D&D 5E: How This Big Table Came To Be

Hi everyone and a good afternoon/morning/evening depending on when you are reading this.

I mentioned in my introductory post that at my DnD table there are seven players. The breakdown includes:
-Fionn the Goliath Bard
-Sen the Human Wizard
-Pelliryn the Firbolg Ranger
-Amethyst the Fairy Arcane Archer
-Yeldar the Half-Elf Paladin
-Xof the Wood Elf Druid
-Whistler the Kenku Rogue

Of all these characters though, only three were part of the original crew that being the bard, ranger and the archer. The others would join us at the next session, but what would possibly possess any sane DM to acquire four extra players for DND, especially when it's already difficult enough to get a group of three people together regularly? Let me tell you this story.

Setting Up Session Times
The bard player and myself had been in a campaign group before, Curse of Strahd, actually which was my first D&D experience. He was DMing and I was playing a Triton Paladin. After that, we went into Dungeon of the Mad Mage and that group completely fizzled out. People got busy, people moved away, people didn't want to do anything online (the usual stuff). So that group faded away and there was a distinct lack of D&D for a long time. There was a one-shot here and there, another failed campaign start with some people from the same group, it was a mess folks. We all want to actually play the game but people have different things happening in their life. Real life happens, someone had a baby, it all happens. I had a campaign with my brother and one of my sisters, one finished and another faded away for the same reasons.

This left me with a D&D shaped hole in my heart but I absolutely hated the idea of a campaign stopping. So I came up with the resolution that the next group would always meet unless 50% of the players couldn't make it.

And so a small recruiting drive was made. I came up with once a month as that would give me plenty of prep-time between sessions, plus if you give a regular time slot that people can commit to it makes it easier to make plans around that.

The first players to agree was my wife and then the bard-player as well as my brother who would play a wizard (and then be sick and miss the first session). Then my sister agreed and she picked a ranger (optional variants over PHB abilities - she's not crazy). So we played our first session and that was cool, a group of four, that's pretty standard size.

Then came a funeral.

More Players, More Chaos
I was told that my great-aunt on my mothers side had passed away. I hadn't seen those cousins for many years and decided I would go to the memorial at my cousins place. I got there and got to chatting with my cousins partners son (he was 11 at the time). Lovely child with a great imagination, he wasted no time in showing me the world map he had made on his tablet and discussing the elves and orks on the map and what made them different. We spent most of the afternoon chatting, well he was talking I was stuffing my face, but then we just got into a groove talking about D&D and fantasy games and movies. Eventually the end of the day came and I had to go.

It was a couple days later when I got a message from my cousin saying that his kid really enjoyed that time and was into D&D type stuff, could I do some DMing for the two of them, maybe some friends? He explained that they had already bought a D&D starter set. I suggested that rather than doing something separate, why don't they join our campaign that was already going? I checked with the original group and they were fine with it, although they would have to reign in their language a bit. But other than that, we got two new players. Great! They agreed to a paladin and a druid. Sweet.

Six players was quite a bit, three times more than what I had DMed before but it was still a manageable number.

Then my buddy Gav asked if I was interested in doing some DMing for other guys in our local churches. I explained what was going on and then he asked if he could join. Without thinking, I said yes and thus the rogue joined the group.

Saying No
At this point, the group was seven and I was starting to stress. I had never DMed for a group of standard size, nevermind seven. I had a couple of other queries from other guys in our local churches and some other friends, but I simply had to learn to say no. Once the campaign was done, or for one-shots, but there had to be an upper limit.

I will keep sharing more about this table, and the various rules I've incorporated to make sure that it runs smoothly.

Yours from inside the belly of a banderhobb
tomster-17