Just starting with Malazan, and finished up Gardens of the Moon a couple of days ago. Overall was pretty enjoyable, but it certainly shows that I'm out of practice with high fantasy worlds. Lots of unfamilar names that left me checking the cast list regularly.
Really looking forward to more info on the warrens that I'm hopeful will come in later books. While I get the impression the same cast won't be back for the whole series, I hope to see more of the Bridgeburners as well!
I ran a battle royale style one shot for a big group recently, based on the Battle Royale module from DMGuild.
Because it was such a large group (11 players) I made a bunch of compromises:
As the other comment said, it was really important to be upfront with the players, out of game, about the challenges of PVP. It was unavoidable for players to be sitting around waiting for the combat to finish with little to do.
I also found delegating some tasks made it easier for me to keep a handle on such a large group: