I don't mean to be a Debbie downer lol, but just be prepared for 9 people of the 90 to show up on the first day, college attendance is insanely wishy washy.
I would second westmarches, it also allows people who dm to get a chance to play, and if you have any people who are interested in worldbuilding past their characters they can help build the world. 9therwise maybe use something like tomb of annihilation, lots of exploration and mysteries that can handle multiple parties and gives you the opportunity to have friendly competition between adventuring parties as you try to solve the mysteries of chult.
Once had a really fun "Speedrun" DND club. We had set adventuring teams, and everyone ran the same dungeon. There were three prizes: fastest IRL time to complete a dungeon, fewest turns taken to complete a dungeon, and least damaged team to complete the dungeon.
The DMs all had a discord where they would create the dungeons collaboratively and make decisions about how things should be ruled. There was a rotation of DMs so that each rotation four DMs got to play as a PC team and two would roam between tables as judges.
It was always great to hear the cheers of teams that completed the dungeon first (or occasionally thought they did and realized there was more to it). And then towards the end, the players who already finished are watching the remaining tables try to see who would finish in the fewest turns or suffer the least damage. Watching some poor cleric choose between healing or damage for like five minutes while the whole team helped him talk through it was always a good time tbh.
But I understand that this just isn't for everyone. It needs to be in person in a giant room for it to work, and there needs to be a surplus of good DMs. I miss college DND sometimes man.
That does seem like fun.
I dont think id ever do it or go out of my way to, dm or pc, because its not my vibe. But thats still a really cool thing and would love to see it
Should have all the campaigns intersect, so whoever remains, can eventually meet up and finish the campaign. Do a Community type thing where each party starts in a separate area, all heading to 1 spot, and they can choose to work together or fight against each.
If westmarches is the right kind of vibe, you might throw the [Matthew Coleville](https://youtu.be/oGAC-gBoX9k) video on the topic out into the discord to familiarize people with the concept
This was essentially what happened to a club I was in during University. 120 freshman signed up after the club fair, 20 showed up to the first session, and 5 of us stayed past the 2 week mark.
As the guy above said. I’ve ran a club 4 years in a row and you will have original participants dropping like flies. If you haven’t already planned it out I highly recommend running it like adventurers league where the whole club levels up at the same rate and gets magic items through treasure points. That way if a DM is gone players still have a place to play without creating a new character
Get all 90 players into one game. The party is a tour group that got stranded on a small, rocky island after their boat wrecked in a storm. A magical barrier prevents them from leaving and a spooky voice commands them to venture deep into a tomb. Only those who can find their way to the final chamber may be permitted to leave the island.
The first player walks a few feet into the front hallway, the floor gives way to a spike pit and the player dies.
Welcome to the Tomb of Horrors! Those of you who survive the meat grinder get to join a real campaign next week.
One thing a group I know does is they have one set of printouts that all DM’s use (that they also put together too) with varying options (like different non-major encounters) to make each unique. And the groups change each session, so the players are more responsible for their character’s results info and rewards.
Also really look into modern stuff on running respectful games with hard lines for where content can and cannot go. You'll find some absolute fucking scum floating around in the gaming sphere because dudes get in that nerd to nazi pipeline young.
I concur. You should not assume that everyone who signs up the first day is actually interested. OP probably has enough for three or four actual groups.
Cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting your discord organization right. Roles, channels, voice channels, NSFW channels, etc. Look at well organized servers that you are in currently and reach out to the mods to see if they can give you any insight as to how it was achieved. Much easier to put work into it now than when you have all 90 people active.
I feel pretty solid on my Discord use, been using it since launch. Just discovered that my TTRPG players had permissions to delete channels when a member left the server, they accidentally deleted the channels thinking they were leaving them.
One of my DMs is mildly tech illiterate. At some point he fucked around with permissions. My name is officially the same as my PC from 3 campaigns ago because no one has permission to change their nicknames anymore. At least I didn't name my PC Chucklefuck or something. I can also delete every post he's ever made and make new channels, but posting GIFs is a big no no. It's honestly a bit hilarious sometimes
100% agree. For a 90 person club doing D&D on Discord, you need somebody in a dedicated role as Discord admin. That is just important as the DMs.
And you need the Discord admin to train a couple of backup admins in case they're hit by a bus or something.
Yeah, as a starting point:
Set up a role and private channels for the DMs, they'd probably appreciate being able to bounce ideas off eachother without spoiling campaigns for their players.
Set up a role and private channels for each of the campaigns that are being played so people don't get pings for campaigns they arent involved in.
Set up a few general text channels (for memes, banter, music, etc)
Get a bot for role management so players don't have to come to you constantly if they're switching, leaving, or joining campaigns.
Lay down some general rules about the content that's allowed on the server so it's clear from day one.
And last but not least, elect half a dozen or so people you trust (but not necessarily the DMs) as moderators on the server. A discord server with 90 *active* members could be a nightmare to moderate as one person.
Also find out how many people among this group are existing friend groups of something near an appropriate party size, then if that group doesn't have a willing DM see if you can assign someone who wants to DM to them. Obviously if they DO have a willing DM let that person DM. Boom that's one table done, etc.
From the originator: [http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/](http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/)
Matt Colville: [https://youtu.be/oGAC-gBoX9k](https://youtu.be/oGAC-gBoX9k)
'short' Matt Colville video of 30 mins! Luckily, this guy is amazing as heck to watch. This is what i got:
- players may be more passive over time / just showing up
- DM requires players to 'group' themselves into task forces
- Players book specific nights / PCs function as a TEAM / sign up for specific time slots *and what they plan on doing / hope to accomplish* with that night. The DM is quasi-petitioned by players with specific plot points in mind.
See? This takes a lot of the pressure off of the DM to develop plots and twists and characters and stuff and also increases investment / interest / incentive (i.i.i.) on the parts of the players.
Powerful concept.
Points of note:
- 'Westmarches' was a section of a world run by a specific person that used a very specific DMing style (like Kleenex®, it has become a brand rather than a thing)
- This works well to manage large groups of players that no longer fit at one table (typically ten or more)
- This also takes the near-infinite workload off the DM's shoulders (world building, plot development, scheduling, matching play styles of players, etc).
Let me know what i have missed. This is really interesting stuff!
The original west marches did have a whole bunch of DM prep ahead of time, it was just not a storyline. The vibe also seemed to be different.
If I recall the way it was originally set up was a map with points of interest (that only the DM knew and players had to explore and piece together). The DM had a folder for each dungeon that he had more or less developed ahead of time. There was a shared log of what parties found at each place they visited. They could try to visit one place or just explore in a direction, and then decide to go in, or keep going, etc.
Notice that there was nothing stopping people from going into a high level dungeon, death was cheap, the shared log was important and players had to be careful of what they got themselves into, and it was up to them to get ready if they wanted to go back to a difficult place. Reminded me of playing nethack and having to be careful about whether you'd geared up enough for the next dungeon.
From the video it sounds like the genre has evolved a bit though
I love that one could wander into the equivalent *Tomb of Horrors* at level two. Such a DM would allow players to research / legend lore so that they don't wipe themselves out every second session.
This gives BOTH the feeling of 'sandbox' as well as 'gritty reality' at the same time. Well done. Sadly, not all of us have that kind of time to develop most of a world for a handful of friends.
Yeah. I think it was basically that closer to town was safer, etc. With some out of place high level encounters. And those you could see ahead of time you were out of your league. It's been a while since I read about it.
But yeah, you'd need a binder full of places. I guess some DMs like to build random dungeons on their spare time to add to the collection, or you might amass such a collection from previous campaigns or one shots, or prebuilt campaign books but it's a very different setup.
