[friczvonbrock]

Hey Y'all chummers,

I'm in the middle of a campaign which is running about 2 years and a half. A lot of players went out, and a lot of other new players come.
Now I'm with 10 players in the campaign and it's really nice, the problem is that tooks a lot of time to get the time of action of all players.
I'm thinking in split the table, but in a complex way. Made the group more like shadowrun worlds, take some runs and put a maximum of players in some, do solo runs with some players or a team with just 2 runners... I dunno, I think it's a good Idea, but I need to organize everything correctly, to don't turn up in complete chaos.

Someone has experienced something like that? Any tips?

Thanks

[Kiirnodel]

Well, first up, do you have more than just you willing to run the game?
If so, you could potentially split into 2 "groups" and coordinate between the two sof that your stories are inter-connected. You could let the players swap back and forth during appropriate times, can be fun.

From what you mentioned it sounds like you would try to run different parts of the group at separate times? That could be fun, but I would be wary of the extra time it would take to plan the extra runs and actually run the extra games.

One other idea would be to recruit one or more of the players to act as "assistant GMs" and get them to help keep the action smooth. For example, if you have someone else keep track of initiative and/or collect the results of some rolls it could help speed things up. It would take some planning to coordinate what the assistant(s) would do and when, but once it is worked out it could potentially make things move a lot faster. This method also had the benefit of not moving a player completely away from playing, they could still play their own character while helping out also.

[Beta]

One thought about the assistant GM thing -- let them get karma and nuyen toward their character so volunteering to do this sometimes isn't at a penalty to advancement.

[friczvonbrock]

Hey Chummers!!

Thanks a lot for the tips. First I'll try to do this GM assistant thing, and when I finish my Neo-Tokyo plot, maybe I'll split them.

Thanks a lot

[TheWayfinder]

Getting back into my Shadowrun PDX game, I now run two sessions a week with two different groups, one with four and the other five players.  My limit is six players, and I prefer four at a time so that I can give more attention to each one of them. 

Player management is an important, and, in my opinion, an undervalued skill a GM must learn.  It's about learning your own limitations and the limitations of the game you're running.  This means you have to know how many players you can genuinely handle, and more importantly you have to gauge your players' personalities.  Also, it's a good idea to review every character your players submit to see if they are at all compatible with the rest of the group.  Group cohesion is important.  For this reason, I generally don't allow more than one cyberspace user and one spell-caster in the group, because two or more, in my experience, tend to come to blows for possession of the spotlight.  Having a decker and a rigger is fine, but having a decker and a technomancer in my group is not. 

I just got done running D&D 5E, and prior to that I made sure to not allow any evil characters among the party.  Not that we had any paladins in the group (which I take the traditional approach, keeping them squarely lawful good), but my experience has been that players choosing evil alignments tend to feel it's a license to do despicable things for the sake of doing it.  Some players can role-play it well, but not mine. 

[AwesomenessDog]

Too many cooks...

I would recommend a secondary/co-gm to manage a split team, downtime, and/or basic math and rules as necessary. If you want to have your team of 9 split into two teams for a run, he can handle team B while you take team A at different tables and converge as necessary; if you want to have a single active run with half or part of the group, you can have co-gm manage everyone else's downtime activities or even an entirely different run; and when he isn't doing anything else, you handle story telling while he handles the mobs or book referencing.

[farothel]

I'm not sure how your group is organised, although I must congratulate you to actually find a common date for 10 people.  Maybe it can be a solutions if you have a team of 10, but if only 5-6 show up every game session, it's still manageable.

[friczvonbrock]

Hey chummers, thanks again for the replies.
Thanks Farothel for the the congratulations, I really try to manage the best day for everybody... In the beggining 5 -6/10 players went to the table, then I started to kick some players and put new ones, everything was fucked up when the players kicked cried out to that, and the other players pressioned me to accept them back.
I'll use the Karma compensation for who helps me with the system and all the calculation stuff, besides that, I'll divide the table in 2 groups or 3 depending on the plot and interation of the characters, the problem of that is that I'll have no more life outside RPG and work lol. But I'll see how it will works, if don't I'll call another GM to help me out with that.

