Through some quirk, Grey Ranks at Dreamation got over-subscribed by 50%. I asked for four players (Sweet! A five player game that I am in!) and got six (Uh-oh!). The game's sweet spot is four players, it works with three of five, but six is just too many for it to be fun, I think.
So it's a conundrum, and I solve it in a way that I think was very effective and wanted to share, because it highlights some of the strengths of this sort of game.
What I did was get everybody together – Paul Tevis, Mel White, Bret Gillan, James Brown, Matthew Gagan, and a really cool guy named Greg Phillips who I only know from Dreamation. We form a crew together, with me prodding and poking and facilitating. Six players, six Things Held Dear, it works out great. Bret, confident in his sexuality, plays a young girl, which is a good move – it makes him the center of attention in the crew. There's the tough guy, the wallflower, the big guy, the family guy, the I-want-to-get-drunk guy. We all agree to play out the meat of the Uprising, chapters five, six and seven. So far, so good!
And then I split them into two groups. Here's the fun part – Dreamation provided us with abandoned offices to play in, so we've got two three-person crews playing the game in adjacent rooms, more or less at the same speed. Chapter five hums along – trapped in the sewers! My sister is pregnant! Then it's chapter six – and I get a player from each crew to switch rooms. We did it again at the top of chapter seven, and the result was really satisfying. I was worried that it might mess up ongoing stories, but it had the opposite effect – we all knew who should stay and who should go (for example, the guy who was really in love with Bret's girl got swapped out, and their relationship imploded while they were apart in a satisfying and spectacular fashion).
Basically from the beginning of chapter six, about an hour into the session, I had nothing to do. The game, which has no GM, had found its pace and rhythm in both rooms and they were off to the races. I was really pleased with the outcome of what was essentially a last minute improvisation.
Remi and I ended up doing the same thing for eight people with Food Holes, and Joshua Newman had four tables of Shock: players at one point, all riffing off the same initial elements. I think this can only really happen at a convention, but it's very powerful. I think I may try to engineer it in the future, actually – a two tribe Ganakagok messenger feast would be epic.
What I found coolest about this structure was that we got to hear stories from the people who switched about what was going in the rest of the Grey Ranks while we were out doing our stuff. I think this effect would have been even more pronounced and still held the game together with twelve or even sixteen people.