Hell, I have my hands full with five. I can't even imagine running for twelve.

With children, once they get past the age of 10-11 (your mileage may vary), they get surprisingly easy to work with in a D&D game. This is, admittedly, based on my own experience with running for kids. They wanna do the cool stuff, and RPGs will oblige them. But you won't be able to run a super-serious game, so if that's your jam, you may need to rethink the whole thing.

I would definitely recruit an extra DM, and possibly even break it into two gaming groups. But that's just my opinion.

Quote from: Cathal on April 10, 2023, 11:33:57 PM
I can't imagine the first time with everyone  remember to use a caller! Did you know the games you mention? Try to understand the system and improvise for everything else. I recommend you Swords & Wizardry. Take a look at the following products. You can use lulu if you want: https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=Matthew+Finch

For beginners:

• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/219477/Swords--Wizardry-Light
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/63665/Swords--Wizardry-Quick-Start
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/223909/Swords--Wizardry-Continual-Light

Then you can run:

• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/190631/White-Box--Fantastic-Medieval-Adventure-Game
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/62346/Swords--Wizardry-Core-Rules
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/194536/White-Box-Expanded-Lore

System Reference Document (SRD)

• https://sites.google.com/site/swordsandwizardry/
• https://sites.google.com/site/swordsandwizardry/swords-and-wizardry-srd/for-players/how-to-play
• https://sites.google.com/site/swordsandwizardry/swords-and-wizardry-srd/for-players/combat

There are tons of adventure for Swords & Wizardry, here is one from Matt

• https://www.lulu.com/shop/matthew-finch/tomb-of-the-iron-god/ebook/product-3727728.html
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/252257/0e-Tomb-of-the-Iron-God-Swords--Wizardry

I'll check these out. Thank you!

Swords and Wizardry is very good and the saving throw is a great generic task resolution mechanism- when they try something weird, tell them to roll a save. With attribute mod if you like.

Every GM has 3 limits.  Many GM's only know about one of them:

- Minimum number of players that will work for the game.
- Maximum number of players that will work for running where everything is "player facing".
- Maximum number of players that will work when as much as possible is "party facing".

That middle one is often in the 4-6 range.  For me, it's more like 5-8, but no doubt that's because of all the time spent running party facing style.  My minimum is higher than most people, too, no doubt the same reason.  I hate running a game for 3 or 4 players, and you can forget 2. 

It's not a smooth curve, either, where you, say, are quite happy running for 5, are coping with 6, and just need to change this or that to manage 7.   There's a mental shift that has to take place to run in the upper range, different habits, etc.  Doesn't mean you can't push the upper limit (especially when fully energized) but you very quickly hit the wall if you don't adjust.

My ideal "party facing" group size is 7-10 players.  Below that, I've got to adjust my style back to "player facing", which might not be what I was ramped up to do.  I can expand on up to the 11 or 12 range in some cases without much trouble, but I'm more tired after the session.  15 is my absolute upper limit.  When running in the 13-15 range, I have to keep the session under 6 hours, and going to 6 hours leaves me absolutely exhausted. 

I don't recommend 12 even for someone who is gung ho to try that style, not at first.  If you can get somewhere in the 7-9 range, and occasionally brush higher, maybe.  Just plan to shorten the session a little, one way or another.  (If you don't explicitly shorten it, it will get shortened for you by some time spent mucking around not gaming.  Which is OK if you don't mind that kind of socializing.  Just realize that it is going to be shorter.)  However, this might be better handled in its own topic, if Pen or anyone else wants to go there.  It's kind of a side thing from running the game in general.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on April 11, 2023, 08:43:36 AM
Hell, I have my hands full with five. I can't even imagine running for twelve.

With children, once they get past the age of 10-11 (your mileage may vary), they get surprisingly easy to work with in a D&D game. This is, admittedly, based on my own experience with running for kids. They wanna do the cool stuff, and RPGs will oblige them. But you won't be able to run a super-serious game, so if that's your jam, you may need to rethink the whole thing.

I would definitely recruit an extra DM, and possibly even break it into two gaming groups. But that's just my opinion.

Just tell them they have to put their phones away, or they don't get to play. Unless, of course, they are using their phones to play.

Quote from: Pen on April 11, 2023, 12:23:07 PM
I'll check these out. Thank you!

The game is free I forgot to mention, I already updated the post. You can download all the version from here: https://snw.smolderingwizard.com/viewtopic.php?t=4

There is a new kickstarter for S&W revised edition, if you are interested

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adventuredesigntome/swords-and-wizardry-complete-revised-rulebook

How to DM Games With Lots of Players

Quote from: Pen on April 10, 2023, 10:58:00 AM
However, how would I handle this type of action:

"I want to jump on a trolls back and shoot him with an arrow or stab him." 

In B/X: make a paralysis saving throw (or roll under Str or Dex) to succeed without falling. Gain the benefits of the thief's backstab.

I wouldn't consider myself a gifted GM, but I have MC'd large groups like this, before.

Appearances are probably deceiving because you are probably not going to have 12 players at one table playing one game. What you're actually looking at is three tables forming, each playing a different game, and I would wager at least one of the tables (if not two) would rather just play board games. It's likely you'll have one consistent RPG group, one one-off or medium-cut board game group, and one lightweight board game group. And once you actually get going, you'll probably only have 50-75% attendance on any given night, so it may wind up only being two tables in actual practice.

The real question is does that sound doable? Just doing the event coordination to GM a single table is already a handful. This will have way more coming and going as players duck into the RPG campaign for a night, then decide they'd rather go play Liars Dice the next night. It may also be a discipline headache; children playing games at their own tables may be too much to ask if the children are too young, aren't well behaved, or if an adult doesn't play along with them and supervise.

