, Word file, whatever - sort things into relevant categories, list how they interact with other categories, and place them in a logical placement. For organization interactions, maybe have a big ol' table with each group placed across and vertically, with some kind of abbreviated indication of how they feel about each other/deal with each other.