So, it seems I will be a guinea pig of sorts as I am running SwM Friday for either 7 (!) or 8 (!!) PCs. To make it even more challenging/likely to be a debacle I'm making pregens AND it's my first time running the game. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? On the flip side it's a house con and I'll be blessed with outstanding players. So it seems I'm heading toward either a complete disaster or extreme awesomeness. In any case, here's an eidolon. The PC is a warrior who, rather than carrying a weapon, likes to grab whatever he can find and use that.
http://images.thecarconnection.com/med/john-mcclane-die-hard-poster_100315402_m.jpg
You may want to split into 2 games of 4 if you can.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea and the way I'd love to go, but this is a very tightly scheduled con with a set number of players for each slot so I'm going to have to play the hand as it's dealt, I think. With luck my players will get into amping the difficulty for one another and it's take off from there.
ReplyDeleteMy suggestion would be to have a few good situations for perilous phases though out beforehand. Nothing set in stone, but things you can quickly adapt to the game. It can be hard to reliably bring the Storm to so many people at once, and some good prep can help.
ReplyDeleteAnother good idea. And I'm not just saying that because I'd started to do that already. :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a tough one! I have a hard limit of 4 rogue players when I run the game. It breaks my heart to turn folks away, but my experience is that the quality of the game drops precipitously at five or more rogue players.
ReplyDeleteThat said, one tactic I've been thinking about testing is pairing players up to play teams of rogues. Like a six rogue player game where Fafhrd and Gray Mouser meet Elric and Moonglum meet He-Man and Battle Cat. Let them roll and narrate together in the Perilous and Discovery Phases. In the Rogues' Phase, let the demanding player choose whether they're making a demand of the pair or of one half of the pair.
If you do employ that tactic, let me know how it goes!
That's . . . an amazing idea. I wish I had time to pull it together for tomorrow but between work and taking kids to their aunt and then the 4 hour ride up I don't think I could prep it properly. I'm set to run at 6 and it's a stellar bunch of players, so I have high hopes (it's Pegcon).
ReplyDeleteI was suspecting it was for PegCon. We're sorry to have to miss it this year. Too much travel and I swear every years has one less weekend than the previous year.
ReplyDeleteYou will both be missed, but will be present via one of your games (which I'm fairly certain has occurred every year)
ReplyDeleteQuick update - game went REALLY well with 6 rogues. Expanded number of motifs for extra players. More light-hearted than expected. Amazing players made it easy. More detailed recap later
ReplyDeleteExcellent news!
ReplyDeleteSo, the report on SwM for 6. It went very well, no doubt due to the six outstanding players I had who completely embraced the system and ran with it. To handle the extra players I bumped the number of motifs up to five and was prepared to go to six if necessary, but things moved along so well and the different scenes integrated so seamlessly that we didn't need them to tie things together (I know, bad Overplayer! Bad Overplayer! But I didn't want to upset the amazing flow that was going on). The plot was created by an off-the-cuff myth during a Discovery phase (we had to stop a Perilous Phase mid-fight and switch to Discovery as he stood in front of a massive spider-creature and said, "I know where she is, and you should know that we've killed your brother.) and we spun off that the rest of the way. It was not as heavy in tone as I expected - there was a lot of laughing - but that may have been aided by the fact that for the entire night the PCs threw three sets of doubles. THREE. Also, I rolled glum to start every phase. Every single one. Whatever the case. the players seemed intrigued by the system and 3 or 4 asked me where to get the .pdf.
ReplyDeleteTheir only sticking point was over the glum/jovial mechanic. They abided by it, but I don't think they felt it was necessary for the game to work. Epidiah, you should talk with Rob D. about it the next time you gusy have lunch, he was one of the players (and the one who came up with the amazing myth that became our lynchpin.