How to Run D&D for Large Groups

#1 Move the Spotlight Around and Involve Everyone

In a large group, it’s easy for quieter players to fade into the background while the more talkative ones dominate. As DM, you need to bounce the spotlight around during non-combat scenes, making sure each player has the chance to contribute. This means actively giving quieter players opportunities to act (even if they pass) and gently reigning in louder players so others can speak.

#2 Push Along Decision Making

Large groups can really get bogged down when making a decision. With more people and more idea comes more discussion and more indecision. Allow a reasonable amount of discussion, but after enough time, the DM needs to push the players to make a decision so the game can move on.

Certainly there are BAD decisions that could lead to catastrophic results, but most decisions in RPGs aren’t at the campaign ending scale. For instance, what to do next. It usually doesn’t really matter, even though players can spend endless amounts of time discussing it. They could sometimes have literally already done one of the things during the time they spend discussing whether they should do it or something else.

Don’t look for 100% agreement; look for a majority consensus, vote, etc.

#3 Assume Courses of Action

With large groups, it not reasonable to take a poll every five minutes, nor to ask each individual player what they are doing in particular situations. Let me explain… Explain how in my moderator one-shot there were about eight players. As they were in the dungeon, occasionally a couple players would say they go down X hallway to check out something. I ASSUMED that the entire group was going with them and narrated the party moving down the hallway and describing what they saw.

Stopping the game in moments like this slows things down and INVITES discussions and decision making WHEN IT’S NOT NEEDED. “But Luke, that’s stealing player agency!” Sure, you can make that argument. I’ll reply that small sacrifices must occasionally be made to keep the game fun for all. I’d rather assume a little agency on behalf of my players – when it’s harmless to do so – and run a fun game, RATHER than let things grind down to a crawl because I ask the other six players if they are going along with the first two or not. Sometimes that decision is important – and then you should let the group make it – other times it’s NOT important, and you should just assume and move things along.

#4 Keep Combat Snappy and Interesting

Large groups can be most challenging to run during combat. Things bog down and can take forever.

So, you really need to work hard to keep combat running at a smooth, quick pace, and also to make combat INTERESTING and FUN. You need both! A fast combat doesn’t necessarily mean a FUN combat. But slow, tedious combats ARE often boring.

Now if you want to know how to do this, I won’t reinvent the wheel here because I already have a video on my YouTube channel that go into details on these topics. See my 12 Steps to Faster Combat video.

#5 Play with Whomever Shows Up

With large groups, it’s inevitable that at least a couple players won’t be able to make the game session. That’s fine. PLAY ANYWAY! This is actually a good thing because it makes the game more manageable for the game master and probably more fun for the players – because usually smaller groups are better.

You’re here in this video because you want help with running large groups, right? So, when a beautiful solution to your large group lands right in your lap – namely, a few players not making a session – don’t reject that solution!

Have an agreed upon mechanic for how the group handles missing players’ characters, of course. Know what you’ll do as the GM to adjust the game (or not!) for fewer PCs if that’s what happens when players are gone. But otherwise, just play the game.

#6 Variety, Variety, Variety!!!

With any gaming group, you generally want to include a variety of game elements – combat, exploration, and social interactions – to appeal to the different things players enjoy. However, with a LARGE group, you’re even more likely to have players with a diverse range of preferences and different parts of the game they enjoy.

So, make sure you’re including a variety of situations in your game. Combats; diplomacy; interesting NPCs to interact with; stealth missions; exploration missions – just different stuff to keep everyone engaged. Obviously, as you get to know all your players well enough, you can start to focus more on things you know appeal to the most number of players…but always include elements that appeal to just a few players, too. Don’t ignore them.

#7 Handle Some Things Outside the Game

If you the game master have time to do so, consider handing some things outside the game, that is, away from the game table between sessions. There are parts of the game that are either not interesting to do at the table, take up a lot of time with larger groups, or are individual activities anyway – these are candidates for being done between game sessions.

Examples: shopping trips between adventures where everyone stocks up on healing potions and stuff; downtime (individual activity); leveling up characters. If you do these things between sessions, you’ll have more time at the game table to play the game.

#8 Don’t Split the Party!

All the standard reasons for not splitting the party are AMPLIFIED when running a larger group. If two players go off to do X, three are doing Y, and four are doing Z, you have two things going on.

FIRST, you the game master are needing to run THREE games at the same time, which is more challenging for you. Describe moving along X scene, then Y, then Z, and swapping back and forth between them as each scene/story is progressed.

SECOND, even though you are doing your best to swap back and forth among the three groups of players, there’s still LOTS of time that many of the players simply aren’t playing the game. They CAN’T play the game. They are spectators at best; on their cell phones most likely; or nodding off at the table at worst.

I suggest having a discussion with the players and agreeing up on a social contract that due to the size of the group, splitting the party will be frowned on even more than it normally is. Basically, ask them to agree to stay together to make the game better for everyone.

#9 Let the Players Help You

I’m not usually an advocate of players taking on traditional game master roles (such as tracking initiative, roleplaying NPCs traveling with the group, etc.) but when running a large group, I would definitely consider looking at this more.

The benefit is twofold: First, it takes stuff of the game master’s plate (because running a large group is challenging) and second, it gives the players additional stuff to do besides just run their characters – because with a large group, there will be good chunks of time where they’ll be waiting their turn to do something with their character. So, the stuff you delegate to players helps keep them engaged in the game and not bored out of their skulls.

#10 Split the Group and Run Two Games Instead

I bet some of you saw this coming, right? The obvious solution, it seems, when you have a group of 8 or 10 players is to simply split the big group into two smaller groups that have a better number of players, 4 or 5 in each group. This of course means that you the game master must have the time to run TWO GAMES instead of one, but if you do and you WANT TO, this might be the easiest way to handle the issue. And if one of the other players wants to be the game master, they could run the second game!

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