Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

[honorentheos]

Hey Bret - Sounds like you handled it well, and the folks at the table played it well to keep it engaging.

PG - I like the idea of having some sort of magical means of facetiming the party like sending stones and scrying rolled into one. "Roll for mute" seems like a viable wisdom save given the number of virtual work meetings I've participated in where someone failed theirs.

As for my own experience with split parties, it's really been hit or miss. My work game has 7 players and I also ignore metagaming and table chatter in favor of keeping folks engaged. Otherwise when it happens I think I'd lose some people, possible permanently. I try to keep running the decisions I make through the filter of if the activities involved can be engaging, and if not I try to find a way to handwave / roll quickly and move to something more meaningful. In fact, editing is my current point of practice in general as a DM. Just in general I find with a large group the tempo has to be managed much more intentionally than with smaller groups of 3 or 4 where just about anything can be engaging and fun.

I also have two one shots I'm running over the holidays. I'm planning to run the same one at both games. I homebrewed it, with the intention of making it largely a faster paced game. My plan for managing potential party splits is to go to combat/hostile social encounter almost immediately if someone runs off on their own with the rest of the party within quick reaction distance. The game is built around three major acts:

- Party is escorting a special delivery of diamonds heading to the village of Greenwinter. The party gets ambushed by a goblin warband accompanied by a wind-up dire wolf construct. Investigation after the combat involves multiple clues pointing to an evil influence wishing to prevent the diamonds from reaching the village clerics who use them in ritual worship of the goddess of nature, Malora. Clues also point to the person behind the influence seeking to set a number of invisible evil fey creatures to creating chaos at the winter festival taking place there that night.

- Act 2 is the party arriving as the festivities are underway. This is an investigation/exploration act. The main events include games the party can play and people they can talk with, but also the appearance of devious fey creatures attempting to do things like open the cages of an owl bear, chimera, and displacer beast so they can run wild among the crowds.

- Final Act is the reveal that the devious influence is the mayor who is a skilled and powerful artificer, this fact being unknown to most people in Greenwinter. His goal is to stop the festival and final acts of worship of Malora to prevent her protection of the forest around the village from being renewed for another year so he can mow down the woods to fuel the many large foundries and forges he has planned. And he doesn't need villagers anymore as he has created a force of constructs to do the work instead. So the final show down is him, a huge warforged titan he created, and his construct minions attempting to level the village, kill the party, and "destroy all humans". The clerics of the village will be able to support the party with what diamonds make it to revivify anyone who happens to go down to the mayor's tough forces.

I think it should be tight enough but fun enough to keep folks together. Plus I'm interested in keeping death on the table but with limited immediate consequence via the cleric support. I'm curious how that affects the game. We'll see.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing more about your next adventure! I don't think anything I could offer would improve on what creative ideas you have for Zenobia and Ommitt.

[Physics Guy]

"Roll for mute" seems like a viable wisdom save given the number of virtual work meetings I've participated in where someone failed theirs.

Yep. Tabletop role-playing games actually are a form of meeting, and I guess a lot of meeting dynamics are relevant. How things scale with participant number is important, all right. I think all I ever learned about dealing with that, though, was to confirm that twenty players are way too many.

It might have been seventeen, or something, but it was absurd. Even when the characters were all together, I broke the players up into sub-groups of three and four, with middle-management callers for each sub-group, so that they could plan and discuss in smaller units. It didn't help nearly enough. Resolving melee took so long, it made the silly old D&D rule of one action per minute look wildly optimistic.

After that my procedure for handling over-large D&D groups was like the supposedly traditional Inuit recipe for loon soup.

"Do not make loon soup."

(I tracked down the source of that supposed recipe. It's from page 19 of a handwritten book of recipes collected by a teacher from Inuit schoolchildren in 1952, and the popular misquotation omits a "the" from the final direction in a brief recipe for boiling loon, "Do not make the loon soup." That might just mean not to boil the loon for so long that it all turns to mush, but I guess it might mean that the broth was no good and should be discarded. It's hard to find much information about eating loon, but everything you do find is about how awful it tastes.)