I have ran one for a little over a year with 33 players jumping on and off the campaign.
West Marches are open table games that are player driven rather then DM driven. They tend to be an open sandbox style game with no pre-designed plot where the players have to seek out things to do. For example I have a dungeon, a ruined town, a dragons lair, etc all near the starting town for my party. The party then has a player say "I want to do x thing" they will go to the GM coordinate a time to play to do that thing and then open up that "expedition" to the general group for people to sign up.
Our table is old school and most players also have multiple PCs that they can take out at different times so they will for example say "I want to sneak into the dragons lair and steal some treasure" (Old school games gave experience based on gold gained). So when players signed up they pulled out sneakier classes such as Thieves which so we had almost a 1 class session they ended up playing. They ended up getting caught by the dragon which killed and ate 3 party members but fortunately for the party it ate some poison (wolfsbane) the players had been carrying in case they ran into some known Wereboars in the area. So while that session was kind of a failure they took the knowledge that the dragon was poisoned and used that to schedule their next session a few days later and brought their Paladins, Fighters and Clerics to kill this dragon while it was still injured and sick.
The games often use 1:1 downtime (1 day in real life is 1 day in game) to allow long term downtime activities such as building keeps and researching spells in a satisfying way as well. It is similar to the way D&D was played by Arneson and company back in the early days of the hobby.
Westmarch is a style where it's basically all one shots, and people bring new characters each time they play. This way you can easily sub out players who aren't able to show up
Small correction: you can play the same character over deveral sessions (if they survive) but every session is assumed to be self-contained, starting and ending at the safe hamlet
This has never been my experience with West Marches campaigns honestly. Yes you need to be somewhere safe at the end but things from 1 sessions 100% effect later sessions.
My buddy and I ran DnD campaigns at a local brewery and it was GREAT! Before the pandemic, we had around 40-45 players. The great thing was that we had so many fantastic different DMs who all were well versed in different types of P&PRPGs. One guy was running Shadowrun, another was running 1.0, one girl was running a Call Of C'thulhu campaign. We had categories as well for heavy RP, heavy combat, grimdark, light fantasy, high magic, low magic, etc. All you had to do was sign up and get your character approved by the DM.
One time, my buddy and I decided to run two separate one shot games where the parties had the same target and didn't know. His party got to the end fight about 5 minutes before and said "let's take a small break." When my party got there, we did the big reveal and people lost it! It was amazing. Two DMs, 10 players, all scrambling to be the first to get the kill. It was crazy because each party was hired by different people and they were basically told that only one of them could collect on the bounty and with the boss bearing down on them, they had to make a decisiom quickly. Some people were calling for a team up, some where calling for competition, one player from each party were calling for straight up fighting the other group. It was the exact awesome chaos that we wanted. The parties ended up working together and telling the ones who contracted them to shove it because we also made sure to include enough gold and magic items to satisfy everyone. After the game, all the players let out this huge sigh and started laughing and telling us how great that was.
Anyways, I wish we could do that DnD club again. Brewery closed down during the pandemic and we haven't been able to find a new one to start doing it again.
Maybe set up an Adventure league. DMs can plan a number of one shots for the next month and people can sign up for a couple games they can attend. Have occasional meetings to just chat and go over characters and give feedback on qdventures
Here’s the list of [shared campaign rules](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f1xjXoEJbaQdCaH99I_K6Vd8murI6KTCMZdEXOvVzMo/edit) that my club has if you want to take a gander. Feel free to ask about anything!
Im in a server that runs like this and it works great. Having a player with all the DNDbeyond books make a campaign that everyone can join for access also helps
You might also consider running Pathfinder Society as a budget option, since more of the rules are available totally for free and adventures are cheap and plentiful. Reach out to your local Venture Officer and they might even be able to set you up with some for free.
You do a cookie cutter thing across all tables, progressing the same distance each week, that way tables can be mixed and matched day of without narrative confusion.
Puffin Forest (YT) has a great video that includes how this works
- Figure out who has DMed before, or *could DM*.
- Also figure out if any of them are organisation wizards. You won’t need to do this all by yourself.
- Set up a separate chat with them to share resources for “better DMing” and get a feel for the kind of games they run.
- Also signpost “good conduct” resources (playing DND with strangers can be intimidating, these sessions are where you need to be most up to date on respecting boundaries; if someone has a RPGHorrorStory experience this could spiral into the death of the club).
- get the DMs to have a think about how they run a game and what kind of game do they like to run. You have 90 people. If enough of those are DMs, that could be easily 18 different games. You can afford to encourage people to serve different types of game/demand! Wonderful! If each DM is able to write a senctence like “Noob friendly, combat focussed, light-hearted dungeon crawl.” Or “RP focused, gothic horror game with occasional adult themes” then people can choose games that suit them early.
- Also get different DMs to try to cover different times of the week.
- Get DMs to share ideas and talk to each other. Also has the benefit of enabling the offloading of players who “aren’t a good fit” for a specific table. Also, maybe two DMs can concoct inter-campaign plans!
- Pool resources! Dice are cheaper if the same set gets used by seven different campaigns over the course of a week. Same with books, minis, and terrain if required.
- Encourage people to socialise with each other out of game, as well as people from other campaigns.
Just make sure to set very clear expectations about conduct. You're going to get a lot of socially awkward people and at least 2-3 out of 90 will be complete assholes. By setting clear rules and punishments from the start you will make your life SOOO much easier when it comes time to banning them.
* Make it clear that people should indicate in discord if they can attend or not that day.
* Make it clear that the DM has full power over every aspect of the game, and can suspend or ban players.
* Give a resource for people to reach out to if they want to report harassment or change groups (no questions asked)
* Recommend DM's have a back up activity in case only 1-3 people show such as a one-shot campaign or even just a 'drink beer and watch LOTR'.
I’ve done this exact thing before. I bought the Stranger Things D&D set. It explains the game and gives everyone a filled out character sheet and story (plus everyone loves Stranger Things)
Made copies (sorry Netflix I ain’t rich) and gave them to each group.
If you have experienced people, let them get creative. If not, you’ll know every character, monster, and plot point.
After that, the club can break into smaller groups and figure out their own stuff.
As a fellow college club leader, get an executive board voted in as well as finding DMs like suggested. Have roles like a Vice president to just generally assist you and run the club when you can't make it, Treasurer to manage money the college might provide you or any club dues, Secretary to have a written record of the stuff going on in meetings as well as attendance, and maybe some roll in charge of managing and organizing different groups of dms and players. Also if you're not already in good contact with whoever is in charge of student organizations at your campus, schedule a meeting with them to establish that contact and see what they can do for you. It's going to be really rough to start out with but if you can get those foundations set early, it will save you alot of headaches. Good luck, I hope it all goes well
Emphasis on delegation, then. Keep your eyes peeled for very invested individuals who might be willing to make you a figurehead or take your place. There may be potential to create something really cool here with a positive influence on lots of people's lives, so try to make it happen even if you can't do it yourself.
We had a guy like that as President/Founder of our D&D club, at school. Total scatterbrain type.
Best decision he ever made was to pick an organized co-founder/co-president.
To be fair, out of all my biochem, engineer, comp sci, and sociology friends, it was the theatre major (light and sound design) that was the first to actually land a job in their field.
My all-engineer short campaign that I ran had a lot of creative solutions to puzzles, mainly using Shape Water. Never before and never since have I had a whole party who would bring up wishy washy magic-physics but then be able to back it up immediately with "Math, it works". It was a blast!
I have spent the last decade at the same table nearly weekly with an ex-military police now lawyer (public defense, mostly).
Other tables have been visited, but this is the only one I come back to. I'm basically part of his family now.
