Games that support campaigns with large groups (6-8) (ttrpg.network)

submitted 1 year ago by yalim@ttrpg.network to c/rpg@ttrpg.network

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I have a pretty sizeable group of friends who like to hang out and play RPGs together. We've done a handful of games, ranging from crunchy stuff through rules-lite games. But one common theme is that our games can go pretty slow. We're a group of 7 most of the time, which means 6 players + 1 GM, which is can make stuff very slow. Iterations of D&D all suffer from this, and it gets really bad in games like Dark Heresey for us. But even tropey, free-form games like Blades in the Dark and most stuff on the Apocalypse engine feel sluggish, since they're so tightly based on the Player-GM feedback cycle.

The only types of games that I've found play quickly with a large group are the light, beer & pretzels games like Everyone Is John, Paranoia, but those don't extend well beyond 1 session. I also like the higher-stakes, longer-form RPGs where the players can shape the world at scale.

Are there games that can support both longer-term campaigns AND large groups, or am I looking for the impossible here?

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[-] WillOfTheWest@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

With larger groups I tend to stick to less mechanically complex games.

Most OSR games can be run on the fly with any number of players. I had a fixed group of 9 run through Keep on the Borderlands, with 1 or two extras jumping in for a session here or there.

My absolute favourite is Savage Worlds. It'ss great as the maths isn't tight and "balancing" an encounter is just a matter of throwing in more mooks, throw in a wild card per 2 or 3 players. It can fit to any setting, though I strongly recommend Deadlands.

My close second favourite is Call of Cthulhu, which I've run with 8 players. There's not a combat focus so sessions are unlikely to get bogged down, and even then, most combat actions are a simple contested roll. Investigations tend to resolve as people splitting into pairs and following different leads; two go archiving at the library, two visit a sanitarium patient, two head over to the local paper to see if any stories have been published or even blocked by an editor, two stake out points of interest.

this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023

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