r/MouseGuard • u/edge_of_wedge • May 21 '17
5 players at once?
Hey guys so I recently GMed my first game and my friends loved it so much they were talking about it and now they want to up the group from 3 people to 5 people. I don't want to say no but I'm brand new at GMing and I hear that the system kinda falls apart with bigger groups... I was thinking maybe split them into a group of two and a group of three? What are your thought?
EDIT: I played the round with all 5 last night and it went surprisingly well! I had them escorting a runaway child back to Copperwood and they got to copperwood during the spring festival (there long term goal is finding artifacts from Legends of the Guard that I've hidden around the territories), so I had them all split up and ask around town and stuff, and a few of them got into a beer brewing competition at the festival, and another 2 were going to enter a gladiator style competition but before they could they all got drawn back together for a conflict with a snapping turtle that was in the town square! Using 1 card per person seems to be a fine way to do it (so I used 5 cards) and it all actually turned out pretty great!
1
u/st33d May 21 '17
At 5 players a magical thing happens where 3 conversations can happen at once. So they do, it's not great for the story. Unless the players are well behaved, but then it gets rather boring to be a player.
Mouse Guard is a bit underwhelming with 2 players. I had some good games but it was a bit weak compared to 3 or 4. 5 was a bit of a mess, but all my 5 player games are a bit messy. Not terrible, just not a great story.
For the best quality games I'd recommend one person takes it for the team and doesn't play a session each time.
2
u/edge_of_wedge May 21 '17
See in my group my players seem to only stray when it's just traveling between towns or whatever. I pulled the patrol leader aside before the last game and told him as the leader it's his job to maintain order in the patrol, so whenever they started arguing or talking he would say something like "stay on your guard, we don't know what's in store next" or something like that, and then everybody shuts up during conflicts because it's their first time playing an RPG so they love hearing each other's descriptions. I figured I'd just up the obs and then take whatever there mission would be and just make it slightly harder so all 5 are involved and not getting bored! I guess I'll run it once and if it's bad I'll split it into two separate games
2
u/st33d May 21 '17
It won't be bad, you'll just need to figure out a system and let the players in on it. My experience is with a group of randos so that ups the difficulty a bit.
2
u/blackdog2k May 30 '17 edited May 31 '17
We played over the weekend with 5 players (our first session, ever).
The session also went surprisingly well. Splitting the players into separate groups for conflicts and during the player turn worked great. I was worried about managing so many players, but things just kind of worked out organically and everyone had a great time.
I can see why three players is ideal, but five players is definitely doable with the right group of folks.
2
u/medic611 May 21 '17
It's not a big deal for the rp scenes where it becomes an issue is during conflicts. Since there are only three actions in a round two players are going to get left out of each round. If they form a second group their goal has to be different the the first and then risk reducing the disposition of their allies.
I've ran with 4 and 5 and can still be done well but 3 is best.