Pencil and Paper roleplaying is fun. A lot of planning can be done, and expressions and tones acted out in person have a lot more feel to them. But let me give some advice.
If you ever Games Master for a large group, make sure you have the stomach to scream "Shut the hell up" at least once every hour you run a game for. Large groups run away with the story, shout over each other and generally make life difficult for the GM. Don't let them. Have control.
Large groups should be encouraged to create backgrounds. Interconnecting histories make stories epic, traumatic pasts are the exception and not the rule. I'm running a game on a home-made system of my own right now, I have 9 players, and among them, two sets of brother and sister from two nations, nations which are sworn enemies, and on top of this fact, the sister of the Entran (tech-heavy nation) pair was subject to governmental experiment, where she met one of the other characters in the group, a girl born out of a ritual who has an affinity for ritual magic. The Entran brother was an Aquamancer and was on the run from his home, because he didn't enjoy the things his commanding officers were commanding, incidentally, his sister (younger than him) was taken and experimented on because of this. The same commanding officer lead a project for a combat cyborg (whom the party's Technomancer was forced to help develop) who, in battle with the Eastaran brother and sister during the war, hacked the other pair's sister's face nearly in half, costing her an eye and a massive scar. She was discharged from the army because of this. Her brother (who, incidentally had lost the opposite eye nearly six years previous) left with her.
I've introduced 6 of the 9 party members and already you can see the interconnections of their pasts. The one brother left the army, so his sister was punished, and placed in a facility with the ritualist by the man who forced the Technomancer to work on a robot-augment which a cyborg used to nearly kill the second pair's sister...
So far the group consists of Entran Brother (Aquamancer), Entran Sister (Ninja), Eastaran Brother (Big, Brick Sh*thouse aka Tank), Eastaran Sister (Black Magic Swordswoman), Entran Tech-head (Technomancer/Artisan), Ritual-born Corsair (Ritualist), Gunslinging Father of One (Cannonmaster), Freshly joined Trader and Sky-Pirate (Enchanter/Pilot), and of course the NPCs, Project Seven (Cyborg girl developed by Eastaro to combat recent Cybernetic developments in Entra. TOO good with magic) and Rio Gaignen (Actually the biological Father of Seven, even bigger than Tank, dual-wields greatswords, currently blind, unable to feel, taste or smell, he made the sacrifice to become an "obsidian master", to channel biengs from other planes of existance. He sees with his ears. Dark, rare to see, the badass good guy of the game)
They have currently found an underground complex full of old-world tech. Unfortunately they were trapped by Dover Demons (slime creatures), so they found an alternative escape, they activated the old-world tech, and found an airship among it, the ship itself is the beak of a giant bird statue, the Oah Bird, fabled to be a sailor's good luck. It flies in the same way as an aeroplane, on aerofoil wings, unlike the other airships in the game, which use heated gas.
Epic, that's what this roleplay is shaping up to be. It's gone from random Messed up Techfantasy to Epic Final Fantasy style plot. New twists are introduced every week I run this game. Someday, I might even write it up.
Remember, make sure to have a definite goal for a roleplay, force players to make backgrounds, because without them, they can't be as 'real' and are never as entertaining. Try to use the backgrounds both for and against characters. And I restate: do not let the players run away with you, be commanding, learn to say "shuddup!"
Umbraz Community Member 
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