We play over Discord and one of the main things I told them is don't worry about missing sessions. Back in session 0 and whenever I added characters I told them there would be limits on the number sessions they could play and they were encouraged to talk amongst themselves both in DM's and in text chat.
From there I often put together a signup sheet with the number of players requested for each session, usually with limits on numbers and no more than 2 games played per weekend.
The mission based system means that the campaign works like a series of one-shots all put together to create a larger story. The players are all agents (some started as recruits) in a covert military organization where the goal is to protect their city allowing me a structure of brief for mission, send out on mission and return back for debrief. Then while I build off previous missions, it works like an actual organization where you have multiple teams and groups and not everyone knows exactly what other teams and groups have done other than via in game roleplay and conversation.
There have only been three multi-part missions where specific people have been required. One early in the campaign where I tuned the difficulty too high and had to send the players who weren't present on that mission on a rescue mission, one where I setup a 3 part set piece battle where Friday night was phase one of the big enemy, Saturday afternoon was phase two and Sunday and was city defense against other threats simultaneously and the third was a multi-week mission across the ocean to face another large scale boss fight.
If players need to miss significant time it isn't a problem. I had one player who was gone for six months. In game the other players were told he was fired from the organization, then he returned as a cyborg having actually volunteered for a special program with the public facing military.
Have there been hiccups with that many players? Sure. But it works well. At least if the 1,800 Discord messages sent throughout the day on Wednesday by my players to plan out what to do about a specific problem is any indication.
And yes I know a lot of you would never attempt to play a campaign like this. To be honest, this was a pandemic lark that I thought would fail. I figured it would be a learning experience, not something I could ultimately write a book about.
I have a lot of respect for you for devoting essentially the entire weekend every weekend to your gaming sessions. There is no way in hell my wife would allow me to do that :D
Okay, so by the sound of it you created a West Marches campaign.
What sort of back end planning did you do to both enable a large group, have a rotating cast, but also allow for in-game for characters to be missing/not present at certain points.
Also, how did you handle progression and mechanical growth without power gaps forming between clusters of characters and individual characters?
First of all we are playing over Discord. There's no way this ever could have worked trying to play in person.
When I started with the group of 11, 8 had never played any TTRPG before. So in the setting I made all the players agents in a secret police type organization. Meaning as the NPC Director of the organization (who is now the ultimate big bad of the game) I was able to assign them missions, using my 3 experienced players (though none had played BESM before) as commanders in story and for helping the others through game mechanics and the basics of playing an RPG so I could focus on worldbuilding, lore and nuts and bolts early on.
In the early portion of the campaign I then coordinated with the 3 commanders to make at least one was on every mission and then used them almost as co-DMs. Sure they were playing and I was controlling the monsters/opponents/etc. but they were doing the actual teaching to the new players. This also allowed for a natural way to not have certain characters present. Team there's an emergency. Whoever is present on duty report now type things and that would be the team for a specific mission.
As the time of character creation, I told every character that I was holding back a number of points for potential plot and story developments. For characters that were falling behind for whatever reason (whether it be prolonged absence or a need to rebalance) I then proposed to give new abilities to my players using those points. Additionally I made heavy use of artifacts in the early game that I gave to players and allowed them to use without spending points if I felt it was necessary. Many of those artifacts were either destroyed over the course of the game or the game has surpassed the power level of those items.
When introducing new characters (either via new players joining the campaign or via new characters created because of character death) I took the average of the top 8 players total character points to assign the pool.
Lastly, I homebrewed puzzles into many of the boss fights, allowing a different style of collaborative element between the team members on those missions. A good example of this is the fight against Emerald Weapon. If you aren't familiar with the fight in Final Fantasy, that fight occurs underwater and there is a timer before you run out of air. I then made every action taken by anyone count as 1 extra energy damage at the end of the round for everyone, adding stress and urgency to the fight.
How the heck do you wrangle so many players?