That said, when you have 12-15 people, it's much easier to pot-luck with drinks and chips and entrees and sides, so there's that.

If at least one other person expecting to attend regularly is an experienced GM or event MC, I think this is quite doable, it just doesn't quite look like your traditional game night.

Since it's neighbors, I hope you're good at politics and de-escalation,  because the chance that all 12 players, including ones that don't like each other, don't end up with noses out of joint is vanishingly small.

Split in to two groups of 6, try and get the cats and dogs separated. Be pleasant, but as others have said, don't become a babysitter.

You'll probably be down to one manageable group that actually enjoys gaming pretty quickly. Best of luck, hope you guys have a good time.

I'd split it into an adults group and a kids group.  If they're mixed the grown up are going to take the lead and the kids won't get to fully participate. 

12 can be done, but it depends on the DM's ability and and cooperation of the group.  I regularly ran games with that many players in high school, and each player had multiple characters.  I also played in such a group at a friend's fraternity in college.  The key is that in combat you have to get each character's turn done in about 20 seconds, barring exceptional circumstances; much longer than that and people get bored between their turns, disengage, take longer to do their own turn, and it's just a downward spiral.

I did something similar a few years ago.  My son wanted a D&D party for his 12th (I think) birthday and about 15 kids were invited.  None of them had ever played an RPG.  I wanted to just play, not waste time telling them how it was done, and I didn't have a sufficiently simple game to do that.  So I wrote a 1 page bare bones game, made up about two dozen characters that they could pick from with distinctive abilities like "sword guy," "blaster," "archer," "brick," "healer," "summoner," etc.  The mechanic was roll d6, add your skill, and I'll tell you what happens.  (There were real resolution rules based on the roll, but they didn't need to know the details.)  Oh, and we did use minis and a mat.  We played for an hour, spent an hour doing boffer capture the flag in the back yard, cake and presents, and then back to the game for another hour to finish the adventure.  Only seven of the kids wanted to come back and play the second bit, but they were really, really into it.  The rest just did whatever.  It was a really good experience and I thought I'd relate it to you in the hope that you might get some useful ideas from it.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 10, 2023, 11:59:14 AM
- Whatever you pick, it must use side vs side initiative or something similar.  3E or 5E style cyclic initiative is a combat killer once you go over 6-8 players, and in some cases can bite even in that range.

I'm going to quibble with this bit.  All three of the large games  I mentioned above used individual initiative and ran just fine.  I won't deny it can help if you're not used to running a large group, but it's not essential.

How to handle an unexpected large party? Be honest and declare that you need to pare down to your more comfortable numbers -- to adequately give them the attention them and their characters deserve  -- and ask who wants to learn the art of being a GM!  This way you are breaking up the mob into multiple tables of fun AND you can explain it through the adage: "feed someone a fish, fed for a day; teach someone to fish, fed for life."

When you explain through examples, like sports have team limits for reasons of manageability and someone to vie against, similarly other game events have limits based on the host's powers of engagement. 'Divide the work, make easier the task,' 'teach others to pay it forward,' and all those bromide axioms.

The hobby needs more GMs and active players. That is drawn from interest and then training their powers up to their capacity. But draw from interest first! Passion to be creative on one's off time is important for a treasure of a GM. Passion leads to curiosity, leads to self-learning, leads to refinement through self-practice and advice-seeking, etc.

Speaking honestly about your human limits, and your invitation to assist new GMs to start their own tables, allows you to fumble through your first few big tables by grounding their expectations more. Everyone outside primary grades understands you can't have everyone in the team on the field at the same time and the game make much sense. But there will be those who see the potential and get the itch to host new worlds of imagination! 

Quote from: Mishihari on April 14, 2023, 12:31:23 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 10, 2023, 11:59:14 AM
- Whatever you pick, it must use side vs side initiative or something similar.  3E or 5E style cyclic initiative is a combat killer once you go over 6-8 players, and in some cases can bite even in that range.

I'm going to quibble with this bit.  All three of the large games  I mentioned above used individual initiative and ran just fine.  I won't deny it can help if you're not used to running a large group, but it's not essential.

If you can and will enforce your 20 seconds or less, and all the players are fully on board with that, yes.  That's not easy to do with some groups.  Side-by-side initiative in any even moderately complex system will run the same combat in 60% or less of the time.  40% of the time is not at all uncommon.  More importantly, side-by-side scales linearly with the number of players, while cyclic scales exponentially.  When you hit the point (and there is a point with every group) where people start to lose attention because of how long it takes to get back to them, then you've hit a wall that can easily send your pace into a death spiral.  For someone learning how to run large groups, that's a ticking bomb you don't need.

Note that if you can just toss any initiative mechanics completely out of the game, and go around the table really fast, this will be less of an issue.  But I'd argue that's not really cyclic in the way people normally mean, as the characters are having no effect on who goes when.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 13, 2023, 11:11:53 PM
Since it's neighbors, I hope you're good at politics and de-escalation,  because the chance that all 12 players, including ones that don't like each other, don't end up with noses out of joint is vanishingly small.

Split in to two groups of 6, try and get the cats and dogs separated. Be pleasant, but as others have said, don't become a babysitter.

You'll probably be down to one manageable group that actually enjoys gaming pretty quickly. Best of luck, hope you guys have a good time.

Thanks. I agree. I'm also definitely planning to have two separate game nights (each a one shot). Hopefully, the numbers then drop to one manageable group.