[TheWayfinder]

Having another GM running the game is something that I think everyone ought to try at least once.  You'll quickly find the problems and the good aspects of doing it once or twice.  It's especially good if the party splits up, and you want to maintain some flow so that the time for your session is maximized.  I did this with D&D 5E and Call of Cthulhu, and after some bumps and hiccups, we were able to run things relatively smoothly. 

Some tips on this:

1)  Determine who's the primary GM.  This is important because if both GM's are doing their own thing, the way the game is presented can be a bit disjointed.  Determining who's in charge kind of helps set the style and the tone.  In dungeon crawls like D&D, this is relatively easy because dungeons are pretty straight forward; you describe what the players see, run the traps and monsters, do the puzzle if there are any, and there you go. 

2)  Flow Management:  It's very easy for one group to get too far ahead of the other.  My sub-GM and I were able to keep in contact using text messages through Gmail rather than Twitter or something, to let each other know what was happening, where the PCs were, if there were any complications, any PC deaths, and so on.  If one group or another were getting too far ahead, or they were in a place where the other group was likely going to be, then we'd let each other know and coordinate accordingly. 

3)  Make sure you both know what game you're running.  I realize this sounds kind of obvious, but it's good to remember because it'll save you a headache or two.  When I ran Call of Cthulhu, my other GM got his adventures mixed up, and messed everything up.  Fortunately, nobody died yet, but it did require us to backtrack.  It's good to know where the PCs are session to session, and do a good review of things before running the game.

4)  Identical Rules Management:  It's just a matter of time before the Players realize that either you or the other GM run things a bit differently than the other.  I compare it to a Daddy and Mommy scenario with kids; they quickly find out that one of the parents may be more of a pushover when they want something, so they'll go to that one if the other doesn't give them what they want.  My rules of the table are written and pretty easy to understand, and my sub-GM knew them all pretty well.  He may have been a bit more forgiving in his rulings than I might've been, but it didn't show too much in the D&D adventure we ran. 

5)  Communication management.  If your groups should not be able to communicate, then don't give them the means to do so.  Players cheat, and they will use every means to communicate with one another, if only to gather information or advice, maybe insight into a puzzle trap or something, or to warn each other of impending dangers.  If the players can somehow, in-game, communicate with the other group, then allow that.  During our adventure, one group was able to inscribe messages on the walls of the dungeon in Elven so that the Hobgoblins wouldn't be able to read them (unbeknownst to them, some of the Hobgoblins spoke and read Elven fluently; heh-heh-heh), and then either I or the other GM would merely send each other a text letting the other know what the message was and where it was located. 

[friczvonbrock]

I already talk with the other GM and I'll see how the other session will goes on.
But I'm preparing him with those things. By the 5 tip I want the players to communicate, but in on, like the PCs were texting, that's why I've created a whatsapp group for the table. And I work like a communication server, when a PC wants to talk with another one, he pass the message to me and I repass to the other PC. It really flows well.

[Horsemen]

Have you talked to your players about a possible split to two groups of smaller numbers?

While I cannot see this not being well received as that means more time per player to shine but I have found communication to inquire as to what they like and prefer before a major change to be a wise move.

Also, be careful of over-extending yourself to try to manage things for such a large group of players and keep them happy.  It can quickly lead to burn out if all you are doing is running and prepping games outside of work.

[Janecki]

I like your Idea of trying to run the game like a live game.  I am a very new GM, all i've run is the 5e Stuffer shack mission, but I had 7 of my friends playing and holy crap the whole game was bogged down.  Now i know some of it was for sake of learning, but as a DnD GM I cant imagine trying to run a 10 person game.  I think the world lends very well to allowing the group to split.  You could even have a ton of fun with it and have the split group hired by opposing Johnsons and they end up working against each other.  That's one thing I've always liked about the setting of Shadowrun, the PCs may be working together but there isn't necessarily loyalty or a friendship.