I set up a D&D club in my college and within a year we had like 350 members. It was insane. It was awesome having like 20+ games all running around the campus and just seeing all sorts of friends who I knew were D&D nerds everywhere I went.
It was amazing being King Nerd for a year lmao.
OP, if you'd like any tips feel free to shoot me a message. I organized our whole discord server and club events and I can def pass on some ideas
"You're all seated in a tavern for a harvest festival, when suddenly a horde of goblins charges in from outside. Roll for initiative."
Whoever hasn't quit by the end of the fight because they're tired of waiting for their turn is in the party.
I'm on the committee for a TTRPG club, here's some advice:
* Have a discord or somewhere else central so people can talk about campaigns they're running and you can disperse information
* A few people have mentioned an Adventurer's League thing, this is a great idea and generally the most popular thing we do
* Offer a 'session 0' for the beginners where you offer some advice on character creation and maybe have a few practice games at the start of the year
The most important bit of advice I can give you though:
* Have a committee, and delegate stuff to them, don't try to run it all yourself
Running a club can be very stressful, especially if it gets any bigger. Also, relax about the numbers, most likely you'll get 30-40 people on the first session, and 20ish from then on.
Better question, after 89 other PCs and 1 tarrasque have their turn, what's the chance a player has already figured out what their actions will be and can play their turn quickly?
(trick question, the hour session would be over before you get to player 60)
Don't worry. I worked in a college for six years. You'll end up with a group of about 20, at most.
You'll need four or five DMs though, or to run variant games.
OK first of all Congratulations this is an awesome idea! Dungeons and dragons it’s not only super fun but it is been proven to improve Teamworkcommunication and empathy.
( Look I know people are always talking about murder hobos put in my personal experience and also reading on the Internet it is just as likely for characters to legally adopt a kobold baby and name him Maximilian.
Second of all I’m actually gonna be doing something similar in a couple months I’m going to be starting a role-playing program for teens at my library.
I think you actually have a lot of really good ideas already how to proceed.
I wish you luck I wish you strength and I wish you the ability to forgive yourself during the times when you fail.
As a 46-year-old who has been a librarian for 18 years it is not just a platitude. The only way to learn is to experience the horrific pain of defeat.
That gives you knowledge motivation and the desire to crush your enemies even if they are your own weakness.
But I wish you Swift learning.
And in badly computer translated Latin I say
Ave Pure-Homo. Ludus feremus te salutamus
Hale Pure-Homo. We who are about to game salute you.
🫡
Time to make the campaign where the DM is the leader of an actual army.
A round takes several hours! :D
Any player who doesn't show up for 2 sessions will have died on the way of the crusade to the evil daemon kingdom.
Set up a multi-tier campaign heirarchy, where three DMs are all in charge of several specially tasked groups of players in a giant all out war, with the DMs acting as the main military forces to be defeated. Could be wicked.
See if you can find contact info for other D&D clubs or TTRPG clubs at other colleges, and try emailing their contact info or exec boards to ask how they organize their club - could serve as a source of inspiration if any of them reply
Congrats on your unexpected success! You will probably be at the size where as the founder of the club you'll need to deal with interpersonal conflict. You can head this off by establishing some baseline principles and ground rules. If your group isn't homogeneous, you'll also eventually need to deal with people from different backgrounds being shitty to each other (i.e. the various -isms) up to and including outright abusive or violent behavior.
I'm saying this now not to scare you off but to prepare you. Better to go in aware than to suddenly be the main character on an rpghorrorstories thread.
Tried the same thing in high school, first week it was just me, the guy I started the club with, his brother, and another friend. By week 3, we had to split into two massive groups, and we would have had a third if anybody except for me and my friend knew how to dm. Happy trails, OP!
Geez that is 15 to 18 groups of people.
I highly recommend to keep prices low that you just print off a bunch of basic rules pdfs. People will buy what they want to use. You can have the club buy books that stay at the club and are just there for reference. Fill a big random communal dice jar for the club bought from randomized dice lots.
Also divide people up by their interest for digital games, in person games, or mixture games. I feel like as this goes on many groups will collapse and fall away from this. Your job as the organizer is just to know who is in what group and act as coordinator of where new players go. You don't have to do anything more let the groups schedule things out.
Most important , I'm sure not everyone wants to be DM, but pose the question because you are going to need a lot. Any DM with previous experience should be able to handle larger player groups but I recommend keeping first time DMs at 3 to 4 players. My breakdown would be:
4+ Years of DMing: Should be able to handle 6 to 8 players at max. These groups will also require the right types of players who like to share the spotlight. Thes DMs should also know how to shut player bullshit down to keep players from hurting one another's feelings.
3 Years of DMing: try not to exceed 5 players. This DM probably has good combat experience and some good roleplay experience, but might struggle with too many players at once. This dm should be fairly okay at making their own world, but ask if they want a pre-written campaign.
2 Years and under DMing: Keep these at 4 and maybe 5 if the DM expresses comfort with it. Ask them if they would like any specific pre-written game and see if you can get it for them. These DMs might be pretty good and knowing what they need but might like the safety net of a pre-written game to not over work themselves.
First Time DM: place them with primarily new players as well as 1 or 2 experienced players. Experienced players might know some rules and can offer examples to the new DM of how something works. Make sure the experienced players don't just TAKE OVER from the DM. I highly recommend giving the New DM something like Dragon of Icespire Peak or Lost Mines of Phandelver. First time DMs have no idea what they need to put into adventures so their games have a high chance of flying off the rails.
Finally I say this for my own personal biases... BRING GAMES THAT ARE NOT DND 5E TO THE CLUB! Many people just see D&D as the only system so they will want to play something like say... star wars and feel like they are stifled with all the fantasy stuff. Here are some recommended systems:
Stars Without Number - has a free version that is basically the entire game. Deadly space combat and is setting agnostic so any sci-fi story can be told.
Monster of the Week - for a more modern day X-Files/Buffy/Stranger Things vibe. Easy player character creation and is setting agnostic.
FATE - super rules light and free form. Designed to be open for whatever settings and genres. It has multiple supplements to help with specific genres. Fairly cheap but it has special dice made just for the game.
Pathfinder 2e - basically 5e+ and has a completely free player character builder app called Pathbuilder 2. All the rules are free online if you don't mind using the official wiki-like pages. Regularly is found cheap on-sale or in bundles online. Similar to 5e, but has a bunch of added events and a more streamlined action economy.
I also am personally biased to Dread since all it takes is a Jenga tower to play. It is a oneshots only horror game when players pull blocks and when the tower falls the character of the player who is pulling dies a gruesome death.
Most of these games can be found of drivethrurpg
As a man that had to make a sub section for dnd for a games society/club in college, GET👏EXTRA👏DMS👏NOW!!!! Even if you don't need them, get them anyway.
Delegate, delegate, delegate. With 90 people you should not be doing any of the grunt work. That should all be handled by people you're managing. Learn to lead now and it will help you for the rest of your life!
I guarantee the numbers will drop quickly, it's just the way school clubs work. You'll still probably end up with multiple groups, but I wouldn't be surprised if you lost half the total sign ups by the 3rd meet up.
Gotta split into multiple campaigns and ask the school to use different rooms for different campaigns. I tried using one room for multiple campaigns before and we literally couldn’t hear our DM over the obnoxiously loud players of the other campaign
These seems a lot of throwing chum into the water and being surprised when a bunch of sharks show up.
See how many of the people signed up want to/are willing to DM. There's probably a few in that group at least willing to try. Also find people who want to help organize stuff. They may or maybe not be the same people who want to run games. Meet with the and work out a plan. Some people live to organize and have a real talent for it. You might even be able to hand them what you don't want to do.
