Megagames - Have you tried one?

[Fhaolan 4,494]

Long, long ago, I ran a tabletop RPG that has 20-some players. It... didn't work, got bogged down and fell apart rather rapidly.

But apparently someone has figured out a way to make them work. Day-long tabletop games with up to *300* people in them on themes like alien invasions, zombie apocalypses, massive dungeon crawls, etc.

So my question is, has anyone here done one of these? How did it go?

I've seen videos on YouTube about them, but the videos seem to point out the bits to me that make me concerned.

1) That's a lot of people, most of whom you don't know personally. So like MMO's it would be really easy for a small group of trolls to ruin the experience for everyone, or on the exact opposite end having a couple of people take it *so* seriously that it effectively does the same thing (On the renfaire/reenactment circuit these are called 'stitchcounters', because they actually whine about how historically clothing would only have x stitches per inch, not y stitches per inch like *your* outfit. I dunno if there's an equivalent term in gaming.) And because of the nature of the game, once the trolls/stitchcounters have done their work, that game is *done*. Your day is wasted.

2) The games are bounded by a RL time limit (6-8 hours), so in many of the videos I don't see them reaching an actual resolution to the game. They just ... end with a time-out. And it's not like you can come back next session to continue it, once the game is over it's over. I dunno how I'd feel about that.

[SugarCoatxMarblePie 701]

Imagine waiting for everyone to have a turn, it'd be difficult unless you do it rapid fire, in which case you need a brilliant literal book before hand so you can literally just ask a multiple choice question to each person in succession to advance the plot.

[child of the night 271]

4 hours ago, Fhaolan said:

Long, long ago, I ran a tabletop RPG that has 20-some players. It... didn't work, got bogged down and fell apart rather rapidly.

But apparently someon has figured out a way to make them work. Day-long tabletop games with up to *300* people in them on themes like alien invasions, zombie apocalypses, massive dungeon crawls, etc.

So my question is, has anyone here done one of these? How did it go?

I've seen videos on YouTube about them, but the videos seem to point out the bits to me that make me concerned.

1) That's a lot of people, most of whom you don't know personally. So like MMO's it would be really easy for a small group of trolls to ruin the experience for everyone, or on the exact opposite end having a couple of people take it *so* seriously that it effectively does the same thing (On the renfaire/reenactment circuit these are called 'stitchcounters', because they actually whine about how historically clothing would only have x stitches per inch, not y stitches per inch like *your* outfit. I dunno if there's an equivalent term in gaming.) And because of the nature of the game, once the trolls/stitchcounters have done their work, that game is *done*. Your day is wasted.

2) The games are bounded by a RL time limit (6-8 hours), so in many of the videos I don't see them reaching an actual resolution to the game. They just ... end with a time-out. And it's not like you can come back next session to continue it, once the game is over it's over. I dunno how I'd feel about that.

So I actually did one of these mega games once and I have to say, setting them up is a nightmare but once they work they are quite interesting.

What we had was a 421 person coordinated RPG world designed around the Dungeons and Dragons system. Everyone was divided up depending on their own basis but the main breakdown went like this:

1. There was 1 world master (me) where everything was controlled to their own will. This person controlled natural disasters and had other major events.
2. There are 20 country masters who each had control over the main countries, they made sure quests went out to player teams and they controlled smaller natural events
3. There were 2-4 dungeon masters per country, they controlled the teams and basic game play of the matches in a similar fashion to D&D
4. Lastly were the player teams which were separated into either 9-5 people based on the dungeon masters in their country

The game basically played out as if it was it's own mini world which indeed it was. The players each started out in their own sections and after roughly 15 hours 2 countries had taken over the rest placing themselves at the dominate position. A couple of people had died in the game so they ended up getting to watch over the other players as they completed the story of the world. The game eventually ended with a peace treaty between the nations and a major war against the final boss of the game who withe their now full army they managed to beat.

The game was freaking intense from start to finish and I must say I was extremely proud of it. I would probably do it again but it was hard enough to find the people much less coordinate the match

[cmarston1 5,965]

Nope.

It sounds like it would be too time consuming for me to want to bother with.

[Guest]

Nah, never heard of it, never tried it.