[honorentheos]

Yep. Tabletop role-playing games actually are a form of meeting, and I guess a lot of meeting dynamics are relevant. How things scale with participant number is important, all right. I think all I ever learned about dealing with that, though, was to confirm that twenty players are way too many.

It might have been seventeen, or something, but it was absurd...

I can't wrap my head around trying to handle that many players. But if it all paid off in your sharing the recipe for loon soup on our little board, surely it was worth it in the grand cosmic sense.

[Bret Ripley]

Yep. Tabletop role-playing games actually are a form of meeting, and I guess a lot of meeting dynamics are relevant. How things scale with participant number is important, all right. I think all I ever learned about dealing with that, though, was to confirm that twenty players are way too many.

It might have been seventeen, or something, but it was absurd...

I can't wrap my head around trying to handle that many players.

Every time I try to think about it my imagination responds with a whimper, and a short time later I find myself snapping out of a fuzzy-minded middle-distance stare ...

But if it all paid off in your sharing the recipe for loon soup on our little board, surely it was worth it in the grand cosmic sense.

Soup of the loon was no mean boon; I am grateful to PG for his sacrifice. I only wish he could find a way to share recipes that doesn't involve triggering psychodynamic defenses.

[honorentheos]

As a DM, One of my favorite resources is The Alexandrian. Justin Alexander has a pretty good resume when it comes to game design and understanding, and he's got a gift for honing in on fundamentals behind concepts that make them accessible.

https://thealexandrian.net/

I mention it because I recently picked up his book, So You Want to Be a Game Master? Having read through the majority of it now I feel comfortable recommending it to anyone with any interest in putting on their robes and wizards hat in order to give DMing a try:

https://thealexandrian.net/so-you-want- ... ame-master

I'd argue just about anyone could gain from it regardless of experience level GMing. Even as a regular reader of his blog posts I found the books organization of much of the material I'd seen from him elsewhere illuminating and helped me in my game presentation and preparation.

And, really, I hate to see this thread off page 1...

[honorentheos]

Yep. Tabletop role-playing games actually are a form of meeting, and I guess a lot of meeting dynamics are relevant. How things scale with participant number is important, all right. I think all I ever learned about dealing with that, though, was to confirm that twenty players are way too many.

It might have been seventeen, or something, but it was absurd...

I can't wrap my head around trying to handle that many players. But if it all paid off in your sharing the recipe for loon soup on our little board, surely it was worth it in the grand cosmic sense.

Karma...

I was introduced to a couple of new folks at our company Christmas party who are young and excited to play D&D. And of course they wanted to know if they could join our game? Sure, says I, hiding the immediate spike in concern that I already have 7 people in the game and find it difficult to keep everyone engaged.

So I'm trying something out and will return and report. That being, I am hoping to set this up so the work game becomes a sort of West Marches campaign. There is enough going on in the story that I am hoping to present the idea in game of the players choosing to split the party to carry out small group missions I can run separately then getting back together to digest the information, considering priorities, then assembling new mini teams to tackle the next goals. Rinse, repeat.

I have a mini-session scheduled this week with the two new players that is meant to give them some in world experience and knowledge before uniting with the main party in the regular session next week. We will see how it goes.

If anyone has any experience with this sort of thing, I'm very welcoming of suggestions.

[Bret Ripley]

honorentheos: I am curious how you handled this, and how things are working out.

Our group has only gotten together once since the last update. We started with the party split as some of the players confronted the witch Zenobia in her home while the others were locked outside.

The session with the players asking themselves why were even here. They acknowledged amongst themselves that they didn't really have a good reason to be trespassing in Zenobia's house -- they got carried away while investigating an idle rumor while waiting for the right time to deliver a secret message to Lord Cecil. But here we were.

Upthread we were talking about how to handle split parties, and while we were starting out with a split party it almost immediately got a little worse: the Halfling rogue (first in initiative) dashed into another part of the house which further split the party. The rogue found himself in a room functioning as a study/library, and he ended his turn there. Zenobia's lair actions include animating household objects to fight on her behalf -- I hear she has a tea service that is to die for -- and books began flapping around like dyspeptic geese and launched themselves to the attack.

