Chris' group sounded much like the one I "broke my teeth on". 12 dudes and rifts, rocking out to heavy metal and rap. With every ARCH-type (spelled wrong for Pat) of guys (jock, grunge band guy, computer guy, rap guy, etc...)

We would meet in a apartment complex near 141 & Manchester and local restaurants would fear us as well.

Thanks for the praise much appreciated!

Nice episode. Fresh blood is good sometimes, and this is one of those times.

Fortunately I have never been in a group larger than 7. And, from listening to this week's podcast, it sounds like that is a good thing.

Even 7 seems like a large amount, I like 4 players plus DM best.

How that I'm thinking about it, there are like 13 people in the rotation for this podcast. Maybe you should split THAT up. Fear the Boot #1, and Fear the Boot #2. Easy for a listener to make this suggestion which requires no work on my part.

I'll be happy with this and Postcards, which has a similar feel to it. Thanks for the show!

Hail Gnomegann!

Jokes aside, if people recall correctly, I ran my first Traveller Con game at FtC4. that was a 12 player game. It was technically my first official Con game as well, so I felt like I had a lot to step up to. According to many of the players in that game, they absolutely loved it. Ever since then, I've been wanting to run a large scale like that again, but albeit a bit more organized.

Warning: Incoming Gamer Story
When I first started playing D&D, I played in the Living Grayhawk campaign during Year 6 of the campaign. My first con experience was a weekend FULL of LG modules. The Friday night of the con was something called a "Battle Interactive." A BI esentially was a module where, everyone that was signed up for it took part in a much larger adventure. Ours was a pretty kickass one. To break it down, Living Grayhawk had the Average Party Level system. Take the average level of the table and play that difficulty, which was broken up into even numbers. There were APL tables from 2 all the way to 14. This module seperated us into two further groups, 2-10, and 10+ (Tenth level characters were encouraged to go to the lower side, but allowed in the upper game.) The two groups were split into two different rooms.

I formed an APL 4 table with 5 of my friends. Another friend had a 10th level Wizard but wanted to chill in the lower bracket with us, so he was at a different table. Esentially, a giant demon gate had opened in the middle of a city, and demons were doing two things. 1) Assaulting the Governor's Manson (APL 10+), and kidnapping hostages (APL 2-10). We knew that this was all connected somehow, but didn't really realize it until my character (Yup. I'm the lucky one) got hit by a Cause Fear spell and was forced to run. I'm an archer, I have no armor, x4 run it is. The Overall Head GM (Who wrote the module I found out later) came over to me, and told me to go to another table when my initiative came up. I walked over, introduced myself and the Head GM said, "Ok. He's Feared, 1 round to go, and this is his initiative. Good luck." I asked the guy beside me what table this was. It was an APL 6. I climbed a roof and started raining arrows down. The Head GM declared taht something happened and GM's needed to head to Phase 2, which essentially meant, "Hurt them." My table needed help, so my Wizard friend who had a fly spell up, walked over, said his initiave, dropped a fireball down, went to where I was, picked me up, and dropped me off at my original table. Finally, our APL 4 table was getting rocked in the final phase, so we asked for help, and a guy walked over, asked our GM something, they had a little conversation and he walked back to his table on the other side of the room. Time goes by and our GM motions to him, he yells from across the room, "Does a 28 hit? That's including the -10 for ranged penalties." He literally laid artillery fire on the monsters that were kicking our asses.

It's a memory that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Gaming Story Ended

With that said, I'm putting together a possible big game similar to that, using Savage Worlds but based in the Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer universe. 4 GMs with me playing Head GM. Does that sound appealing for a Con Game?

(Also, toying with a Traveller idea where 1 crew is on the ground, the other crew is in space duking it out. Thoughts?)

Well, that game on Friday night was interesting to say the least. The particulars of the game aside, running a game with twice the amount of people does make the game much less personal.

You can make a large group work, but the experience isn't as immersive as when you have a small one.

Chris Mais is a good friend. Unfortunately, all of our previous attempts to have him on the show were consumed by that demon, Skype, and its peripheral programs. Expect him again as a guest, but given that he's got his own family of shows, I doubt he'll become part of the regular circulation.

Julia is someone we met at Fear the Con. She's the girlfriend of a guy that has his own RPG podcast. She's eloquent and well-versed in geeky stuff, so we asked if she wanted to try out on our show. Does that make her a new host in rotation? No idea. We try not to make that sort of commitment until both the new person and existing hosts have a chance to see whether it's a desirable arrangement for all parties involved.

But...yeah...we do have quite a few in circulation. Chad, Chris (the other one), Dan, Johann, John, Pat, and Wayne. Karla is currently our first alternate, and I think we changed her name to yellow. Beth is more of a potentially recurring guest at this point, mostly for the purpose of spilling the goods on Pat.

As for making two shows out of that, the editing would be the death of me!

Oh, now I remember her!

What the heck does erectile dysfunction have to do with large gaming groups?

I guess it could be pertinent to "The problems players have to contend with", but is that really something you want to discuss with your gaming group?

FIRE ZE LASERS

Well, combats with more players are bigger, harder and longer-lasting.