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Kallera · **10-19-2017, 08:29 AM**

I'm in a long term campaign with a large number of people on discord, and I tend to enjoy going at a decent clip with responses, even when my character isn't majorly contributing to the action. Though I know not everyone is like this. One concern that was run into was people having to deal with time skips or the action having gone ahead of their character between postings. How do people deal with this?

The speed of the canpaign and making sure everyone gets their action in seems to be a tightrope walk that is difficult to get around, especially when your character is relying on another's response, or want to bring someone in but don't know how long they'll be replying.

Is that the case for large parties of roleplayers in general? How do people and the campaign "DM" prepare for this?

Lucius Ignatius · **10-19-2017, 08:51 AM**

Generally it's a pretty difficult thing to do. This is coming from someone who recently ended a discord plot with about a group of... about 5-8 people. I was co-DMing with another friend of mine, and it was a lot of stop-go-stop-go between replies. We didn't necessarily have a post order, but we did try to allow everyone to post back to each other before moving on to the next part.

We almost had about 10 people--and if we did, I don't think between the both of us, we could've carried on the way we did. What we did do, as DM's, is section off half of the group, I took one half, and my co-DM took the other. There was certain things going on with one group, and certain things with the other. But in the end, we ended up pulling them together and connecting the groups with fill-in storytelling on both sides.

Combat was typically free form, but at the end, we had a post order with a custom combat system based on D&D rolls--we used a discord bot for rolls instead.

I don't know if that helps, but I hope it helps a little!

A thing to note: Due to time zones, it was impossible for everyone to be on that the same time, so a few of us had to just respond when we could, and make sure it was enough to reply to.

Between my DM friend and I, I don't believe we will be attempting this set up again, unless we have more DM management and a better set up. We did as good as we were able, but overall it wasn't ideal in the least.

Gegenji · **10-19-2017, 09:10 AM**

(10-19-2017, 08:51 AM)Lucius Ignatius Wrote: We almost had about 10 people--and if we did, I don't think between the both of us, we could've carried on the way we did. What we did do, as DM's, is section off half of the group, I took one half, and my co-DM took the other. There was certain things going on with one group, and certain things with the other. But in the end, we ended up pulling them together and connecting the groups with fill-in storytelling on both sides.

That's kind of what I did when I did an RP event that had about a dozen people involved (including myself). We split off the group into three "teams" each. I led one and my two support DMs covered the other two. During that, the support DMs had a general idea of what events might happen and basically ran with it as they wanted, and shot me questions via tells and the like when they weren't sure of something.

After that, there was another scene which involved a Castrum raid and the group got split into halves - one going inside and the others outside causing a distraction and generally keeping the Garleans busy. Again, it had its own sub-DM who basically was given free reign to throw enemies at the outside party while I dealt with the infiltration team.

It all worked... relatively well. Really, I think we had more issues with a couple participants more than with the setup.

Alternately, you could just have a sort of "turn order" - let everyone get a chance to do or say something before going through the next "cycle." Kind of like initiative in any table top RPG. This will certainly slow things down as you get into bigger groups (unless you split them up like mentioned above), but it would certainly allow everyone a chance to say or do something.

Or... you can just try and roll with it and assume the folks that are posting faster are just... doing things faster. Take the Grindstone. We've had several situations where a handful of speedy posters get through all their matches relatively quickly, and then are stuck waiting on one or two matches where either the RNG Gods have decreed it would be a lengthy parry-fest or one (or both) fighters are taking far longer to write out their attacks.

In those situations, we usually just figure that the lengthier fight is, in fact, just taking longer. We don't really bother worrying about how one fighter can go through three matches where they've taken a total of, say... 10-15 actions while the slower match has taken all of six. We just say that this fight is "still going" and let the faster fighter just sort of chill and observe or maybe do a little bit of side RP until the matches catch up. Maybe prod the slower fighters into trying to be quicker and/or shorter in their emotes so that they can finish a bit quicker. Not the most elegant solution, but when you have numbers like the Grindstone you sometimes just have to hand-wave things for the sake of expediency.

Mermaid · **10-19-2017, 09:12 AM**

The few times I've done RP with large groups of people? Everyone got a turn. That was it. We all got our first posts out and then continued going in that order.

This was only broken if people split into groups. When that happened it was handled one of two ways. Method one was the smaller groups were expected to go at a decent pace so they could be brought back together without time skips or stuff being role played privately. Method two was some sort of action would happen that everyone would get dragged into regardless of how far they'd gone.

It really just comes down to having a lot of patience. I got my start derping around in chat rooms like everyone else but it was forum/PM/IM RP that really got me hooked and it's easily my preferred style. I've never had a problem with an RP going slow or taking awhile so long as the other people involved posted regularly and didn't drop out. So really my advice is slow down, you don't have to have a strict post order but try to give everyone a turn, and be prepared for a looong campaign.