Next in initiative was Ommitt (wax boy) who spent his turn speaking his "burble, blurp" language into Zenobia's ear.

Next up was one of the players whose character (fighter) was outside, and her turn altered the course of the encounter. She forced open a shuttered window so she could see what was happening inside, and wanting to de-escalate the situation shouted "hold! We intend no harm!" This led to an opposed Persuasion or Deception check (her choice) against Zenobia's Insight. Due to the situation (the fighter's friends running amok in the house) the fighter made her check at disadvantage but still rolled reasonably well (14 or 16, If I recall correctly). For drama, I rolled Zenobia's Insight in plain sight and rolled a natural 1. It was beautiful.

This seemed to call for ... something. Something weird, as it happened.

Zenobia was up next. She pointed a crooked finger at the fighter and silently cast a spell. The fighter failed her wisdom save, and at the end of Zenobia's turn everyone in the party felt their senses overpowered by a sort of "white noise" sensation and they sank into unconsciousness.

Now, the fighter's background information included gladiator training. As she regained consciousness, she found herself standing in a coliseum's entrance tunnel, and could hear a crowd chanting her name. Her armor had been refurbished and her arms and face were covered with brightly painted runes. She stepped into the arena and the crowd erupted in cheers.

Scattered around the arena were the other party members. Unlike the fighter, their appearances had not changed. In addition to the other party members were various monsters, including a goblin, an orc, a small 4-armed humanoid, a skeleton, and a hulking ogre. As soon as our gladiator entered the arena, the monsters attacked.

General melee ensued. Nothing remarkable happened until it was the turn of the strange 4-armed humanoid, which used its movement to close with the ogre. In doing so it passed by the gladiator, shouting "let's take out the ogre!" This gave the gladiator the option to take an attack of opportunity on 4 arms -- which she declined.

Aside from the 4-armed creature, the lesser monsters were quickly dealt with and everyone ganged up on the ogre. When one of the party members landed a crit on the ogre, 4-arms cried out "oh, well struck!"

When the ogre fell, the crowd redoubled its cries for blood. All the party members were still standing, and as they turned on the 4-armed creature it shrugged as if to say "let's get this over with."

The players had noticed that none of 4-arm's attacks had been directed at them -- they had in fact behaved like an ally. As each player's turn came, each declined to attack; the crowd began to boo. On the gladiator's turn she looked around and saw archers aiming at the remaining combatants; she knew this show wouldn't be over until the crowd's appetite for blood was sated.

She tapped into her gladiator training and dialed up an impressive-looking 'finishing move'. She made a successful attack roll and, just before plunging her sword home, whispered to 4-arms: "make it look good" and did the old "sword under the arm" trick. (She was, after all, spoiled for choice.)

4-arms managed a successful performance check, and the crowd went wild. Horses were let loose in the arena and began running circles around our group, raising a cloud of sand and dust that soon enveloped our party. As they closed their eyes against the dust darkness settled around them, and the last thing they heard was 4-arms making soft burbling noises.

With a flash they found themselves back in their original positions in and around the witch's house. Guessing that the party had just passed some sort of test or won some sort of moral victory over the witch, the gladiator demanded of Zenobia: "tell us what the future holds for us!" That is where we ended.

I haven't decided how Zenobia will respond. She doesn't really owe them a prophecy, of course, but it's hard to resist an opportunity to screw with the players.

(Oh: and I defy anyone to come up with a cheesier way to deal with a split party!)

[Bret Ripley]

Oh, and the players understood 4-arms burbling sounds at the end to indicate that this was Ommitt's avatar -- it was this realization that convinced the players that sparing 4-arms was the right move and in doing so had 'won' a sort of moral victory over Zenobia. Right or wrong, this feeling inspired the fighter's demand for information about the future.

Missing context: I belatedly realized that yesterday's write-up may not track as well as it did at the table, and I now regret omitting players' first encounter with Ommitt, which I didn't mention because it seemed inconsequential at the time.

