Author: Writer of prose

Any tips for incorporating many players into one campaign?

I have a group of 7+ people (all newbies) who are interested in learning to play. I know that some may drop out, but want to plan for the eventuality that everyone commits.

We’re all in grad school together. We all have the same VERY busy schedule, and a big part of the interest is the group bonding time, so it isn’t feasible or desirable for me to split up the group and run two separate games.

Any ideas about the best way to juggle all those players?

A pair of thought starters:

-Do I run a game for all of them at once? (Can’t imagine that working. I’ve always felt like 4 PCs is the highest you can go…)

-Do we just establish that there are only 4 players per session, so people will miss some weeks and make other weeks? In which case, any suggestions on how to run a coherent narrative-driven campaign if people miss a lot? (This group is going to want to focus on wacky characters and stories, not dungeon-diving and monster-slaying.)

Any better ideas?

Thanks so much!

Going to be introducing DW to a group of five 10-year olds. Any tips for how to have them choose their character classes without inviting conflict?

I’m concerned about a fight breaking out over who gets to be — let’s say — the thief. And then having a campaign where one kid feels cheated the whole time cause now they’re — I dunno — the ranger.

I won’t have a printer onsite and can’t get an answer in advance. I don’t know the kids so can’t really choose for them. (Unless you think I should anyway?)

Should I just bring two of every class I’m offering? And if two want to be the same, allow it? That’s a lot of superfluous printing…

Thinking of offering classes from the Hack series:

Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, Wizard — plus I’m also going to throw in the Witch and Dashing Hero cause they’re my favs.

Thanks!

Here’s a question about adding in new players to an existing campaign:

I’m already two sessions in with two players — a Fool and a Noble. We did a LOT of world building Q&A together and I threw them into a conflict that’s deeply rooted in the answers that they gave me. When we left our heroes last, they were both in the midst of resisting capture by an ambitious org created through our world building.

Now we’re adding in two more people who will be in the campaign for the long haul: a Druid and a Wizard (both new to RPGs). I’d like to give them time to contribute to the world building, and I’m not concerned about that: there are plenty of blanks to fill about magic, geography, and politics.

What concerns me is how to use their world building answers while throwing them into conflict with an ambitious org that was created before their contributions were in the mix. I’m concerned that it will feel like they’re guest stars in the Fool’s and Noble’s story; I want them to feel like they’re stars too and this is their story.

Any suggestions?

In case it helps, the quick and dirty on plot so far is that there’s an ambitious org doing the bidding of an evil deity. The party split up in the first session. The fool was being pursued by a possessed agent of the god and was most recently tooling up at home for a big stand off. The noble was hitchhiking and got kidnapped by the god’s servants. We’ll have to play to find out what happens, but the villains aspire to kidnap and bring them both back to HQ.

1) How can I make perilous journeys more perilous without just planning random encounters? I want their encounters to feel organic to the story. I find that I usually either just montage it, or that I end up presenting them with un-inspired hang-ups.

2) On a similar note: I’m hopefully starting a sci-fi campaign any day now (probably with Stellar Conflict). So perilous journeys will be happening in the comfort of their ship. Any suggestions for how to deal with inter-planetary travel in an interesting way? I feel like bad guys shooting at them will only be fun the first time…