Lucius Ignatius · **10-19-2017, 09:31 AM**

(10-19-2017, 09:10 AM)Gegenji Wrote:
(10-19-2017, 08:51 AM)Lucius Ignatius Wrote: We almost had about 10 people--and if we did, I don't think between the both of us, we could've carried on the way we did. What we did do, as DM's, is section off half of the group, I took one half, and my co-DM took the other. There was certain things going on with one group, and certain things with the other. But in the end, we ended up pulling them together and connecting the groups with fill-in storytelling on both sides.
That's kind of what I did when I did an RP event that had about a dozen people involved (including myself). We split off the group into three "teams" each. I led one and my two support DMs covered the other two. During that, the support DMs had a general idea of what events might happen and basically ran with it as they wanted, and shot me questions via tells and the like when they weren't sure of something.

Yep, exactly what we did. Though we just had myself and my friend doing a co-DM... support DMs would have been a godsend, haha. Smile

I always like to just have a 'set path', but the players in the campaign can deviate however they would like within their general, reasonable restrictions. I like to see what they will come up with to get to that point.

Lucius Ignatius · **10-19-2017, 09:40 AM**

(10-19-2017, 09:12 AM)Mermaid Wrote: The few times I've done RP with large groups of people? Everyone got a turn. That was it. We all got our first posts out and then continued going in that order.

Â So really my advice is slow down, you don't have to have a strict post order but try to give everyone a turn, and be prepared for a looong campaign.

I think this is a good way to go about it, in all honesty. Ours took... about 3-4 months, with some hiccups with people being busy, some minor disagreements between players at some points (which, all in all got solved). We wanted it to roughly begin at the beginning of Early Access of Stormblood, to about the beginning/mid of August. It wound up taking up until mid September, but generally it was well worth the slow pace, albeit most of us were really aching to get I.G. and RP.

It was difficult for us because a lot of us didn't even have access to certain Stormblood areas, which a lot of them took place. We had an idea to just do PVE content for maybe.. the first two months so we could get things unlocked/enjoy content, while those first two months were done in Discord, and the rest was to be done I.G. but unfortunately none of that worked out as planned. We had a lot of on-the-fly changes to our original plan, based on the needs of our campaign team.

Thorbought · **10-19-2017, 11:04 AM**

I dm a large event for my FC every week with usually around 20 people. First of all, you won't make everyone happy so try to do what you think is best instead of attempting to cater to everyone. It's been said before but make sure you divide people into groups with other dms. The smaller the group, the better as people will get more opportunities to talk and bond. For combat and such, I will do turn orders and wait for everyone to go. I know some will be slow to respond so I will sometimes tell them to prepare their rp in advance. (For example, I will be typing up a response to the previous person and I'll tell the slow rper in this case to have their type up ready).Â

I'll also usually try and get a response out of everyone or make sure everyone will get some attention. Some rpers are a bit slow or shy and may not talk much in these big group events. In this case, I'll try to focus some action their way such as having npcs go up and speak to them.

Kallera · **10-19-2017, 07:02 PM**

Thanks for the responses!

I think I'll float the sub dm suggestion at the next large scale rp we plan. It sounds like a powerful idea and a good way to not isolate people.

C'kayah Polaali · **10-19-2017, 10:27 PM**

I've done a decent number of largish GMed events, so I'll chime in with the "use a post order" thing. I tend to let everything happen free-form if there's no conflict happening: If it's a party, or a meeting, or anything like that, I'll just let it all go free-form unless someone is obviously being left out because they can't type fast enough.

With conflict - combat, for instance - I'll establish a post order, which naturally slows things down. I've started using /p and/or linkshells to help with this, though. I'll ask people, when it's their turn, to post OOCly in /p or the linkshell. Just a quick one-liner saying what they'll do. Then any rolls that are necessary are handled, and we move on to the next person. 60 seconds per person, tops. Then, while they're waiting for their next turn, they can craft up an IC post that has their action and its resolution (because we know if it's succeeded or not by that point) to be posted in /say or /em. This has been really helpful in keeping the action moving, so you might want to give it a try, as well.

Erah'sae · **10-20-2017, 08:22 AM**

What I've done in DM'd scenes is I set a timer for people to get their actions in, or their character didn't get one.Â This keeps it flowing and stops people from overthinking the situation unless their characters are also going to be paralyzed by overthinking the situation.

No 'in scene' time bubbles, no jumping about.Â If someone needs a break to handle something RL, we may pause.

It's good to let the players know ahead of time what the timer is, and give a warning when it approaches.Â Lets say there's a 3 minute timer.Â Give an OOC warning at 1min seconds, 30 seconds, and done.Â Then actions are resolved, the DM responds and we move forward.

Roleplay speed in a scene with multuple players(more than 4)

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes