Hi all, I have an odd query. I’m getting married in a couple weeks and I’d love to play Dungeon World as part of my bachelor party. 4 of the groomsmen there are regular players in my home game for years, so it that made it easy enough to transition. One of them volunteered to GM so I could just kick back and play that night.
We had two newbies who would be joining us, but I figured five players would be fine since three are pretty experienced.
Then two more buddies got drafted into the party. Now we have seven players, four of them first-timers and one GM, who though quite creative and an awesome player, has only run other rpgs.
Is this too much to tackle? Should I just let the ship sink with this many on-board? I read a bit on the post about running big groups, but is this too big a burden for so many first-timers and our newbie GM? I’m at a bit of a loss here, as I’d love to have us play somehow, but I’d rather do something else than try to hold together something that won’t work…
I would suggest recruiting a second GM and running 2 tables. 6 is a LOT in Dungeon World, especially with new players. 7 is asking for trouble.
If you run 2 tables, the GMs can play a kind of “bride’s party or groom’s?” and run some kind of competing storylines involving a wedding party, perhaps?
I run with six, and it takes a little work to keep focus. Any more could be problematic…
Definitely two tables. While it is true that D&D gets slowed down by the crunch, DW requires a good apportioning of time in the spotlight to bring out the best, and with so many people it’s just not possible. I would only run it with 5 people in a group that’s very tight-knit and in which people know each other’s timing and are used to cooperate and give each other space, and I wouldn’t run it for 6+ at all.
However, 3-adventurers parties work perfectly fine (and are actually very funny, because everybody gets to do lots of things!)
I ran my 2nd game of DW for a group of 7, all but 1 were new to the system. I can say that it ran well, I had two separate groups of players and jumped back and forth to keep the action rolling and give people time to think (including me!). By the end of the night I had brought the two groups together and everyone had a great time. I can say for me it felt a bit like channeling the one power from the wheel of time. Like riding the edge of a blade with disaster on either side, but awesomeness at its peak! I would let the GM make the call. Also he could do a couple of sessions before had for smaller groups, thus getting the characters established and then combining them during the event.
I don’t run any AW-based game with more than 4 players (not including me as GM). More than that and I feel people don’t get enough spotlight time.
Bismuth Crystal Hahaha Once again alcohol is here to solve our problems.
We’ll have drinks aplenty I’m sure.
So it looks like one guy won’t be there till later, which still means a lot to handle. I’ll definitely run some test sessions w/ the gm before so he’s less green. Maybe I’ll coGM for part and then see if we can bring it together at the end. I love the dual wedding party idea Stephanie Bryant
Our regular group has four and on great occasions five, so its not too far off for me. But five really takes the players putting the spotlight on each other to work. Not gonna happen with this many fresh faces…
Still I’m open to all the wisdom this community is willing to offer, so let me know as any ideas continue to appear!
Ok here’s an idea:
You have several veterans and several newbies.
You should get another GM (prefereably two) and run concurrent groups doing very short adventures, like an hour or two. And at the end of these short stories, you have certain members of each group swap with someone of a different group, while keeping the same characters. The new players get asked a short series of questions to tie them to their new group/world, and off you go for another round!
Rift World.
I ran a BachelorCon a year ago, we picked RPGs to play out of a hat, and had a bunch of smaller, quicker card and video games handy so that if people weren’t into the RPG being played, they could take a break and play something else.
Two tables with a shared world sounds like a pretty good idea too; I know at conventions they have big tournament scenarios.