It's the first session. How do you bring together an eight

Get them drunk and coerce them into acting out their basest desires through roleplay?

>>45922405
Nah son, I mean in-game.

Firstly, the OP is a bit misleading. I thought this was about the actual players and not the characters. Or are you still talking about the players?

Secondly, ditch at least 2 players. You're gonna find it real hard with 8 players.

They meet in a tavern.

>>45922350
First of all
>Who took a shower today? Raise your hand!
>Good! Now everyone who is wearing dirty clothes, put your hand down.
Everyone with their hands down, you're dismissed.

So now that 3-4 people are left:
>All right guys, let's start creating characters. The setting is a typical DnD campaign after the campaign is over. The kingdom is just recovering from a civil war after the PC killed the last king. The scars are still fresh.
That way everyone knows what to expect, characters' backstories make sense, and everyone knows eachother.

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>>45922350
>eight player party

>>45922757
What? I've played in a 20 player party before.

>>45922724
>Everyone with their hands down, you're dismissed.
>getting rid of the only ones who would actually be good ttrpg players
The less responsibility someone has in real life, the more time and effort they can devote to the game, bruh.

>>45922350
They're all renegade members of a crack team of commandos who follow no laws but their own.

>>45922791
Lies!

>>45922724
So you'd create a setting that's already been wrapped up by a previous group, with no BBEG left to actually provide a challenge?

Why don't you just tell me we're going to be fighting wolves for eight sessions? Really let me know there's nothing to really work for.

>>45923006
On the contrary. That is just the setting's background. The big bad is the company that has been sending PCs into this world for entertainment of the masses on Earth for the past 20 or so years

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OP here. Let me rephrase this.
How do you bring together eight PCs who all know each other and have likely worked together before, but seem to have conflicting interests and have not made an enormous amount of effort to intimately intertwine character backstories despite repeatedly and directly being asked to.

>>45923406

Get rid of half of them. Then have them redo their characters with intermingled backstories.

>Hey it's Benny from Jackson! How ya doin'!
>You sonnofa bitch, you took Jesse's share. After this is over, you're gonna pay your debt to him and his family.

Everyone doesn't need to know everyone else initially. But they should be separated by 1 maybe 2 people (so friends of friends).

>>45923406
Have them meet in a bar or other public place; specifically in groups, rather than individually, so it's not so much of a coincidence. Then thrust them into something before they can say their goodbyes and move on, forcing them back into a party.

>>45922757
My dad consistantly played in large parties in the 80s, he said there was kind of a deputy to the dm in his group that would help keep things running smoothly

Read their back stories. Write a mini story that slowly brings them together before the main quest.

Or maybe something happens in a public place where they're all at. Rumble in the town market. Catastrophe during carnival.

Or maybe one pc or npc deliberately gathers the team together

>>45922350
what is that, a picture for halflings?

>>45922350
Alien slave raiders trying to anal probe them?

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>>45922440

>>45922724
What's wrong with taking showers at night?

>>45922350
Well at eight players, obviously you're all mad so you can join up to go petition the king of the potato people for your freedom.

>>45922791
Any good stories or crazy shit in general on how that worked.

>>45922350
They all show up to a meeting that they have been invited to. No one knows who invited them all specifically and for what purpose, but all that is known is that they were chosen because they each have specific different skillsets.

Take it from there basically. If someone has a stupid character then they were chosen because they are expendable. If someone has a good looking character then they were chosen for their physical beauty which you can make up a reason for needing, like seducing a guard or mom who gas information you need.

>>45924092
Not particularly good stories, the craziness just came from the number of people. All credit to the DM who found a way to run it well, basically he had everyone split up into sort of small teams of a few characters within the group proper.

Then for the gameplay, we were expected to figure out a general action for our teams either in combat our out, and he'd go around to each of the groups to get what their actions were. I was honestly amazed how fast he made it go despite so many players.

The whole thing ran for 8 sessions of about the same amount of players, till other DMs were available and opened up games. By the end though we still had about 10 players.

>>45922757
Fun fact: the first iterations of D&D called for 15-30 players per DM, then called a 'referee', and more than one such group playing in a campaign.

>>45924475
To be fair, D&D was first formed from a wargame.