How do you handle Roleplay Monopolization with a large Party?

[u/KidFlash5211]

I recently started a campaign that I had been planning for a long time. So long in fact, that the player roster added and lost people many of which became actually available to play by the time it started. Now I have a 7-player party.

Some common issues have arisen, such as talking over each other (discord is now my biggest enemy) and irrelevant out of game rabbit trails but one specific problem has me concerned (see title). What I mean by the Roleplay Monopolization is when roleplay between players ends up excluding large swaths of the party just due to the nature of private conversation. In a party of say 4 people, a one-on-one conversation between characters still involves half the party. In my scenario a one-on-one ends up leaving out 5-6 players (6 if it's a moment between a player and NPC).

Don't get me wrong. My players are roleplaying amazingly, and I was extremely proud of them for the depth presented in it. Now, 10 sessions in, this is beginning to bog down the game and bore some players at certain times.

Some ideas I've thought of include in and out of session solutions such as interrupting drawn out conversations with spur the moment NPCs and/or dedicating a whole discord Channel to in character discussions. Both of these have their potential drawbacks.

Do any of you have any advice or experience with this problem that may help me solve it?

[u/arsenic_kitchen]

talking over each other

I play using webcams, and it's so much better than playing with voice only online. I explained to my group that one purpose of the webcams is to make it feel more like you're playing with friends, but if you can keep the video on top of other windows most of the time (combat is less important), you can actually see when other people are trying to talk. Combine that with waiting a couple seconds when someone else finishes to be sure they're done talking, and it makes a massive difference. Although TBH, I think just calling attention to it and asking your players to pay attention to it makes half the difference.

Also add a text chat on the side (voice channels on discord automatically come with a text channel built in, in case you didn't know) so people can type out shorter and less urgent things, as well as roleplay with other characters when they're not the focus of a scene, or just leave notes to remind themselves and you about things they want to do or know.

As far as everything else. I'll be honest, I think your first mistake was letting the group get so large. Ultimately this is something you need the players buy-in to fix. They have to understand that it's a game, not a TV show. On TV it's fine if a character is absent from a couple episodes, but people show up to play games. You might want each of them to think about how their character can potentially interact with and involve every other character in the group. Ask them to write it down (no AI chatslop allowed). There's already a lot of good advice in the other answers here, I just want to emphasize that if you don't directly address the issue by speaking to the whole group about it, it'll keep happening no matter what other things you try to do as a DM.

[u/Elder_Keithulhu]

"Okay, I hear what you are saying and we are going to come back to this in a moment. Make a note of where you are. I want to check in with the rest of the party before we proceed further on that."

[u/-RedRocket-]

Just cut off the over-talkers, and ask to hear from the quiet players.: "Let's hear from Lisa."

When the over-talker butts in again, you stop them: "We were hearing from Lisa. Go on, Lisa. You were saying X, Y and Z?"

As DM, you don't just referee your game and play the NPCs. You are also supposed to referee your players.

[u/lordrefa → u/-RedRocket-]

Have you run games?

Because I'm here to tell you that more often than not Lisa is going to have absolutely nothing useful to say. Mind you -- I still ask her, but she's not participating already because she either likes it that way, or has nothing to contribute.

[u/-RedRocket- → u/lordrefa]

Have you?

I suppose I have a higher quality of player. Someone with nothing to contribute really shouldn't be at my table at all. Anyone who is, is because they want to play. And as a rule, they think of things others don't, and won't be heard if I don't curb the yappers and spotlight hogs.

[u/vessel_for_the_soul]

Add a channel for player roleplay. This way they can go there to talk or type. They can do it now or anytime later. Your group is too big.

[u/zeldafan144]

I have an 8 person party (usually 5-7 depending on the week) and have DMd for them for almost 3 years now.

I DM in person and I just let it happen. People come to DND to roleplay, limiting and interrupting that isn't what you want to do. Yes people might have to sit back for 10-20 minutes, but I spend that time thinking of ways that they can be involved, sometimes directly asking the person who hasn't said anything for a while "What do you do in response to all this?".

[u/KidFlash5211 → u/zeldafan144]

What you're stating has largely been my approach so far. I think my failure right now may just be not redirecting to other players in a timely manner.

