Author Topic: Large Party Houserules  (Read 1247 times)

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StPeteGamer

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Large Party Houserules
« on: June 12, 2009, 04:53:44 PM »
Seeing another houserule thread inspired me.
I am currently running a 3.5 game for between 7 and 8 players.  This is a large group and at times becomes difficult to handle due to the sheer size of it.  Please let me know of any houserules you know of or have used that help deal with larger groups. 

archangel.arcanis

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Re: Large Party Houserules
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2009, 05:06:27 PM »
timers are a good start. You get no more than 1 minute to determine you action in combat or each player gets 15 minutes of the DM's time before we head to the dungeon so do all your shopping and NPC role playing quick.

That is the only thing game wise i can think of. But getting a good group dynamic and flow will help a lot with most problems you may encounter. Try to have the party interact with each other as much as possible so that they aren't bored while the DM has to do something else. Have a player, typically the rules lawyer of the group, be the looker uper of the group. He is to look up anything that needs to be looked up so the DM can continue running the game until that is resolved.
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dither

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Re: Large Party Houserules
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2009, 05:57:44 PM »
Have a player, typically the rules lawyer of the group, be the looker uper of the group. He is to look up anything that needs to be looked up so the DM can continue running the game until that is resolved.

Another good idea is to not wait for rules and to not allow "take backs." Everyone gets one chance to make a decision.

I also promote the "act on your turn, think on everyone else's turn." Rather than going with a timer, I'll occasionally let the players simply delay until they have an action they want to do, just to keep things moving.

I usually stand up during combat (when I have a big group), do a lot of pointing, and try to keep everyone's attention focused on me and on the game.
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McPoyo

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Re: Large Party Houserules
« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2009, 01:35:06 PM »
-I use a 30 second timer, personally, during combat. If your character has to decide and act out their entire round within 6 seconds, requiring the player to at least decide on the actions within 30 isn't a bad idea, after all.
-When purchasing items, I have the players either come up with a list of stuff they want in between sessions, or before hand that they can pull from when they have the wealth for it. That way, all I have to do is run down the list and approve/disapprove items when it comes up.
-If the player doesn't know how their spell works, it fizzles. This fixes the "Wait 5 minutes while I track down and look up how this spell I've known I was going to use for three weeks works" issues.
-Rules discussions limited to 1 minute. If you cannot find the reference you are disputing within that time, we'll go with my way and look it up and discuss changes/adjustments before the next session, in order to prevent stalling out the game.
-No summoning in combat. It's just a gentleman's rule I try to keep with the players in order to keep one player from having 17 different sets of actions in a combat at the higher levels.
-Have page and book references listed next to your stuff. Then again, I ask this in smaller games too, in case a question on something comes up.

And +1 to everything Dither said.
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They don't/haven't, was the point. 3.5 is as dead as people not liking nice tits.

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