We play over Discord and one of the main things I told them is don't worry about missing sessions. Back in session 0 and whenever I added characters I told them there would be limits on the number sessions they could play and they were encouraged to talk amongst themselves both in DM's and in text chat. From there I often put together a signup sheet with the number of players requested for each session, usually with limits on numbers and no more than 2 games played per weekend. The mission based system means that the campaign works like a series of one-shots all put together to create a larger story. The players are all agents (some started as recruits) in a covert military organization where the goal is to protect their city allowing me a structure of brief for mission, send out on mission and return back for debrief. Then while I build off previous missions, it works like an actual organization where you have multiple teams and groups and not everyone knows exactly what other teams and groups have done other than via in game roleplay and conversation. There have only been three multi-part missions where specific people have been required. One early in the campaign where I tuned the difficulty too high and had to send the players who weren't present on that mission on a rescue mission, one where I setup a 3 part set piece battle where Friday night was phase one of the big enemy, Saturday afternoon was phase two and Sunday and was city defense against other threats simultaneously and the third was a multi-week mission across the ocean to face another large scale boss fight. If players need to miss significant time it isn't a problem. I had one player who was gone for six months. In game the other players were told he was fired from the organization, then he returned as a cyborg having actually volunteered for a special program with the public facing military. Have there been hiccups with that many players? Sure. But it works well. At least if the 1,800 Discord messages sent throughout the day on Wednesday by my players to plan out what to do about a specific problem is any indication. And yes I know a lot of you would never attempt to play a campaign like this. To be honest, this was a pandemic lark that I thought would fail. I figured it would be a learning experience, not something I could ultimately write a book about.
I have a lot of respect for you for devoting essentially the entire weekend every weekend to your gaming sessions. There is no way in hell my wife would allow me to do that :D
Wow! I'm speechless!
Okay, so by the sound of it you created a West Marches campaign. What sort of back end planning did you do to both enable a large group, have a rotating cast, but also allow for in-game for characters to be missing/not present at certain points. Also, how did you handle progression and mechanical growth without power gaps forming between clusters of characters and individual characters?
First of all we are playing over Discord. There's no way this ever could have worked trying to play in person. When I started with the group of 11, 8 had never played any TTRPG before. So in the setting I made all the players agents in a secret police type organization. Meaning as the NPC Director of the organization (who is now the ultimate big bad of the game) I was able to assign them missions, using my 3 experienced players (though none had played BESM before) as commanders in story and for helping the others through game mechanics and the basics of playing an RPG so I could focus on worldbuilding, lore and nuts and bolts early on. In the early portion of the campaign I then coordinated with the 3 commanders to make at least one was on every mission and then used them almost as co-DMs. Sure they were playing and I was controlling the monsters/opponents/etc. but they were doing the actual teaching to the new players. This also allowed for a natural way to not have certain characters present. Team there's an emergency. Whoever is present on duty report now type things and that would be the team for a specific mission. As the time of character creation, I told every character that I was holding back a number of points for potential plot and story developments. For characters that were falling behind for whatever reason (whether it be prolonged absence or a need to rebalance) I then proposed to give new abilities to my players using those points. Additionally I made heavy use of artifacts in the early game that I gave to players and allowed them to use without spending points if I felt it was necessary. Many of those artifacts were either destroyed over the course of the game or the game has surpassed the power level of those items. When introducing new characters (either via new players joining the campaign or via new characters created because of character death) I took the average of the top 8 players total character points to assign the pool. Lastly, I homebrewed puzzles into many of the boss fights, allowing a different style of collaborative element between the team members on those missions. A good example of this is the fight against Emerald Weapon. If you aren't familiar with the fight in Final Fantasy, that fight occurs underwater and there is a timer before you run out of air. I then made every action taken by anyone count as 1 extra energy damage at the end of the round for everyone, adding stress and urgency to the fight.
This is awesome! Squee!
Awesome, I could never handle that many players. quick question can i your Monsters i need some help in that regard