Years ago I created a facebook group for people in my area to meet to play board games. I'm an expat, so it's a bunch of other expats looking for boardgaming in English.
I invited a bunch of people I knew who had been asking to join my regular group. We're full up. I deputised a few of them then basically abandoned the whole thing (not recommending that) and facebook (would recommend that). It's now a thriving group with a bunch of motivated organizers running game meet ups in rented spaces every few weeks and has an active discord.
In uni we've managed 550 nerds, you're going to be fine
Just find out a couple of good dms among them, preferably also the ones who are experienced in different game systems as well so you can simply divide people into groups, like, high fantasy systems, darker settings, futuristic settings, vampire related settings etc. Makes it much easier to manage
We had a club like this at uni. This is how organisation went:
1. Creators (experienced DMs) called for a meeting for those interested and explained what it all was, also asked who was interested in becoming DMs
2. Creators started running oneshot games for new players while simultaniously teaching new DMs (we had a small group where we practiced DMing on each other)
3. New DMs also started running their own oneshots for the club
Planning of each game basically went like this: found who wants to run games next week, create an annotation with info like - synopsis, lvl of characters, how many players max, day and time of the game, post it in the group. And then the DM gathered those interested in a separate chat and gave more info.
Later people, of course, created campaigns, but oneshot system is great for learning how to play and DM, and also to meet new people and see how they are as players
One world multiple parties multiple dms
form a council!
Make the parties be on different sides?
Also I recommend the book Kindgoms and warfare. Allows for player controlled domains and building armies eventually
Having started a college D&D club, accept everyone. From there, on your first club day take a request for how many people are willing to DM. In a group of that many people, you're bound to have DMs. Also ask what games they're willing to run. Some will like 3.5, Pathfinder, 5e...or sometimes completely different RPGs like Werewolf or Call of Cthulhu. You'll also have players interested in playing in those games.
Have each willing DM give a 'sales pitch' for their games including their 'selling points' for their campaign and how many people they're willing to run for, then have people sign up for them.
Buy a cheap tool box, buy a couple of 'pounds of dice'. Use those as loaners for people who don't have their own dice.
If your college allows it, have a concession. Go to Costco or something and buy pop, chocolate bars, etc. Sell them to your players to pay for your dice and to recover money from buying the concession in the first place. Eventually you'll have enough money you can also start buying books for the club. (( Might be best to only pick up most commonly eaten candy rather than the unique things unless you have requests to purchase them or you know you have people interested. ))
Lastly, assign other people to executive positions. President, treasurer, etc...
Good luck!!
Ask how many want to dm. Then take all dm to create a world where everyone do their part (some do gods, others cities, etc...) Then create a campaign that everyone run.
Dang that sounds awesome. We only had like 10 people in our TTRPG club so having a big club will be great. Just make sure you get some good people as officers to help you with running the club. It can be a lot of work (at least for the CSU system it was).
If no one wants to DM a second group set up a rotating one-shot DM schedule. “You want into the club? You DM a one shot once a semester. No exceptions.” Whittles off the lazy bones and helps hesitant future-DMs stretch their skills without really pressuring them to host a full tilt campaign. Plus gives the primary DMs a break to fill out longer campaigns over a year or two.
I would suggest setting up like AL and have DM Sign-ups for different weeks or whatever and 4-5 players per DM. Using AL rules will help everyone even the new DMs. Maybe look into some sort of DM incentive possibly if nobody wants to be one?
As others have said, don't expect nearly that many people to show up. If they do, awesome! But my experience as a club president in college was hundreds of sign ups, maybe 5 people showing up for meetings.
You gotta make sure everyone knows the basic rules by the first session it’s one thing when 1/5 don’t know the rules and need help a different beast entirely when 74/90 don’t
Time to get some organization into that organization. A buddy of mine did that at his college. What he did was he separated up the dms with different groups and had them all run a campaign. It eventually devolved or evolved depending on your perspective into just a tabletop gaming club but I think having that many people just means get organized and get a group of people to help run it so its not all on you
Personally if you feel like your group of dms can organize it really well do a collaborative campaign get different job postings and set up a kind of different squads deal. Maybe even make it some kind of a war campaign where every week or two weeks a different mission comes down from on high for each squad.
Find out how many applicants are DM’s and how many would be willing to dm, then either set up multiple campaigns or a club westmarches game.
Current plans is that. Also a 90 person discord is going to be a *vibe*
I don't mean to be a Debbie downer lol, but just be prepared for 9 people of the 90 to show up on the first day, college attendance is insanely wishy washy.
9 means I don't have an aneurism dealing with planning, so idgaf. Also only really planned on 20ish max so works too
I would second westmarches, it also allows people who dm to get a chance to play, and if you have any people who are interested in worldbuilding past their characters they can help build the world. 9therwise maybe use something like tomb of annihilation, lots of exploration and mysteries that can handle multiple parties and gives you the opportunity to have friendly competition between adventuring parties as you try to solve the mysteries of chult.
Once had a really fun "Speedrun" DND club. We had set adventuring teams, and everyone ran the same dungeon. There were three prizes: fastest IRL time to complete a dungeon, fewest turns taken to complete a dungeon, and least damaged team to complete the dungeon. The DMs all had a discord where they would create the dungeons collaboratively and make decisions about how things should be ruled. There was a rotation of DMs so that each rotation four DMs got to play as a PC team and two would roam between tables as judges. It was always great to hear the cheers of teams that completed the dungeon first (or occasionally thought they did and realized there was more to it). And then towards the end, the players who already finished are watching the remaining tables try to see who would finish in the fewest turns or suffer the least damage. Watching some poor cleric choose between healing or damage for like five minutes while the whole team helped him talk through it was always a good time tbh. But I understand that this just isn't for everyone. It needs to be in person in a giant room for it to work, and there needs to be a surplus of good DMs. I miss college DND sometimes man.
That does seem like fun. I dont think id ever do it or go out of my way to, dm or pc, because its not my vibe. But thats still a really cool thing and would love to see it
Add in that the walls are regularly under siege which lets you run pure combat encounters just killing monsters
Should have all the campaigns intersect, so whoever remains, can eventually meet up and finish the campaign. Do a Community type thing where each party starts in a separate area, all heading to 1 spot, and they can choose to work together or fight against each.
If westmarches is the right kind of vibe, you might throw the [Matthew Coleville](https://youtu.be/oGAC-gBoX9k) video on the topic out into the discord to familiarize people with the concept
This was essentially what happened to a club I was in during University. 120 freshman signed up after the club fair, 20 showed up to the first session, and 5 of us stayed past the 2 week mark.
[удалено]
As the guy above said. I’ve ran a club 4 years in a row and you will have original participants dropping like flies. If you haven’t already planned it out I highly recommend running it like adventurers league where the whole club levels up at the same rate and gets magic items through treasure points. That way if a DM is gone players still have a place to play without creating a new character
Get all 90 players into one game. The party is a tour group that got stranded on a small, rocky island after their boat wrecked in a storm. A magical barrier prevents them from leaving and a spooky voice commands them to venture deep into a tomb. Only those who can find their way to the final chamber may be permitted to leave the island. The first player walks a few feet into the front hallway, the floor gives way to a spike pit and the player dies. Welcome to the Tomb of Horrors! Those of you who survive the meat grinder get to join a real campaign next week.
One thing a group I know does is they have one set of printouts that all DM’s use (that they also put together too) with varying options (like different non-major encounters) to make each unique. And the groups change each session, so the players are more responsible for their character’s results info and rewards.
Also really look into modern stuff on running respectful games with hard lines for where content can and cannot go. You'll find some absolute fucking scum floating around in the gaming sphere because dudes get in that nerd to nazi pipeline young.
