this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Very recently I've had good experience with Mork Borg games. Currently doing a Pirate Borg game with 6 players on a weekly basis and we've been playing for a few months now with a pretty long, extended story. I hate calling it a campaign, because there was no real defined ending that has been primarily player driven, but it's getting to a point now where it's naturally wrapping up. But, this system has rules light enough to make combat fast, quick and pithy, and lots of opportunities for randomization of events, items, outcomes and whatnot to put in unexpected flair in the story. It's very easy to learn, and great for building very random stories. The random tables of things is by far my favorite and is the best inspiration as long as players are willing to use those things as inspiration for something cool.
As an example, in Pirate Borg we had a situation where a character had access to "Ash" a drug-like substance that can be traded for profit or there is the option of ingesting it and a random table of effects. The effect we had was very non-mechanical, where a character sees darkness, shadows and feels lifeless. The player took this and ran with it, having the character feel very depressed and not wanting to do anything, really leaned in to that aspect of feeling lifeless even though there was no specific mechanic other than what the table was illustrating. It was really awesome!
I find that Powered by the Apocalypse games tend to be pretty good with 6ish players, but you also have to have very invested players who are willing to drive and narrate story along and not get too bogged down in mechanics. We did a few YEARS of PbtA games with great success, and they were immensely rewarding experiences. We played The Between recently and they were like. HARD LIMIT OF 4. We played with 6 just fine and it was an AWESOME ride and such a great story! I think a lot of this is about how your group adapts to being good storytellers and a good audience for each other. Have the mechanics be something that works to seamlessly tell a story rather than get in the way. If things are getting bogged down, it might be too much.
A few things to caveat though about our experience thought which I think leads to our success.
These things are completely system independent and really what drives why we can have a group of 7 of us effectively play games like this for years and years on end and keeps us coming back for more.
Thank you for the detailed reply! I've never played any of the Mork Borg games. I'll give the site a look.
It might have just been the games I tried, but I had problems with big parties when playing both Atma and Monster of the Week. The usual player-GM loop of a player suggesting something and me changing the scenario in response got a little frustrating when there were 5-6 things happening in between each player's action. In the moment I could split the party up a bit and cut between them, but that led to these long periods of downtime in between turns. I might just need more experience running these kinds of campaigns.
Scene cuts are a normal thing for us. We often split up quite a bit. It does take learning how to balance out how to cut back and forth. It's like watching a TV show, you have to know when to raisr the suspense and at the perfect moment when people want more swap to the other thing to leave that suspense in the air.
Often we cut when someone needs to make a roll. We say the move, call for the roll and then cut to the next player. That gives the player a moment to find their dice, roll, see the result and think about what might happen.
Practice and try things. See what keeps the tension high and action and storytelling flowing. I'm sure you can get it!