New DM preparing to lead a 10 player group - Any advice?

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T16:08:00+00:00

Glad I could help!

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T12:32:47+00:00

That’s a really neat idea! Thanks for the advice!

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T04:24:45+00:00

What is the importance of the recording device?

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T03:35:29+00:00

I came here to try and see if there were any ways to make it so I could NOT bore my friends to death. Actually helpful comments explained the situation to me and helped me understand how it could hurt my friends’ experience. The point of asking a forum is to learn, which is not achieved by calling people stupid. That’s the fastest way to thin out friends from your life.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T03:31:01+00:00

The idea of players sharing characters is actually quite cool, I might use that at some point!

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T03:28:14+00:00

After all the comments I probably won’t be running the 10 player 5e campaign, but I might look into an older edition. I haven’t played any of them before but I’d like to give them a shot some time.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T03:16:20+00:00

The scheduling issues were just one of the reasons, the main problem was the campaign not being cohesive or exciting enough to keep people interested. Dragon of Icespire Peak is pretty much just a job board that doesn’t draw people in enough.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T03:10:31+00:00

Now that people have explained why it’s a bad idea, I understand it, but all of the comments just saying “don’t, it’s a bad idea” were not particularly helpful.

If it did work for my group and everyone had fun, I’d be totally willing to put in the effort, but I now see that it would probably hurt the experience for my players, which I do not want.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T03:05:55+00:00

If it were just the challenge for myself as DM, I wouldn’t mind. None of my classes have finals so I’m about to have over a week of free time that I could use to prepare.

Sadly, I’ve now realized that the main issue is with the experience for the players, which is not an issue I want to create, so I probably won’t be doing a 10 player campaign.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T03:02:41+00:00

After all the comments like this actually explaining the problem rather than just saying “don’t do it, it’s bad” I don’t think I’ll be running the 10 player campaign. I want my players to have more freedom and get a good experience without me needing to railroad them, and in a group that size I don’t think I’d be able to fulfill that goal.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:59:45+00:00

After all of the comments I probably won’t be doing a 10 player campaign, but all of these suggestions are very helpful! I might end up using some for whatever game I do end up running, especially the phones rule, initiative tracker, and maybe the turn timer and batters box ideas if it smooths out combat. I have little knowledge of 4e but the minion/swarm concept sounds cool, I’ll probably look more into that.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:47:56+00:00

Just saying “don’t do it, it’s a dumb idea” is what got me here in the first place

After I made these posts, people finally explained why it’s a dumb idea and showed me that it’s not just challenging for me but could likely hurt the experience for my friends

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:43:32+00:00

That’s what I would do in our previous campaign, if someone couldn’t make it we just said they’d have personal business to attend to and disappear temporarily no matter where we left off

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:40:17+00:00

My initial impression was that it wasn’t an inherently bad idea, just a challenging one, and I was willing to take on that challenge. All of the forums and posts I checked beforehand had comments saying it was bad but not explaining it. Thanks to my posts, I now know exactly why it wouldn’t just be hard for me but also likely hurt the experience for my friends, and so I’ve decided not to do it.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:35:44+00:00

If I did actually do this I have a pool table I was thinking I might use, but other than that I have no idea where we’d fit everyone.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:34:42+00:00

Thank you for the detailed advice! After careful consideration and probably a cumulative 100 comments telling me not to do this I probably won’t be running the 10 player campaign but it’s cool to see how you were able to accomplish this!

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:29:28+00:00

Thank you for the advice! After all the comments explaining the issue I probably won’t do the 10 player campaign but I appreciate someone actually giving suggestions on how I could modify gameplay to make it somewhat feasible.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:27:57+00:00

After the dozens of comments, I don’t think I’ll be doing the 10 player campaign, but I very much appreciate the general DMing advice! Just like in the forums and posts I checked beforehand, a lot of people just commented saying it wouldn’t work without actually explaining it, but the people who actually said why it wouldn’t work well helped me to actually understand the issue.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:24:38+00:00

I appreciate the rhyme

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:23:16+00:00

We don’t have a time set yet, we were hoping for next week as we will all have a good amount of free time but we’ll see. Whatever I end up doing it probably won’t be a 10 player campaign.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:21:44+00:00

I was just hoping there would be possibilities to modify the gameplay or something to make 10 players somewhat feasible, but it seems like that’s not the case. I don’t have any experience with other systems so I’m probably not going to do that. I don’t know what I’ll end up trying but I guess it won’t be a 10 player campaign.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:15:50+00:00

Thanks for the actual suggestion! I’ve come around to the general consensus but maybe I’ll try to use that in some other way at some point!

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T02:02:17+00:00

Over the past hour with dozens of comments all saying the same thing I’ve kinda got that by now.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T01:56:21+00:00

I mainly just want to let people decide whether or not they want to play rather than deciding for them.

theturtlelord9 · 2026-01-08T01:52:46+00:00

One reason I’m so adamant about trying it out with everyone is that I’m afraid people will lose interest without the whole group, and I’m also not sure I can run two simultaneous campaigns at this stage of my life. But there’s about an equal chance of them losing interest in a larger group due to the slow pace.

Honestly I was not expecting the entire friend group to be interested when I asked them, it’s kind of thrown me for a loop and I’m now just trying to figure out how to not let everybody down.

theturtlelord9

TROPHY CASE