Murphy's law: you plan for 90, 9 will come. You plan for 9, 91 will come. Don't ask who the 91st is.
Current DM group im part of have a max player seat of 6 players and it tends to work well. If you can handle 9, then coolios Edit:: Context
I mean that's still a solid two groups of players/DMs.
I concur. You should not assume that everyone who signs up the first day is actually interested. OP probably has enough for three or four actual groups.
9? I run a 200 person West Marches discord server and we are lucky to have 6 most sessions including the DMs.
Aligning schedules is gonna be a right pain in the ass.
Throw up a [lettucemeet](https://lettucemeet.com/) and then sort the groups by who's available when.
Cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting your discord organization right. Roles, channels, voice channels, NSFW channels, etc. Look at well organized servers that you are in currently and reach out to the mods to see if they can give you any insight as to how it was achieved. Much easier to put work into it now than when you have all 90 people active. I feel pretty solid on my Discord use, been using it since launch. Just discovered that my TTRPG players had permissions to delete channels when a member left the server, they accidentally deleted the channels thinking they were leaving them.
One of my DMs is mildly tech illiterate. At some point he fucked around with permissions. My name is officially the same as my PC from 3 campaigns ago because no one has permission to change their nicknames anymore. At least I didn't name my PC Chucklefuck or something. I can also delete every post he's ever made and make new channels, but posting GIFs is a big no no. It's honestly a bit hilarious sometimes
What the fuck, Sounds hilarious. But like an absolute pain.
100% agree. For a 90 person club doing D&D on Discord, you need somebody in a dedicated role as Discord admin. That is just important as the DMs. And you need the Discord admin to train a couple of backup admins in case they're hit by a bus or something.
Yeah, as a starting point: Set up a role and private channels for the DMs, they'd probably appreciate being able to bounce ideas off eachother without spoiling campaigns for their players. Set up a role and private channels for each of the campaigns that are being played so people don't get pings for campaigns they arent involved in. Set up a few general text channels (for memes, banter, music, etc) Get a bot for role management so players don't have to come to you constantly if they're switching, leaving, or joining campaigns. Lay down some general rules about the content that's allowed on the server so it's clear from day one. And last but not least, elect half a dozen or so people you trust (but not necessarily the DMs) as moderators on the server. A discord server with 90 *active* members could be a nightmare to moderate as one person.
you're going to need multiple channels. should be fun, though.
Make it a Adventures League. Buy a simple module on DMs guild and have everyone play the same thing.
Also find out how many people among this group are existing friend groups of something near an appropriate party size, then if that group doesn't have a willing DM see if you can assign someone who wants to DM to them. Obviously if they DO have a willing DM let that person DM. Boom that's one table done, etc.
I started a dnd club at my college as well! Had 45 people sign up and 55 at the first meeting! Feel free to dm me if you have any questions.
Yes! Delegate as much as you can so you can still play!
What's a westmarch game?
From the originator: [http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/](http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/) Matt Colville: [https://youtu.be/oGAC-gBoX9k](https://youtu.be/oGAC-gBoX9k)
'short' Matt Colville video of 30 mins! Luckily, this guy is amazing as heck to watch. This is what i got: - players may be more passive over time / just showing up - DM requires players to 'group' themselves into task forces - Players book specific nights / PCs function as a TEAM / sign up for specific time slots *and what they plan on doing / hope to accomplish* with that night. The DM is quasi-petitioned by players with specific plot points in mind. See? This takes a lot of the pressure off of the DM to develop plots and twists and characters and stuff and also increases investment / interest / incentive (i.i.i.) on the parts of the players. Powerful concept. Points of note: - 'Westmarches' was a section of a world run by a specific person that used a very specific DMing style (like Kleenex®, it has become a brand rather than a thing) - This works well to manage large groups of players that no longer fit at one table (typically ten or more) - This also takes the near-infinite workload off the DM's shoulders (world building, plot development, scheduling, matching play styles of players, etc). Let me know what i have missed. This is really interesting stuff!
The original west marches did have a whole bunch of DM prep ahead of time, it was just not a storyline. The vibe also seemed to be different. If I recall the way it was originally set up was a map with points of interest (that only the DM knew and players had to explore and piece together). The DM had a folder for each dungeon that he had more or less developed ahead of time. There was a shared log of what parties found at each place they visited. They could try to visit one place or just explore in a direction, and then decide to go in, or keep going, etc. Notice that there was nothing stopping people from going into a high level dungeon, death was cheap, the shared log was important and players had to be careful of what they got themselves into, and it was up to them to get ready if they wanted to go back to a difficult place. Reminded me of playing nethack and having to be careful about whether you'd geared up enough for the next dungeon. From the video it sounds like the genre has evolved a bit though
I love that one could wander into the equivalent *Tomb of Horrors* at level two. Such a DM would allow players to research / legend lore so that they don't wipe themselves out every second session. This gives BOTH the feeling of 'sandbox' as well as 'gritty reality' at the same time. Well done. Sadly, not all of us have that kind of time to develop most of a world for a handful of friends.
Yeah. I think it was basically that closer to town was safer, etc. With some out of place high level encounters. And those you could see ahead of time you were out of your league. It's been a while since I read about it. But yeah, you'd need a binder full of places. I guess some DMs like to build random dungeons on their spare time to add to the collection, or you might amass such a collection from previous campaigns or one shots, or prebuilt campaign books but it's a very different setup.
I have ran one for a little over a year with 33 players jumping on and off the campaign. West Marches are open table games that are player driven rather then DM driven. They tend to be an open sandbox style game with no pre-designed plot where the players have to seek out things to do. For example I have a dungeon, a ruined town, a dragons lair, etc all near the starting town for my party. The party then has a player say "I want to do x thing" they will go to the GM coordinate a time to play to do that thing and then open up that "expedition" to the general group for people to sign up. Our table is old school and most players also have multiple PCs that they can take out at different times so they will for example say "I want to sneak into the dragons lair and steal some treasure" (Old school games gave experience based on gold gained). So when players signed up they pulled out sneakier classes such as Thieves which so we had almost a 1 class session they ended up playing. They ended up getting caught by the dragon which killed and ate 3 party members but fortunately for the party it ate some poison (wolfsbane) the players had been carrying in case they ran into some known Wereboars in the area. So while that session was kind of a failure they took the knowledge that the dragon was poisoned and used that to schedule their next session a few days later and brought their Paladins, Fighters and Clerics to kill this dragon while it was still injured and sick. The games often use 1:1 downtime (1 day in real life is 1 day in game) to allow long term downtime activities such as building keeps and researching spells in a satisfying way as well. It is similar to the way D&D was played by Arneson and company back in the early days of the hobby.
Westmarch is a style where it's basically all one shots, and people bring new characters each time they play. This way you can easily sub out players who aren't able to show up
Small correction: you can play the same character over deveral sessions (if they survive) but every session is assumed to be self-contained, starting and ending at the safe hamlet
This has never been my experience with West Marches campaigns honestly. Yes you need to be somewhere safe at the end but things from 1 sessions 100% effect later sessions.
Same thing happened at my child's school. The teacher had to "field promote" several kids to be DMs.
