[SamTwist]

Hi Everyone

I find myself in a tough position.
Since I threw the idea of hosting a Shadowrun campaign, I now find myself with 8 players who absolutely wants to play.
This is way too much in my opinion for a single group, so I had the idea to make 2 groups out of these 8 players

Every two weeks, I would meet one group and host, same setting but different campaigns, so each group would play once a month and I thought, maybe once or twice a year, doing one big run with all the players involved.

From your experiences as a GM, am I bitting on more than I can chew?
Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Regards,

[firebug]

If you're an experienced GM, it could be possible, but even then each group getting to play only once a month is a bit lame (just a personal opinion).  That aside, writing two stories and keeping track of 8 players is still difficult, possibly even more so if you make it so you have 4 weeks inbetween each group's session.  I don't think a big run with 8 people would work either, sadly, but that's just my experiences that getting even six people to sit down for something can take hours of prep.

I think what you'd be better off trying to do is find another GM.  Maybe one of the players is willing to step up?  Give the less-experienced GM the group with four players, and the more experienced GM the group with three.  That way the less-experienced one can be a bit more reckless with the enemies and the PCs will have more man-power on their side to overcome challenges.

[emsquared]

Seems like its one of those things where you just have to know yourself and your capabilities. Personally, I like playing and GMing in equal measure so there's no way I'd take on two campaigns at once. If you like GMing enough to spend the hours per week it'd take to do 2 campaigns justice, go for it. And yeah 8 players in one game sounds like not much fun as a GM or for any of the players, as no one would really get to shine. The number of NPCS it'd take combined with players could stretch combat into an entire session...

[Walks Through Walls]

One thing to look at is would all 8 players show up every session? Back in 2nd edition I had a weekly group that swelled to about 7 or 8 players, but we rarely had more than 5 players show up for any one session so it was never overwhelming for me as a GM. It did take some creative thinking and work in order to switch players in and out between sessions, but it did work for the most part.

[Elektrycerze3]

Hi!

Walks Through Walls has a point =)

Right now I have 7 players in my group. I've seen 6 at my table tops. Besides, I managed to really simplify things for everyone involved by sticking with "one session - one run" policy. This way you don't have to worry about a player missing after an important cliffhanger.

But managing two parties... That I'd consider more difficult than GMing for a party of 8.

[Shade]

I've had groups in the 8-10 range before. The trick is to be very organized about how you approach the game. I would not recommend attempting it if you can't devote a chunk of time away from the game table for it. All downtime should be handled between game sessions via e-mails, dropbox, or whatever floats your boat. Gametime should get straight to the run, possibly even running the meet beforehand if not every player is needed for the meet. You will need to maximize the time you spend at session on the Run itself, as everything will be slower with that many players.

[Lagoruthon]

I second Shade's and Elektrycreze3's comments here.  I GM for 8 players regularly and as the GM you need to be very organized.  Also if you players can look up the rules they be using between character turns it help keep things moving.

[Ravenspoe]

Last year I ran Missions at my local shop, but I ended up with 9 players each session.  It really slowed things up.  I am starting it back up in October and this time I am only allowing a max of 6 players.  With the massive amounts of crunch and newbie players made the game difficult to run.  To be honest I also blame my abilities sometimes to process all the rules, so the lower the numbers the easier it is for me to run.

[Michael Chandra]

Last year I ran Missions at my local shop, but I ended up with 9 players each session.

That's why my brother reads the Missions I offer as well, preparing them so he can jump in as GM. With GM Rewards in Season 5, that means he doesn't even lose the chance to gain experience.

[cyclopean]

I think a big thing to consider is how much personal attention the players are wanting/expecting from you. If everyone has a lot of backstory, detailed contact relationships, etc and that is going to play a large role in the campaign, I wouldn't really want to do more than 6 players (personally I prefer 5), but if it's more of a merc/war style setting, or just runs with not a lot of in-between run social stuff you might be all right. Or, as someone mentioned above do all the downtime stuff between sessions, but I would worry that some of the wonderful possibilities for inter-pc relationships developing might get a little lost in this case. Also, this method still would require quite a lot of your time, out of game, to respond to all the individual players. Or, recruit a co-gm (or 2) from amongst the players- maybe have 1 person track initiative and move stuff around on whatever map or grid you use, and have another player on top of looking up rules. And then encourage all the other players to make sure to know the rules they need to play their pc, and to decide on actions/look anything up they need to during other player's actions to keep things rolling. Still, a bit of a daunting task. The 2 groups of 4 sounds potentially really cool (I like the idea of overlapping campaigns a lot), but each group only playing 1/month would be too long between sessions imo. Best of luck!

[SamTwist]

Thanks everyone

The reason I decided to play once a month with each group is because I'm actually playing Earthdawn as well, in 2 different campaigns with 2 different GMs. Each GM and other players would like to participate in my Shadowrun game as well but the GMs also want to continue their respective campaign, so I figured we could replace Earthdawn by Shadowrun once a month and everyone liked that idea.

It's actually going to be my first time being a GM but I'm really looking forward to it.

I think I might start off slow, with limited players, just to get acquainted with the rules and the responsabilities of being the GM and take it from there.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Regards,

[Voodoolaw]

Not sure that this is advice, so much as an observation, but with my job we do a lot with ICS (incident command system), and it gives guidelines for managing crews of people.  It amazingly has given me some help in running games. 

One of the guidelines is that under each supervisor (or gamemaster in this case), the optimum span of control is 5 individuals under each crew leader, +/- 2.  Less than 3, you merge them with another group.  More than 7, you split them.  This falls in line with what others have mentioned here, and have learned intuitively.  It is not that you cant run crews of 8 or more, but that more often than not, your attention to what tasks they perform will suffer. 

Some people will say they excel with larger groups, and that may be the case, but by and large, most people are gonna see things start to fall apart.  One idea I have seen is an assistant GM who handles matrix issues or some aspect of the gMe.  This was more a 2e/3e tactic tho, prior to mainstream matrix/AR integration. 

[Voodoolaw]

One idea i did consider for a larger group, tho it was for a full campaign, was to have one or two players sit their PCs out each mission, and assist with running the opposition.  They would receive the full Karma and resource rewards the group running their PCs received.  Each player would rotate through.  We never used this in SR since we always had a no-show or two, but it worked nicely for Battletech.

Many even enjoyed taking their buddies out 

The only potential problem I saw in this was boredom for said PCs during the legwork/planning phase.  Though I doubt the smokers would have minded so much.

[Shamie]

It really depends of what you can chew. My magic number for players is 3 but i know other who can juggle 7-9 players.

I had same problem this year, being the only one in my groups who knew rules for 5th and 4th. So i had 7 players. 2 serious roleplaying, 3 "we just wanna shoot stuff" and 2 with conflicting schedules.

So i separated the 3 "we just wanna shoot stuff" players in a campaign i name "left overs" and the other four i put them in campaign i name "main". So i started running mission first with the "left overs" group so i could test them and the same mission i would run later with the "main".

The "left overs" are happy to shoot stuff and the "main" get to play a mission i already work out more or less any problem it may have.

My advice would be try to run the games and see how it goes, it you see that the campaigns are taking a toll maybe reduce the group.