BA for larger groups?

[criticalrob]

Hello all,

Does anyone have any experience with the Broadsword Adventures rules with more than 2 players? I am running a fantasy skirmish in June and I want to accomodate up to 6 players. Will BA work for this or should I look for another ruleset?

Thanks!

[Operator5]

I run convention games for 4 to 8 players using it. So it can accomodate 6 no problem. I usually streamline activation to a clockwise manner if the players are competing against one another. How many models per player were you hoping to use? If I know that, then I can help with other modifications to help it run how you would like.

[Grimm]

I run a convention Game with 5 Players and 5 figures for each player (45 Adventuer) it only works if you be the Game Master .
If I do it again I will make 4 Players with 3 or 5 Models but no one should have more then 6 Grade of models .

When we play in our group we play with more Players but only with 2 or 3 Sides (the good ones , the Bad ones and Gamemaster) so each Player cantrol  1 or 2 Models .


Grimm

[Doomhippie]

I can only agree with Grimm (having played in a few rounds of his). It does work out.

[criticalrob]

The number of models per player was going to be my second question. I have plenty of minis to use, so that's not an issue.

Time is an issue. I have a three hour slot to finish the game. I plan on Game Mastering to help keep things moving.

Ideally, I would have a set number of Grades per side (two opposing sides). That way if 5 people show up, three can play one team and divide the grades/models three ways, and the other team can divide their Grades up by two.

Thanks for all the help!

[Froggy the Great]

I've found that if you have any more players than two, you'd do very well to limit each player to maybe a G3/G2 or a G3/G1 - much past 4 and I'd limit them to a single G2 or G2 each.

[criticalrob]

Another thing I could do is give everybody a single G3 and then run the bad guys myself. That may speed things up a little.

[Grimm]

I do that with my Innsmouth Game at the Tactica show and it work very well.
All get a RPG feeling when you do that.

[Operator5]

With BA it is a little easier to give players a few more models. You could give them each a Grade 3 and 3-4 Grade 1 models using the Hordes of Minions rules. The Grade 1 Models would act as a squad and always activate together.

There are so many variations of how to play that it really comes down to the game you want it to be. If you want help working out how the best way to run it, post here or over on The Speakeasy the type of game you would like and I'm sure the collective mind can come up with some answers and suggestions.

[UncleRhino]

Most of the Rattrap games we have done as a gaming group have been done with up to 6 players.  .45 Adventure, Fantastic Worlds...still no Gloire(will work on that, Pete!) and I have run convention games with 4 players for Broadsword Adventures.

Just make sure that you have a good story backing things up and it goes well.  Make sure that there is a good "reason" for all of the teams involved to be involved.  Also, if there is one central sort of Maguffin, the sought after thing, make sure that not every faction wants it for the same reason.

The BA multi-player game I ran most recently had a faction looking for an escaped slave girl and  another faction of escaped slaves looking to find her and escape with her.  You have instant tension between the players for the slaves and escapees that centers not only around the objective.  The third faction was looking for black lotus in the jungle and if they found the slave girl, could have made use of her for big sorcery purposes as a sacrifice.  The fourth faction consisted of natives looking to drive away the interlopers.  With that kind of dynamic, it was a fairly simple game with many different outcomes each of the times it was played out.

Be sure you have enough encounter markers and enough diversity in encounters to keep things interesting for the players.  Some encounters might mean nothing to one team while might be very important to others.  For that game I had two kinds of encounters for the players to explore, totalling up to 24 encounters.  Many were essentially nothing, some were "traps" some were helpful things and, of course, the goal encounters.  Try to have those be triggered by more than one encounter--meaning you have to find two encounters before the "goal" can be found/recovered.  This keeps you from setting things up only to have the goal encounter be located on turn two.

In speaking of turns, I have used a card based initiative system and found it to work quite well.  Each faction has a card and each model has a card as well.  These are shuffled together and drawn out at random for activation.  That way, you know your entire team will activate together once per turn and then individually as well.

I try to limit grades to no more than 5 total for games, as more than this can bog things down very quickly.

Hope my suggestions are usefull.

Ryan

[criticalrob]

In speaking of turns, I have used a card based initiative system and found it to work quite well.  Each faction has a card and each model has a card as well.  These are shuffled together and drawn out at random for activation.  That way, you know your entire team will activate together once per turn and then individually as well.

Great idea, Ryan. I'm going to do this. Thanks!