As I have written things up, the PCs meet Ommitt for the first time outside Zenobia's house; that is not accurate. Their first (brief) meeting with Ommitt was the result of a random encounter that occurred a couple of days earlier, as the players were approaching town while travelling cross-country from Spindledrift Mountain. They spied what turned out to be Ommitt at a distance, and they watched for a while as he wandered back-and-forth across a field of tall grass. The players were curious about this behavior and called out to the figure, who immediately began walking away from them. Of course they followed, and after a while they noticed that Ommitt had turned around and was heading directly toward them. As the PCs pushed their way through the tall grass they noticed that grass was clinging to them, and those that failed saving throws began to feel drowsy and to slowly lose hit points. Upon further inspection they realized that some of the blades of "grass" were actively hunting parasites: a hybrid creature that was a plant at one end and blood-sucking worm on the other (the players called it "leech grass," which sums it up perfectly). As the players stopped to pick the leech grass off themselves, they allowed Ommitt to approach at which point they realized Ommitt was some sort of waxy construct. Or something. They tried greeting him, but in reply he only burbled enigmatically and began "shooing" them away with his ping-pong paddle hands. The leech grass clung to Ommitt's sticky resin body but did him no harm. (He was in fact collecting the stuff for Zenobia, who uses it as a spell component/potion ingredient.) Unable to communicate with Ommitt, the PCs decided leave by carefully retracing their steps, figuring the path they'd already taken had been thinned of leech grass.

Behind the scenes: it was this encounter that caused Ommitt to use his combat turn communicating with Zenobia. Ommitt was curious about their behavior in the field: from his perspective, they had allowed themselves to be harmed by the leech grass in order to ... what? They hadn't attacked, and they hadn't tried to steal any leech grass -- all they did was greet him and try to make friendly small talk. He had told Zenobia about the encounter in the leech grass, and on his combat turn in the house informed her that these were the people that had greeted him in the field and didn't try to steal any leech grass.

Zenobia's situation was this: on one hand, she had home invaders (one of whom was being actively attacked by flying books) but on the other she had Ommitt's information and the Persuasion check. These factors informed my choice to go all 'Star Trek' after Zenobia's natural one -- she subjects the PCs to an illusory(?) test of character: the fighter had said "we mean no harm," and she was going to see about that. Had any of the PCs harmed the four-armed creature (a.k.a. Ommitt) they would have been attacked upon finding themselves back at Z's house.

You know, writing that up really drove home how much more enjoyment I get from game preparation than from game play. Don't get me wrong: we had plenty of laughs as one absurd situation replaced another, but I found that session exhausting.

[Dr. Shades]

You know, writing that up really drove home how much more enjoyment I get from game preparation than from game play.

You know, that's exactly why I quit playing Dungeons & Dragons way back in the day: It finally dawned on me that it was more fun to prepare for than it was to actually play.

[Bret Ripley]

You know, writing that up really drove home how much more enjoyment I get from game preparation than from game play.

You know, that's exactly why I quit playing Dungeons & Dragons way back in the day: It finally dawned on me that it was more fun to prepare for than it was to actually play.

Yeah ... but if I don't have some sort of deadline (e.g. scheduled game) I have a hell of a time motivating myself to make time to indulge in the creative processes I end up enjoying. Maybe having a game on the calendar is the price I pay for a lack of self-discipline? What a silly man I am.

When I look at the balance sheet, so far the "price" has been more than worth it. Not a model of efficiency, I'll admit, but all-in-all it does good things for my brain. Last night we scheduled our next game for Saturday, and this morning we have excellent D&D preparation weather -- it is snowing. Outdoor projects will have to wait, and I'm already starting to get a brain tickle thinking about the possibilities for Saturday.

There has been a delicious in-game twist I could not have planned that has me almost giggling to myself. I won't mention it yet just in case one of our players stumbles across this thread. If this was a secure "GM" channel I'd throw it out there to share my good fortune: a player made an offhand decision in an almost throwaway bit of dialogue that, unknown to everyone but me, involves the sort of coincidence that could almost serve as the premise for a Shakespearian comedy. The stakes are positively deadly and they haven't got a clue. I can't wait to see what happens.