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I’m catching up with some old episodes of RPG Circus and liked a segment about group size and Henchmen in the party. I sent them an email with some thoughts and decided to cross-post. Here are two points regarding group size, player types, and henchmen.
The first point is about the difficulty of providing *equal spotlight to all players* in large groups. In my groups of up to seven players, I usually have one or two really quiet people. When I ask them, they say they enjoy the game. I figured that they are either casual players that just enjoy the company and the chaos at the gaming table, or they just like imagining the events without necessarily feeling the need to share what is going on in their head. That’s how I stopped worrying about unequal spotlight. The only thing I pay close attention to is when shy people want to say something but they get interrupted all the time. I’ll make sure that everybody gets their say, and if necessary that means we’ll go around the table, player by player.
The second point is about NPC characters in the party, or secondary player characters. In my D&D 3.5 campaign with up to seven players, I still encourage people to *create secondary characters*. I have a house rule saying that all player characters will turn into NPCs of the campaign setting when they reach level 10 because I don’t like how the rules slow combat down at higher levels. I also have a house rule saying that new characters start at level one. Thus, there is an advantage of bringing in secondary characters: if your primary character dies, or gets taken out of the game, your secondary character is no longer on level one. I had read about this so-called Entourage Approach in the old school fanzine Fight On. Secondary characters get half XP and that really works for me.
On his blog, Jeff Uurtamo also asked how to find players for old games. I find that in order to get new players for my old school D&D game (Labyrinth Lord rules) I had to recruit new players that had never gamed before, I had to start playing in a group that is interested in playing many different systems, and I had to end my existing D&D 3.5 campaign. Every one of these steps gave me one or two players. Together, I finally had a group big enough to run it.
how to find players for old games
Finding others to *run* the old school games for me has been impossible.
#RPG #Old School
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Hey Alex! This is Marshall, from the podcast. Loved your email, so thanks for that.
My point about spotlight wasn’t so much about inequal spotlight as just insufficient spotlight. We all get our turn to shine, but those turns are short and far apart. I’m an admitted spotlight hog, and it frustrates me.
Mostly, though, I wanted to comment about your awesome system for handling NPCs and replacement PCs. While I personally think that handling that many support characters likely cuts down on the role-playing specifically (I am of the opinion that RP really needs a one-player one-character connection), I think that your system has some fantastic advantages for maintaining a strong and reasonable continuing story.
– Marshall Smith 2011-06-10 17:06 UTC
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You are right, sometimes people get confused when too many characters are present in the party. There are a few factors that help, though.
When running D&D 3.5 a few levels difference between primary and secondary character make sure that the secondary characters try to keep out of almost all fights and necessarily have little to say — so most of the time players will be role-playing their primary character only. That is one of the main benefits of the half XP rule. It provides secondaries with a background to explain how they got their starting level without forcing the players into dividing their attention in game too much.
In addition to that player characters end up showing up in generations. When the primary reaches fourth or fifth level, people start thinking about a secondary character. Inevitable, the primaries are now the old hats, the veterans, and the secondaries are the newbies.
If we want to give the secondaries more spotlight and develop them further, we can have side adventures for the secondaries only. Within that adventure, they act as primaries, getting full XP and all that. And they don’t detract from the primaries.
– Alex Schroeder 2011-06-11 00:05 UTC
