Dming a table of 9 players

Hi everyone,

Highrollers and CritRole got me into D&D, and now I'm very happily going to start dming for my friends and their better halves, which is awesome!

The problem is, more people means more schedule conflicts, so we settled for a monthly 2h session, which I think is quite manageable but less engaging.

Another problem that I found from a homebrewed one-shot I did with them that kicked this whole thing off for us, is that I understand combat can be really boring with 9 players, because it takes forever, some classes have simpler turns, other more complex, and is a bit hard to prepare/balance (especially for a new DM 😅).

Does anyone have any tips on making things more interesting and engaging for when it's not your turn? In between sessions? Combat management for such a big table?

Thanks very much I advance 😁