Number of Players: At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts.
A 1:20 referee to player ratio!? Wow.
The largest group I ever ran was at a weekly gaming club back in 1990. We regularly had twelve players, and at times as many as sixteen. But we also had two DMs. One was the primary DM, who was responsible for the scenario's design and execution. The other was a support DM (me) that was primarily just an adjudicator and secretary. As we were all heavy convention players, our scenarios were generally designed for 4-6 hours of play, and largely objective-oriented. It all worked surprisingly well.
Of course, that was 2nd edition AD&D. My solo LBB playtests (and the two actual S&W games I've run) have shown that OD&D plays pretty fast, at least at the low levels. But I'm still not sure I could manage 2o players.
And then, I remembered something else I'd seen in the LBBs, in The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures (page 12):
EXAMPLE OF THE REFEREE MODERATING A DUNGEON EXPEDITION:The players, equipped and ready, are assumed to have located a set of stairs descending to the first level beneath the ground. The Referee's part will be indicated REF, that of the "Caller" for the players being shown as CAL.
The next page shows an example of play, where it's quite clear that the Referee is only talking directly to the Caller (and it is implied that the Caller is consulting with the rest of the party).
A-ha! The secret to managing that many players is a single caller!
Well, I don't know if that's true, or if that is even the OD&D intent (scanning quicky, I couldn't find any other Caller references in the LBBs). But I can certainly see this making a 1:20 ratio manageable; it essentially makes it a 1:1 ratio. It becomes the party's responsibility to self-organize and communicate actions up to the caller.
If I can ever get a large enough group together, I'd love to try the caller approach. Maybe I can get the help of some OD&D notables to put something together for next year's GenCon.
Wow! Fifty players sounds insane. So, I went to college and left my nifty dice at home. Go me... Can I be an even worse noob and ask what OD&D stands for precisely?
ReplyDeleteOD&D stands for original D&D, and refers to the original D&D boxed set (including the 3 "little brown books") published in 1974. (http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/original.html is a nice collection of OD&D printing information.)
ReplyDeleteSome folks also include the original five supplements later published between 1975 and 1979 as part of OD&D. (http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/setpages/supplements.html)
The game we played while you stayed with us, Swords & Wizardry, is a "retro-clone" of OD&D, using some of the rules in the supplements.
So, it's somewhat fair to say you've played OD&D!