I have a pretty sizeable group of friends who like to hang out and play RPGs together. We’ve done a handful of games, ranging from crunchy stuff through rules-lite games. But one common theme is that our games can go pretty slow. We’re a group of 7 most of the time, which means 6 players + 1 GM, which is can make stuff very slow. Iterations of D&D all suffer from this, and it gets really bad in games like Dark Heresey for us. But even tropey, free-form games like Blades in the Dark and most stuff on the Apocalypse engine feel sluggish, since they’re so tightly based on the Player-GM feedback cycle.
The only types of games that I’ve found play quickly with a large group are the light, beer & pretzels games like Everyone Is John, Paranoia, but those don’t extend well beyond 1 session. I also like the higher-stakes, longer-form RPGs where the players can shape the world at scale.
Are there games that can support both longer-term campaigns AND large groups, or am I looking for the impossible here?
I can’t really think of a single RPG that I play, that works optimally with more than 4 people. Each one explicitly calls out that the suggested party size is 3-4, including Blades in the Dark, PF2e, and D&D5e. This may be something where everyone options is kind of bad.