Roleplay too big?

[Yuffie Kisaragi]

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So I currently have a game running that I originally designed to have maybe 10-15 characters. At this point, we're at 22. This is partially my fault (I made two extra characters than normal and I never put a lid on how many characters a player can have), but it's still a problem. I don't want to close the roleplay because I feel like when I do that I'm potentially losing out on great stories and great players. The question is, how should I redesign the game to host more people? For more information, it's a military squad style game, where the characters chill at base or go out on missions while dealing with character conflicts and solving a mystery. Missions were going to have like 3-5 jobs and I would split the characters between them. But now with so many more characters these jobs would get weighed down with too many. My first thought for redesign was to have two of these missions going simultaneously. And I want to make it super clear, closing sign-ups or putting a character cap is not an answer for me.


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[Enuky]

You could create an opposing side and divide the players. Both sides can have their own missions taking place while being separate. It creates irony especially if they are enemies working against one another. I just started doing this in my rp where everyone had to be either resistance or monarchy, and I have been quite impressed at the way the sides have been slowly working against one another while not being together at all. The resistance side is preparing itself to fight the monarchy, while the monarchy is kept busy with reconstruction. I might add though that dividing the players does not eliminate work on your part-- having multiple scenarios is almost like being in more than one rp and you have to write a lot more.


Alternatively, I don't see why having simultaneous missions ongoing wouldn't resolve the issue as well, if pitting members against each other isn't your cup of tea.

 

[Dusky]

@welian is an expert at crowd control with large roleplays.

 

[Yuffie Kisaragi]

[QUOTE="Enuky K]You could create an opposing side and divide the players. Both sides can have their own missions taking place while being separate. It creates irony especially if they are enemies working against one another. I just started doing this in my rp where everyone had to be either resistance or monarchy, and I have been quite impressed at the way the sides have been slowly working against one another while not being together at all. The resistance side is preparing itself to fight the monarchy, while the monarchy is kept busy with reconstruction. I might add though that dividing the players does not eliminate work on your part-- having multiple scenarios is almost like being in more than one rp and you have to write a lot more.
Alternatively, I don't see why having simultaneous missions ongoing wouldn't resolve the issue as well, if pitting members against each other isn't your cup of tea.

[/QUOTE]
The players being split is a plot point for later, but yes that should help divvy up character interactions and overall make things more digestable.


And yeah, I think that simultaneous missions will be my primary solution, but I was hoping for some other pieces of advice I could use.

 

[Coward]

So not all the characters are played by different people? I would possibly require people to choose which of their stable they're taking on each mission. Their other characters would be at base working on something else, like in a Bioware game.


If you explain why you're limiting it I think people will understand

 

[welian]

[QUOTE="Yuffie Kisaragi]My first thought for redesign was to have two of these missions going simultaneously.

[/QUOTE]
That will work just fine. You can use multiple in-character tabs to divide the mission groups. In the meantime, you may want to consider making a rudimentary spreadsheet to help keep track of all the characters and who is in what group.

 

[TyrantKingKuma]

[QUOTE="Yuffie Kisaragi]So I currently have a game running that I originally designed to have maybe 10-15 characters. At this point, we're at 22. This is partially my fault (I made two extra characters than normal and I never put a lid on how many characters a player can have), but it's still a problem. I don't want to close the roleplay because I feel like when I do that I'm potentially losing out on great stories and great players.
The question is, how should I redesign the game to host more people?


For more information, it's a military squad style game, where the characters chill at base or go out on missions while dealing with character conflicts and solving a mystery. Missions were going to have like 3-5 jobs and I would split the characters between them. But now with so many more characters these jobs would get weighed down with too many. My first thought for redesign was to have two of these missions going simultaneously.


And I want to make it super clear, closing sign-ups or putting a character cap is not an answer for me.

[/QUOTE]
I've been in a bunch of threads that turned into behemoth stories with 30+ characters when they originally they should have 10 at most.


Best advice I can give, you need to split the action, make more missions, expand the story to allow more characters into it... or better yet make them fight each other, some will play one squad and the others a counter squad to them from the other side.