Does anyone here have experience running a game of Blades in the Dark with >4 players? Any advice?
Does anyone here have experience running a game of Blades in the Dark with >4 players? Any advice?
Does anyone here have experience running a game of Blades in the Dark with >4 players? Any advice?
They will have a greater amount of Stress to draw on, and more DTAs, so spread the obstacles around freely.
Honestly? Don’t. It diminishes the chance for each character/player to have dramatic moments or to display inner conflict.
If you decide to do it anyway, tell your players to not expect to be able to do things for dramatic flair often. Alternatively, tell them they can, but explain that certain characters/players may get shafted for spotlight time for individual sessions. Obviously neither of these are good outcomes. Scores tend to become more about filling clocks and less about dramatic action. Downtime tends to be more rote and less narratively fulfilling. These are my experiences.
Wow thanks for the advice. Duly noted
It’s not terrible if you’re getting ready for some long term play.
My BitD group has 5 players. It means some weeks some people are in the backstage, but then next week they’re more forestage. Downtime and settin up scores might be a session in itself but that can be fun. It can also mean you have many angles to flesh the world out from. A good way to help bring people in is to give ownership of some things to people not in the scene. Let the Skovlander Cutter talk about how the refugees are set up in duskwall. I also have players who have a hard time being on spotlight for 4 hours and jumping around letting them recharge a bit is a way they can come to the table more often.
If its a one shot then it could be advised to keep to 3 players. That’s a nice swift clip.
There will be some spotlight split. In the BitD one-shot I ran with 5, I needed to rely on more 8+ clocks to keep the suspense and try and involve everyone in the action.
So what in doing is a long term campaign. I have a “stable” of close to ten PC’s and really the most I’ll ever actually have at any given moment is 6. The roster will change every week but usually be round 4
Sebastian Cuellar Are these PC’s all being controlled by different players?
If only half are going to be in play at any given time, are they all going to get the same volume of downtime?
Different players. They get one downtime per score. Thoughts?
If you could consistently split them into 2 groups I would have them be competing scoundrels.
If its going to be different people every time.. Well that’s going to be a lot.
You could sequester downtime to like e-mail updates. Used a shared dice roller to keep people honest. And if there is color moments you can just plan for them to open up your sessions with.
I’m running with 7 players right now. Managing spotlight time is a challenge, but everyone is invested in the proceedings regardless of who has center stage. I guess I’m lucky to have players who are happy to be audience half the time, but shouldn’t that be on the players as much as managing spotlight is on the GM? They need to take some responsibility for their own entertainment, and one way to do that is to get invested in and care about what’s happening to everyone else. But maybe I’m ranting here.
One thing we do is carry on regardless of how many players show up on a given night. The score-driven structure makes it relatively easy to play without the full complement, and they choose opportunities based on which PCs are present.
Different system, but similar concept: I ran a six person game of The Sprawl and had some drop-in-drop-out. As Jason Lutes said it’s definitely hard mode in terms of managing spotlight time, especially since I never make much of an effort to keep the PCs in one group if they end up deciding to split up or multi-task or what have you.
But it works great for a game with scoundrel-y characters. They ended up developing really divergent motivations and their missions and plans overlapped and involved one another but in really interesting ways that probably wouldn’t have happened if they had stuck together. Having more players around the table meant action was either more vignetted or if we really needed to clamp down on a scene without all characters present you can get players in on the NPC action.
Work with players to get a sense of what their character’s default should be. Where are they, how safe are they, what do they get up to; this will help you misdirect when they’re not present. Play with time scaling. Sometimes a character whose player wasn’t there last session was gone for the span of one mission, sometimes it was a few days or a few weeks since anyone saw them.
Think about how this in-fiction organization might be different from one with a more consistent player membership. Think about how it slots into the world and what sorts of challenges and complications to throw at it that speak to it’s less centralized and less dependable nature. Make it more than just the way your players organize–leverage it to produce fiction. 🙂
I’d honestly run two Crews.
Lex Permann Running two crews doesn’t fix the problem I think you think it does.
If I have a bunch of people who want to play, and I’m interested in accommodating that, that doesn’t mean I have twice as much time to run twice as many games!
Presumably, drop-in and drop-out is occurring, too, because scheduling is too erratic for the people interested in playing to guarantee stable time slots of the game. These are just the realities for a lot of gaming groups.
My six player game had a reliable schedule, but I had six because even more than that signed up. I didn’t have the time or energy to run a whole second (parallel or not) crew at a different time. I did, however, have the time and energy to try and do my best with a more exhausting number of players.
I’m aware convention wisdom is that most RPGs are for 3-4 or 3-5 players. Having run bigger games, I’m torn between understanding why people say that and getting a bit frustrated that people seeking advice are consistently told to just not do it. It’s entirely possible to run a game like blades with more than 4 players with everyone having a great time. It’s more work, but it’s entirely doable.
When I’ve run two groups in the past, I would do alternating weeks.
It sounds like there are issues with stability of the group not just group size. That might not be improved by having TWO alternating sessions that not everyone can make consistently with different nominal crews.
I’ve ran five. I prefer to run one score a session, but one player was usually left out, didn’t get the spotlight time. My fix was longer sessions with more long term tasks and often a second score allowing for more spotlight time. Also keep things moving and encourage them to spend stress, they have more between them.
When I run a one-shot for conventions I usually have 6 players. My best advice would be to keep the action coming at the characters rapid-fire, force them to be reactionary. Large groups become harder to manage when the pacing is slow because characters tend to “wander off” and you find yourself being pulled too many directions.
I played Blades and it’s hacks for several hundred hours combined. And only ten of those with five players. Each of those times there was a core of 3 PCs and two one-shotters.
My takeaway: a 4 hour session with a score and downtime phase out of the question. But it’s cool. Ish.
If you do this, get used to success due to easy fictional basis for teamwork actions. Additionally, they’ve a lot of stress to throw around, and more backup, so expect them to feel like tier 1 immediately.
Moving forward: My instinct is to keep tables at 3 or 4 PCs, and use a variant of cohort downtime rules for all PCs when I’ve got more (just for pacing).