What is the max party size to run a BitD game?
I regularly DM a D&D 5e game and I really want to introduce my group to BitD.
Problem is each week between 5 – 6 people show up.
I noted the manual indicated to run games of 2 – 4 players, which ofcourse sucks because I dont want to exclude people.
The issue is I have a family and I cant do multiple sessions a week.
Is it advisable/possible to exceed that?
What advice would you provide for a GM like myself who wants to introduce his players to this game but has a larger group that he runs?
I try to run for 3 players. That’s ideal for Blades. Big groups don’t work well for me with this game.
Other people here have done it, though (some very large groups, even), so maybe they can help out. There have been other threads about this topic, too, so try searching the community.
ok, thanks for that.
At an open table game day playing with strangers, I advertised a 5 seat slot and got 6 people, and one of them was reluctant to play. I put him in charge of the crew sheet, to remind people of the advantages it bestowed and make any necessary decisions about cohorts. That was an okay patch in that situation.
In general, I feel like every character represents part of the group’s “stress pool” collectively, so the more people there are the harder I hit them.
The teamwork rules and the hard-working dice rolls (rolling once solves a lot more fiction than in most games) lend themselves to folding groups of players in together. Parties are more readily split, allowing more jump-cuts, and still fewer people are alone.
Just some random thoughts.
I ran a successful game for 8 players. Some caveats:
– there were a lot of sessions played with missing players, so actual play was closer to 5-7 characters at a time.
– we played very casually, with regular breaks and no intention of intense, “immersive” play.
Some cool stuff:
– teamwork rules really shine as a way to coordinate action on the table.
– we got to play parallel scores, which was pretty neat.
Awesome this all makes me alot happier about trying this.
One of the problems I had with D&D and my group is they tend to try and go ham, and then get frustrated at mechanics of D&D which prevent them from doing cool stuff.
For example Canter Haig. He could never function in a D&D setting.
My players regularly try to do that kind of stuff. Which sucks because I want to reward them, not do what D&D rail roads me to do (usually TPK)
I’ll give it a try and see.
I run for a group that is about 11 people total, though on average 5 are able to make it to a given session. The most I’ve run so far i a single session is 8. Keeping pacing going is always the challenge in a big group, but to not too bad if you can make people think about what they’re doing or going to do while you’re with other people. Also as stated, you can bring in multiple players into a single scene through group rolls and helping each other. That said, as John mentioned, Blades sings when you have 3-4 because you can really drill down on an individual character. It’s definitely possible though. And 5 isn’t too bad I’ve found.
Our regular group is 5 players, they are a crew of Shadows with Synchronised so group rolls can really generate a lot of crits (occasionally a lot of stress as well for the group leader 😄)
You just need to be careful to make sure you provide enough opportunities for all of them to hit their XP targets
I’ve only run BitD once with a group of four. It’s fast-paced enough that none of the players were out of the loop for long.
Five players would probably be my upper limit. I recently ran a two player player PbtA game (Masks) which was the best PbtA game I’ve ever run. Two weeks later we added four new players, and it didn’t flow anywhere near as well.
BitD isn’t PbtA, but it’s close enough I’d expect to run into similar issues.
I run for five players when everyone is there, although as of late we’ve had a baby, a lot of random bugs going around, and some online classes mess with that. Plus I run on hangouts, so crosstalk is sometimes an issue.
I’d say with five people you need to make sure everyone understands the score/plan/detail. My weakest sessions were probably when we didn’t nail that down well enough, and skipped to engagement without enough fictional traction for me to keep going, or worse, conflicting assumptions. Just trying to pick out where 5 PCs start the scene can lead perilously close to “planning”.
It’s not all that different from running anything with a large group – you need to keep an eye on spotlight time and handling things mechanically might take a little bit longer, but you’ll be able to see more of the game, you know? More playbooks and stuff.
That said, it’s totally doable, and you have a lot of fallback if people can’t make it. And I agree with the posters above: hit ’em hard.
I ran a con game with 6 – It worked well – you just have to manage the screen time religiously. No dithering! Smash cut to the good stuff during the score, and allow individual players to ‘hog’ the spotlight during their downtime actions.
I’ve capped my group at four, though two of those players are playing two characters each (and I’m open to the idea of the others bringing in secondary characters if they’re so inclined). It’s mainly down to how many people you as a GM can pay attention to at any one time.
Another note: I’ve found that the economy changes significantly with more players. A successful score paying 10 coin is great for 3 players, but for 8 players… Less so. That’s the one mechanic I’ve tinkered with to allow the crew to advance.
I’m running with 5. The biggest challenge I’ve had is making sure everyone is included, as the plan doesn’t always call for every role covered by the players. Granted, I’m on like session 4 so everything could come together beautifully or fly apart into a million pieces by the end of the campaign.
My group was six players, with one flake who often forgot about game night. Optimal, in fact, for me, maximum party size is 5.
At six, I had one guy basically twiddling his thumbs for half the session – it wasn’t always Mr Forgetful, either.
Kris Green Was your one guy unhappy twiddling his thumbs? When I am a player (of any game) I tend to do a lot of thumb-twiddling while immensely enjoying myself. This does sometimes leave GMs worrried that I’m being left out and stressing themswlves and the game to “include” me.
Mike Hoyer it was a different guy in different circumstances, and I know that at least one of them felt like he’d been treated poorly that session.
As a player in that group of Kris Green, I found myself rethinking some LTPs and character goals because I was taking up all the spotlight time while others “waited their turn”. It’s too easy to overshadow someone else when the table is full. It also distorts the mechanics since now the group has 12 downtime actions collectively to sort out Heat, Assets etc vs a group of 3 who have to balance half that for their crew. I personally favour 3 players when GMing, 4 maximum.
Our Cult has seven members in the crew (although I think we have never had more than 6 for a single session). As pointed out above, such a large crew means we have lots of actions to toss at managing heat and whatnot, but our GM has countered that by having a lot of external factors we are constantly having to counter.
Thank you to every one who responded with advice. I have written up an overview of the the session (something I feel would probably be fun for me to continue to do) for those interested how it went.
but the TL;DR; of it is well, the only problems were ones of me being unprepared for the complexities of the factions and my group picking smugglers and having no idea what a score for smugglers should even look like.
But despite that I feel it went quite well.
For smugglers, they need something to smuggle. That means that for one reason or another, one ore more types of goods are considered banned or illegal, and someone wants to get those illegal goods into or out of the city.
Best to think about not just what’s illegal (drugs, electroplasm, unrefined leviathan blood, bottled ghosts, certain weapons, printed material on certain volatile subjects, etc), but also the why of it (public safety, political shenanigans, etc).
Ben Morgan It doesn’t really need to be illegal. Traditionally, most smuggled goods are perfectly legal at their destination, but taxed. Tobacco, alcohol, and various legal drugs are smuggled between, of all places, the US and Canada even today, as well as within both countries. But smuggled cargo can be even more innocuous than those substances, including things like dyes, pottery, fabric, and even books. And of course, as Americans will well remember, that most innocuous of substances, tea.
Good point.