A Traitors-style game for a large group: 30 to 200 players

Head count: 30 to 200 players. One host runs a circle of up to 30 in about 50 minutes; a bigger group is more circles, more hosts, or sessions back to back through the day.

A Traitors-style game is built for a room where everyone can hear everyone, which is why 16 to 30 is the sweet spot for Treachery!. Past 30 the arguing stops managing itself and the quiet half of the room drops out. The answer is not a bigger circle; it is more circles, or more sessions. Here is how it works for a department of 60, a conference of 150 and a festival field of 200, and what you need from the room. The rules themselves are in how to play a Traitors-style game: Treachery! in an hour.

Two ways to scale it

Sessions back to back. One host, one room, one circle at a time. Half of a company of 60 plays while the other half eats or networks, then they swap. A conference slot of two hours takes two sessions; a whole afternoon takes four or five. It needs one room and one host, and every player gets the full game with the whole circle in the argument.

Circles in parallel. Several circles of up to 30, each with its own host, all running at once in one big room or several small ones. The whole group plays in the same hour. It needs a host per circle and enough space that the circles can't hear each other's votes. This is how we run it at Camp Wildfire, where sessions have taken up to 200 players at a time, with the crew we send grown from one host to four over five years.

Which one depends on your timetable more than your headcount. A conference wants the parallel version so the programme moves on; an away day with a long afternoon is happier with back-to-back sessions and a shorter wait.

What a large group needs from the room

• Chairs for everyone, in circles. Cabaret tables work if people can turn their chairs. Rows don't.
• A room per circle, or one big enough to keep them apart. Twenty metres between circles is enough; a wall is better.
• A microphone per host for anything over 30. For a circle of 30, a host can carry the room unamplified; for a hall, no.
• Nothing else. No screen, no set, no rig. The game is sitting down, in words, so it suits every ability and every dress code, and it moves rooms in five minutes.

Running it yourself at this size

You can, with a confident host per circle and a firm clock. Split the group into circles of 20 to 30 before anyone arrives, with a named host each, and run the same round structure in every circle: night, morning, day, vote, repeat. Give each host a whiteboard and the same script, start the circles together, and set a hard finish so the winners can be announced to the whole room. The thing that goes wrong is the host who plays, or the circle of 45 that nobody wanted to split; both are fixed in the planning. Past about 16 people the organiser cannot be the host and still enjoy the day, which is usually when we get the call. For the office version at the normal size, see how to play a Traitors-style game at work.

What it costs hosted

Treachery! is from £20 a person with a minimum of £600 a session. For a large group that means one session per 30 players, whether they run in parallel or back to back. There is no VAT to add: Get Social is not VAT registered, so the price you see is the whole price. Travel outside London is extra, and tasks between rounds are an optional add-on, priced on request. Send us the headcount, the slot and the room, and we'll come back within one working day with a plan.