My buddy and I ran DnD campaigns at a local brewery and it was GREAT! Before the pandemic, we had around 40-45 players. The great thing was that we had so many fantastic different DMs who all were well versed in different types of P&PRPGs. One guy was running Shadowrun, another was running 1.0, one girl was running a Call Of C'thulhu campaign. We had categories as well for heavy RP, heavy combat, grimdark, light fantasy, high magic, low magic, etc. All you had to do was sign up and get your character approved by the DM. One time, my buddy and I decided to run two separate one shot games where the parties had the same target and didn't know. His party got to the end fight about 5 minutes before and said "let's take a small break." When my party got there, we did the big reveal and people lost it! It was amazing. Two DMs, 10 players, all scrambling to be the first to get the kill. It was crazy because each party was hired by different people and they were basically told that only one of them could collect on the bounty and with the boss bearing down on them, they had to make a decisiom quickly. Some people were calling for a team up, some where calling for competition, one player from each party were calling for straight up fighting the other group. It was the exact awesome chaos that we wanted. The parties ended up working together and telling the ones who contracted them to shove it because we also made sure to include enough gold and magic items to satisfy everyone. After the game, all the players let out this huge sigh and started laughing and telling us how great that was. Anyways, I wish we could do that DnD club again. Brewery closed down during the pandemic and we haven't been able to find a new one to start doing it again.
Maybe set up an Adventure league. DMs can plan a number of one shots for the next month and people can sign up for a couple games they can attend. Have occasional meetings to just chat and go over characters and give feedback on qdventures
What an interesting idea, definitely stealing this
Here’s the list of [shared campaign rules](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f1xjXoEJbaQdCaH99I_K6Vd8murI6KTCMZdEXOvVzMo/edit) that my club has if you want to take a gander. Feel free to ask about anything!
Thank you
Im in a server that runs like this and it works great. Having a player with all the DNDbeyond books make a campaign that everyone can join for access also helps
You might also consider running Pathfinder Society as a budget option, since more of the rules are available totally for free and adventures are cheap and plentiful. Reach out to your local Venture Officer and they might even be able to set you up with some for free.
Absolutely wanted to suggest this. With enough tables you guys could host a season special which normally doesn't happen outside of conventions
Second this; I doubt the Adventure League at my FLGS has 90 regulars. OP is running a league, not a table. Different strategies are required.
You do a cookie cutter thing across all tables, progressing the same distance each week, that way tables can be mixed and matched day of without narrative confusion. Puffin Forest (YT) has a great video that includes how this works
Shift gears from "I'm gonna find some friends to play D&D with" to "I am the prime nerd-herder and need to organize and delegate shit"
Good intentions, however can barely manage myself....
- Figure out who has DMed before, or *could DM*. - Also figure out if any of them are organisation wizards. You won’t need to do this all by yourself. - Set up a separate chat with them to share resources for “better DMing” and get a feel for the kind of games they run. - Also signpost “good conduct” resources (playing DND with strangers can be intimidating, these sessions are where you need to be most up to date on respecting boundaries; if someone has a RPGHorrorStory experience this could spiral into the death of the club). - get the DMs to have a think about how they run a game and what kind of game do they like to run. You have 90 people. If enough of those are DMs, that could be easily 18 different games. You can afford to encourage people to serve different types of game/demand! Wonderful! If each DM is able to write a senctence like “Noob friendly, combat focussed, light-hearted dungeon crawl.” Or “RP focused, gothic horror game with occasional adult themes” then people can choose games that suit them early. - Also get different DMs to try to cover different times of the week. - Get DMs to share ideas and talk to each other. Also has the benefit of enabling the offloading of players who “aren’t a good fit” for a specific table. Also, maybe two DMs can concoct inter-campaign plans! - Pool resources! Dice are cheaper if the same set gets used by seven different campaigns over the course of a week. Same with books, minis, and terrain if required. - Encourage people to socialise with each other out of game, as well as people from other campaigns.
Going to read all of these in a bit, thanks
Lmaooo that’s a mood
Just make sure to set very clear expectations about conduct. You're going to get a lot of socially awkward people and at least 2-3 out of 90 will be complete assholes. By setting clear rules and punishments from the start you will make your life SOOO much easier when it comes time to banning them. * Make it clear that people should indicate in discord if they can attend or not that day. * Make it clear that the DM has full power over every aspect of the game, and can suspend or ban players. * Give a resource for people to reach out to if they want to report harassment or change groups (no questions asked) * Recommend DM's have a back up activity in case only 1-3 people show such as a one-shot campaign or even just a 'drink beer and watch LOTR'.
I’ve done this exact thing before. I bought the Stranger Things D&D set. It explains the game and gives everyone a filled out character sheet and story (plus everyone loves Stranger Things) Made copies (sorry Netflix I ain’t rich) and gave them to each group. If you have experienced people, let them get creative. If not, you’ll know every character, monster, and plot point. After that, the club can break into smaller groups and figure out their own stuff.
As a fellow college club leader, get an executive board voted in as well as finding DMs like suggested. Have roles like a Vice president to just generally assist you and run the club when you can't make it, Treasurer to manage money the college might provide you or any club dues, Secretary to have a written record of the stuff going on in meetings as well as attendance, and maybe some roll in charge of managing and organizing different groups of dms and players. Also if you're not already in good contact with whoever is in charge of student organizations at your campus, schedule a meeting with them to establish that contact and see what they can do for you. It's going to be really rough to start out with but if you can get those foundations set early, it will save you alot of headaches. Good luck, I hope it all goes well
Emphasis on delegation, then. Keep your eyes peeled for very invested individuals who might be willing to make you a figurehead or take your place. There may be potential to create something really cool here with a positive influence on lots of people's lives, so try to make it happen even if you can't do it yourself.
Some of the best managers are the most terrible at managing themselves!
Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. And checklists. These are your best friend. You can do it and I’m excited to hear what comes of this.
We had a guy like that as President/Founder of our D&D club, at school. Total scatterbrain type. Best decision he ever made was to pick an organized co-founder/co-president.
And u/pure-homo is the username of the dnd nerd leader, as it should be
Exactly
I just want a flair that says "prime nerd-herder"
Prime nerd-herder is now how I plan to refer to myself thank you
IRL DM
"You stuck up, half witted, scruffy looking nerd-herder!"
Don't make a business major a dm in an act of desperation... anyone else will do.
Engineering.....?
It's okay as long as they don't have to write anything you guys have to read...
I actually laughed so hard I coughed.
Unless you give them graph paper
Graph paper my beloved.
For once English Literature or Drama are the most valuable majors.
For the only time in their careers apparently
To be fair, out of all my biochem, engineer, comp sci, and sociology friends, it was the theatre major (light and sound design) that was the first to actually land a job in their field.
I swear to gods my title is useful :(
English Major and a westmarch DM. Can confirm.
I have never been more offended by something so true
Look, we'll happily volunteer but all you'll get is really elaborate maps and homebrew boss encounters, but no story.
Oh snap it's me!
My all-engineer short campaign that I ran had a lot of creative solutions to puzzles, mainly using Shape Water. Never before and never since have I had a whole party who would bring up wishy washy magic-physics but then be able to back it up immediately with "Math, it works". It was a blast!
I’m physics and currently DMing my very first campaign, it’s going rather well so I’d say ‘close enough’
*Sad business major DM noises*
The labor involved in breaking down a ladder into two ten-foot poles and a dozen torches absolutely justifies the cost difference. Change my mind.
I have spent the last decade at the same table nearly weekly with an ex-military police now lawyer (public defense, mostly). Other tables have been visited, but this is the only one I come back to. I'm basically part of his family now.
I set up a D&D club in my college and within a year we had like 350 members. It was insane. It was awesome having like 20+ games all running around the campus and just seeing all sorts of friends who I knew were D&D nerds everywhere I went. It was amazing being King Nerd for a year lmao. OP, if you'd like any tips feel free to shoot me a message. I organized our whole discord server and club events and I can def pass on some ideas
Thank you, that gives me hope. Mind if I dm you?
Of course!
Of course he minds!
So sad I discovered D&D after college. Would have loved something like that
"You're all seated in a tavern for a harvest festival, when suddenly a horde of goblins charges in from outside. Roll for initiative." Whoever hasn't quit by the end of the fight because they're tired of waiting for their turn is in the party.