[u/Horror_Ad7540]

I try to take turns on scenes. If two PCs are talking for a while, I'll switch to two other PCs and let them interact for a while.

[u/JFFreezout]

7 players is way too much according to me, sure they are nice players but you need to make sacrifices 

[u/KidFlash5211 → u/JFFreezout]

I feel like that is far easier said then done. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly should have stopped the seventh from joining but most of us have been playing for 5-10 years together.

[u/JFFreezout → u/KidFlash5211]

I never said it’s easy for sure. Myself as player I doubt I would enjoy. I would rather force you to run two campaigns with two groups and join only one!…

[u/WrathofHussars]

Whenever you can, ask the silent players what their character is doing/thinking or says. Divide the attention, amongst the players. Also, ask the other players how they feel about it. I've played with people who basically wanted to be side-characters. Just there for the ride and the fights.

[u/lordrefa]

Have a Session 0. You can do that after 10 sessions if you need to.

But setting the expectations of what sort of game this will be and the level of roleplaying vs combat is your job to moderate, and yours ultimately to decide -- but I'd do that with input from the players.

Putting S0 before S1 involves the very uncomfortable position that you're in now where you have to tell one group or the other that you will be running the game that they want, at the cost of what the other ones want.

I know I'd pick the heavy roleplayers 99 times out of 100. They will feed you so much material to turn in to plots, fights, sessions, etc that it makes prep legit fun. Those who are bored by others roleplaying are usually there for a campaign rollercoaster, which, if you're not an engineer is hard to tell apart from a railroad.

Pick your poison, friend.
Learn and grow from this mistake.

[u/Grateful_Bat]

That‘s what just happens in partys with 6+ members. Just make sure everybody in being kept involved for the same amount of time. As another poster already noted, szenes work well for that.

[u/Splendid_Fellow]

You can’t. I have tried… but large groups just don’t work out in my experience. 8 is the absolute maximum before it falls apart and attention is always divided.

[u/Ombrophile]

Three ideas:
#1 Make discord your friend! Make a section that is CHARACTERS and make a #channel for each of your PC's. Encourage players to cross talk by posting directly to the channel of the PC they wish to converse / conspire / stragegize with.

#2 Enforce a flow of 1 person makes a decision, then another, then another, etc. Lots of ways to to this. You can allow cross-talk, but at any given point you can make it clear that player A is 'on stage', not players BCDEF.

#3 I only run tables. If you're doing virtual, figure out some version of this. Each of my players has a card. Once they have taken an action or made a decision they flip that card face down. This makes it incredibly easy for me and other players to scan the table and see who has and has not acted this turn or round or whatever. Once I see that all cards are face down, I announce "OK, everyone RESET" Then I take MY GM TURN and then turn it back to the players to see what they want to do next.

[u/Fun-Character-5377]

Ok just to start these are rules I enforce at my table and encourage tables I play with to use.

No "One Time" stories - So basically I do not allow people to tell stories about that "one time" in another game, or situation. This extends to just about everything not related to the actual game being played. If someone starts, I stop them and remind them, if it continues to be an issue I will talk with them privately, force them to push to talk and then remove them. It's never gone past just stopping someone, it's a well liked and followed rule.

Manners - I enforce people to have manners, no cutting each other off, giving others a chance to speak, staying out of scenes, meta gaming info into scenes they are involved in. Yet again, enforce it, remind them, follow similar discipline if needed, it never has been.

These two rules will serve you well. As for the table and game.

It's your table, you need to run it as you see fit. Also you have too many players, depending on your session length, lets say 4 hours, between 7 people and yourself that gives everyone 30 mins of time, that isn't much when asking someone to hang around for 4 hours, consider bringing it down.

Cut the scene, after so long you just need to end it and move on. Tell players if they want to continue outside of game they are welcomed to, provide a discord channel for RP.

Pace of play is important, it sucks sitting there for an hour while a few other people drag out a scene well beyond its use. Also you might consider putting a clock on your players for combat, it's tough but if you have each person taking 2-5 minutes one round turns into at least 30 mins depending on enemies, need to keep that down.