A lot of people do the "play by the character sheet" thing even though they're experienced enough to know better. A good whack to the head with a PHB--er, stay good, steph! ....anyway.
As you probably know, the previous Mudd DMs (Nick, Steve, Brian) all played large-party (8-9 players) and so that became standard. Dan defined the 8-character limit, I would have gone with 6 but having managed to pull off the sundered realms campaign alone with only about the expected amount of severe disorder, I feel pretty flexible about party size. Nick put aside time for "the players will wank now" if I recall.
I suspect that gameplay will improve as Dan and I figure out how best to balance our skills, I get back into the swing of co-DMing after such a long stretch of DMing alone, Dan gets more experience DMing, and party gets more experience playing with each other. At least I know that personally as a DM a lot of my decisions are determined by knowing how players will interact with each other, not just how players will act individually.
I found the session more taxing than I would have liked, too. Partly for that reason I'm voting no Friday night session, especially since I need to try to pull Eye of Chaos back into shape.
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As you probably know, the previous Mudd DMs (Nick, Steve, Brian) all played large-party (8-9 players) and so that became standard. Dan defined the 8-character limit, I would have gone with 6 but having managed to pull off the sundered realms campaign alone with only about the expected amount of severe disorder, I feel pretty flexible about party size. Nick put aside time for "the players will wank now" if I recall.
I suspect that gameplay will improve as Dan and I figure out how best to balance our skills, I get back into the swing of co-DMing after such a long stretch of DMing alone, Dan gets more experience DMing, and party gets more experience playing with each other. At least I know that personally as a DM a lot of my decisions are determined by knowing how players will interact with each other, not just how players will act individually.
I found the session more taxing than I would have liked, too. Partly for that reason I'm voting no Friday night session, especially since I need to try to pull Eye of Chaos back into shape.