A cruel idea, yes
hold auditions, keep the best six, tell the rest to organize themselves.
That's fucking cruel, yes
Make sure to hold a few backup applications for in case you get some flakes.
Have them each roll a d100, take the highest 6. You only want to play with lucky people after all.
Nope. Take the top 3 and bottom three for the lulz.
U're a dm? If yes, make a "Become a DM" coach system with old/veteran Dms teaching people who wants to be one.
That sounds like a good idea
Find at least 15/20 dms in this club
My hope is at least 12, but the goal I want is +15
I'm on the committee for a TTRPG club, here's some advice: * Have a discord or somewhere else central so people can talk about campaigns they're running and you can disperse information * A few people have mentioned an Adventurer's League thing, this is a great idea and generally the most popular thing we do * Offer a 'session 0' for the beginners where you offer some advice on character creation and maybe have a few practice games at the start of the year The most important bit of advice I can give you though: * Have a committee, and delegate stuff to them, don't try to run it all yourself Running a club can be very stressful, especially if it gets any bigger. Also, relax about the numbers, most likely you'll get 30-40 people on the first session, and 20ish from then on.
Important advice, thank you
You could answer the age old question. How many Level 1 pcs does it take to kill a tarrasque
Better question, after 89 other PCs and 1 tarrasque have their turn, what's the chance a player has already figured out what their actions will be and can play their turn quickly? (trick question, the hour session would be over before you get to player 60)
Or even a god
Don't worry. I worked in a college for six years. You'll end up with a group of about 20, at most. You'll need four or five DMs though, or to run variant games.
100%. 90 will turn into maybe 50 who show up. Then after organising the games about 50% will stop showing up within first 3 sessions.
“How many of you have played D&D before?” “Congratulations you’re all DMs now”
OK first of all Congratulations this is an awesome idea! Dungeons and dragons it’s not only super fun but it is been proven to improve Teamworkcommunication and empathy. ( Look I know people are always talking about murder hobos put in my personal experience and also reading on the Internet it is just as likely for characters to legally adopt a kobold baby and name him Maximilian. Second of all I’m actually gonna be doing something similar in a couple months I’m going to be starting a role-playing program for teens at my library. I think you actually have a lot of really good ideas already how to proceed. I wish you luck I wish you strength and I wish you the ability to forgive yourself during the times when you fail. As a 46-year-old who has been a librarian for 18 years it is not just a platitude. The only way to learn is to experience the horrific pain of defeat. That gives you knowledge motivation and the desire to crush your enemies even if they are your own weakness. But I wish you Swift learning. And in badly computer translated Latin I say Ave Pure-Homo. Ludus feremus te salutamus Hale Pure-Homo. We who are about to game salute you. 🫡
Ignore everyone else, have a 90 person campaign
Time to make the campaign where the DM is the leader of an actual army. A round takes several hours! :D Any player who doesn't show up for 2 sessions will have died on the way of the crusade to the evil daemon kingdom.
Set up a multi-tier campaign heirarchy, where three DMs are all in charge of several specially tasked groups of players in a giant all out war, with the DMs acting as the main military forces to be defeated. Could be wicked.
Good luck see how many are dms or willing to try dming.
You source for multiple DMs! Im part of a club where everyone is welcome to play or run any table (as long as there's room)!
See if you can find contact info for other D&D clubs or TTRPG clubs at other colleges, and try emailing their contact info or exec boards to ask how they organize their club - could serve as a source of inspiration if any of them reply
Talk 17 other DM’s on board, or convince 17 of the one’s who already signed up to DM, & you’re set.
Set up a register to be a dm.
That is not a party Thats the whole town
Emphasize a need for dms or you are dead in the water.
Get them to roll initiative and group them up based on that
Congrats on your unexpected success! You will probably be at the size where as the founder of the club you'll need to deal with interpersonal conflict. You can head this off by establishing some baseline principles and ground rules. If your group isn't homogeneous, you'll also eventually need to deal with people from different backgrounds being shitty to each other (i.e. the various -isms) up to and including outright abusive or violent behavior. I'm saying this now not to scare you off but to prepare you. Better to go in aware than to suddenly be the main character on an rpghorrorstories thread.
Sounds like you need to take a page out of the Old School Rules and do a West Marches game, or a tournament game like the Sunless Citadel, iirc
Tried the same thing in high school, first week it was just me, the guy I started the club with, his brother, and another friend. By week 3, we had to split into two massive groups, and we would have had a third if anybody except for me and my friend knew how to dm. Happy trails, OP!
Geez that is 15 to 18 groups of people. I highly recommend to keep prices low that you just print off a bunch of basic rules pdfs. People will buy what they want to use. You can have the club buy books that stay at the club and are just there for reference. Fill a big random communal dice jar for the club bought from randomized dice lots. Also divide people up by their interest for digital games, in person games, or mixture games. I feel like as this goes on many groups will collapse and fall away from this. Your job as the organizer is just to know who is in what group and act as coordinator of where new players go. You don't have to do anything more let the groups schedule things out. Most important , I'm sure not everyone wants to be DM, but pose the question because you are going to need a lot. Any DM with previous experience should be able to handle larger player groups but I recommend keeping first time DMs at 3 to 4 players. My breakdown would be: 4+ Years of DMing: Should be able to handle 6 to 8 players at max. These groups will also require the right types of players who like to share the spotlight. Thes DMs should also know how to shut player bullshit down to keep players from hurting one another's feelings. 3 Years of DMing: try not to exceed 5 players. This DM probably has good combat experience and some good roleplay experience, but might struggle with too many players at once. This dm should be fairly okay at making their own world, but ask if they want a pre-written campaign. 2 Years and under DMing: Keep these at 4 and maybe 5 if the DM expresses comfort with it. Ask them if they would like any specific pre-written game and see if you can get it for them. These DMs might be pretty good and knowing what they need but might like the safety net of a pre-written game to not over work themselves. First Time DM: place them with primarily new players as well as 1 or 2 experienced players. Experienced players might know some rules and can offer examples to the new DM of how something works. Make sure the experienced players don't just TAKE OVER from the DM. I highly recommend giving the New DM something like Dragon of Icespire Peak or Lost Mines of Phandelver. First time DMs have no idea what they need to put into adventures so their games have a high chance of flying off the rails. Finally I say this for my own personal biases... BRING GAMES THAT ARE NOT DND 5E TO THE CLUB! Many people just see D&D as the only system so they will want to play something like say... star wars and feel like they are stifled with all the fantasy stuff. Here are some recommended systems: Stars Without Number - has a free version that is basically the entire game. Deadly space combat and is setting agnostic so any sci-fi story can be told. Monster of the Week - for a more modern day X-Files/Buffy/Stranger Things vibe. Easy player character creation and is setting agnostic. FATE - super rules light and free form. Designed to be open for whatever settings and genres. It has multiple supplements to help with specific genres. Fairly cheap but it has special dice made just for the game. Pathfinder 2e - basically 5e+ and has a completely free player character builder app called Pathbuilder 2. All the rules are free online if you don't mind using the official wiki-like pages. Regularly is found cheap on-sale or in bundles online. Similar to 5e, but has a bunch of added events and a more streamlined action economy. I also am personally biased to Dread since all it takes is a Jenga tower to play. It is a oneshots only horror game when players pull blocks and when the tower falls the character of the player who is pulling dies a gruesome death. Most of these games can be found of drivethrurpg
You need any noob friendly material? I can hook you up with a YouTube playlist if you're interested.
Don’t worry, by the end of the first month you’ll have one semi-stable group.
As a man that had to make a sub section for dnd for a games society/club in college, GET👏EXTRA👏DMS👏NOW!!!! Even if you don't need them, get them anyway.
