What are your thoughts on running a game of BitD for a larger group?
Some of the rules can be a bit crunchy. We are planning on this for our next campaign, but I am starting to get a bit concerned as I dig in and refresh myself on the rules.
It is only 6 players, but some narrative/story heavy games can cause trouble with more than 4 players, even when they have simple rules.
We’ve been running the Unbroken for a while with seven, although we regularly are missing one or two players. BitD actually works pretty well for players to drop into and out of. But our most epic heists have had 6 or 7, and they’ve still worked well.
I have four regular players at my table, and one drop-in-and-out player; I have been able to directly compare the two and I prefer the smaller table. The more players you have, the harder it is to keep them threatened, since there’s a larger overall pool of stress to draw from. It’s also harder to keep more players engaged, especially if they have different in-game skill sets; get used to jumping camera and keeping the different threads straight.
The rules themselves scale fine, it’s trying to hit that feeling of desperate action against the odds that troubles me.
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I’d not appreciate to be in a game with more than four players (ok, maybe the occational guest is ok), and I’d not run for more than four players.
Not because of the rules, but because it’s boring. Sure, you could scale things, like in a hack I saw, but I really don’t want to sit around waiting for”my initiative number” …
If I had a group of seven people I’d advocate for a Troupe Style game, which I believe BitD would do brilliantly!
I’ve found 6 players to be about the point where it makes sense to try and encourage an A-plot B-plot kind of structure. This is tricky, and requires cooperation from your players, but it gives the GM a lot more control over where the spotlight is.