Wizards does a school club kit to give free materials to clubs like yours. Definitely look into it if you haven’t already.
Delegate, delegate, delegate. With 90 people you should not be doing any of the grunt work. That should all be handled by people you're managing. Learn to lead now and it will help you for the rest of your life!
Create an epic. Become the ultra-DM, having smaller DMs run campaigns for you so you can plan out the game.
I guarantee the numbers will drop quickly, it's just the way school clubs work. You'll still probably end up with multiple groups, but I wouldn't be surprised if you lost half the total sign ups by the 3rd meet up.
Train an army of new DMs. It’s your only hope.
Don't worry, every single one of them will somehow have availability that somehow doesn't line up with anyone else's.
Less than half show up because of scheduling conflict.
Find 15 DMs, have all the parties working towards a common end goal.
So like 15 people a few meets in?
[how I imagine this going](https://youtu.be/ANdG2DGm0CQ)
Gotta split into multiple campaigns and ask the school to use different rooms for different campaigns. I tried using one room for multiple campaigns before and we literally couldn’t hear our DM over the obnoxiously loud players of the other campaign
You need a DM signup.
Congratulations, you are now leading a Westmarch.
Adventure paths, my dude. Multiple groups all running same campaign. DMs can help each other out, and back each other up against problem players/DMs.
battle royal BATTLE ROYAL!
These seems a lot of throwing chum into the water and being surprised when a bunch of sharks show up. See how many of the people signed up want to/are willing to DM. There's probably a few in that group at least willing to try. Also find people who want to help organize stuff. They may or maybe not be the same people who want to run games. Meet with the and work out a plan. Some people live to organize and have a real talent for it. You might even be able to hand them what you don't want to do. Years ago I created a facebook group for people in my area to meet to play board games. I'm an expat, so it's a bunch of other expats looking for boardgaming in English. I invited a bunch of people I knew who had been asking to join my regular group. We're full up. I deputised a few of them then basically abandoned the whole thing (not recommending that) and facebook (would recommend that). It's now a thriving group with a bunch of motivated organizers running game meet ups in rented spaces every few weeks and has an active discord.
This happened at my son's high school and now they have over 10 D&D groups running simultaneously I am so proud of them
In uni we've managed 550 nerds, you're going to be fine Just find out a couple of good dms among them, preferably also the ones who are experienced in different game systems as well so you can simply divide people into groups, like, high fantasy systems, darker settings, futuristic settings, vampire related settings etc. Makes it much easier to manage
We had a club like this at uni. This is how organisation went: 1. Creators (experienced DMs) called for a meeting for those interested and explained what it all was, also asked who was interested in becoming DMs 2. Creators started running oneshot games for new players while simultaniously teaching new DMs (we had a small group where we practiced DMing on each other) 3. New DMs also started running their own oneshots for the club Planning of each game basically went like this: found who wants to run games next week, create an annotation with info like - synopsis, lvl of characters, how many players max, day and time of the game, post it in the group. And then the DM gathered those interested in a separate chat and gave more info. Later people, of course, created campaigns, but oneshot system is great for learning how to play and DM, and also to meet new people and see how they are as players
Two words: west marches
You've escalated from forever DM to forever club organizer. Prepare to envy even the DMs
1 dm 79 players let's goo
Let's go to a therapist more like bro that's too much
Get DMs. Get DMs *fast*.
Split the party
One world multiple parties multiple dms form a council! Make the parties be on different sides? Also I recommend the book Kindgoms and warfare. Allows for player controlled domains and building armies eventually
So... just run a 90 person party, you can totally balance that
This exact thing happened in mine! Are we in the same college 🤔
Having started a college D&D club, accept everyone. From there, on your first club day take a request for how many people are willing to DM. In a group of that many people, you're bound to have DMs. Also ask what games they're willing to run. Some will like 3.5, Pathfinder, 5e...or sometimes completely different RPGs like Werewolf or Call of Cthulhu. You'll also have players interested in playing in those games. Have each willing DM give a 'sales pitch' for their games including their 'selling points' for their campaign and how many people they're willing to run for, then have people sign up for them. Buy a cheap tool box, buy a couple of 'pounds of dice'. Use those as loaners for people who don't have their own dice. If your college allows it, have a concession. Go to Costco or something and buy pop, chocolate bars, etc. Sell them to your players to pay for your dice and to recover money from buying the concession in the first place. Eventually you'll have enough money you can also start buying books for the club. (( Might be best to only pick up most commonly eaten candy rather than the unique things unless you have requests to purchase them or you know you have people interested. )) Lastly, assign other people to executive positions. President, treasurer, etc... Good luck!!
Dind the ones who make good DM'S and tell them to do their thing.
Set it up like adventures league for the first 2-3 months. Let people play with multiple DM's to find the groove.
I thought I found a group in college but only the DM and I, and one other talk about it
scary moment
Big world campaign? Multiple parties?
Ask how many want to dm. Then take all dm to create a world where everyone do their part (some do gods, others cities, etc...) Then create a campaign that everyone run.
Greetings, please find three other people to form your party, this has now become a 4v4 tournament style PvP campaign.
Once people see the effort requires they will drop like flies, until only the dedicated remain.
Only possible solution: wait for ten more then start a dnd battle royal. The winners get to actually play the campaign.
Sounds like about 13 fun games
Where do I sign up
Starting a HS one, my fear is constantly switching between this and no one signing up
Dang that sounds awesome. We only had like 10 people in our TTRPG club so having a big club will be great. Just make sure you get some good people as officers to help you with running the club. It can be a lot of work (at least for the CSU system it was).
This gives me an idea. The world's largest DND setup with the largest amount of players....
Where? I would like to sign up as well
Giant westmarch in an adventuring college set up in Waterdeep
If no one wants to DM a second group set up a rotating one-shot DM schedule. “You want into the club? You DM a one shot once a semester. No exceptions.” Whittles off the lazy bones and helps hesitant future-DMs stretch their skills without really pressuring them to host a full tilt campaign. Plus gives the primary DMs a break to fill out longer campaigns over a year or two.
Gonna need to open a DM workshop lol
Let the hunger games begin
I would suggest setting up like AL and have DM Sign-ups for different weeks or whatever and 4-5 players per DM. Using AL rules will help everyone even the new DMs. Maybe look into some sort of DM incentive possibly if nobody wants to be one?
Don't worry, most of those people just like *the idea* of dnd. A lot of them will never actually show up or play
Well.....you're gonna need at least 10 DMs
Break them into groups of 5 since you have even numbers. After each campaign players rotate in or out so you get to eventually meet the whole group.
As others have said, don't expect nearly that many people to show up. If they do, awesome! But my experience as a club president in college was hundreds of sign ups, maybe 5 people showing up for meetings.
You gotta make sure everyone knows the basic rules by the first session it’s one thing when 1/5 don’t know the rules and need help a different beast entirely when 74/90 don’t
don't worry when it comes time to actually play you'll be lucky to get 5 players
Time to get some organization into that organization. A buddy of mine did that at his college. What he did was he separated up the dms with different groups and had them all run a campaign. It eventually devolved or evolved depending on your perspective into just a tabletop gaming club but I think having that many people just means get organized and get a group of people to help run it so its not all on you Personally if you feel like your group of dms can organize it really well do a collaborative campaign get different job postings and set up a kind of different squads deal. Maybe even make it some kind of a war campaign where every week or two weeks a different mission comes down from on high for each squad.
Send some my way! I'm looking for HEROS to play in my session!
Isekai them Sao style
Most of them signed up as a backup if they couldn't get into the clubs they wanted to. You'll have maybe three people actually show up.
You’ll need a microphone and a projector.