Microphone challenge

Looking for suggestions and options, since I keep coming up blank. I am looking to redesign and try to improve our current audio setup, for our live-play RPG sessions. What we have is functional, but challenged – some of the players are naturally louder than others or quieter. Originally, our group consisted of 10 players, so there was very little I could practically do about it, but our group has trimmed down to 7 players, and I want to revisit the topic.

First some criteria for the puzzle, what do I want to accomplish? My goal is to have dedicated mics for each player and the GM (aiming for 9 total). I use a lavaliere mic myself, so it really doesn’t need to change, so really looking for 8 dedicated microphones. Budgeting is of course tight, this is a hobby project and not a business, so I am aiming at $100 or less for the full changes. Each mic should be close or at the player, with a long enough cord to stretch the 10 feet or so to the audio capture (a Zoom H6), where it ultimately plugs in with XLR. Each player has a laptop which can provide USB power if needed, but I want to avoid using the laptops to record 8 different streams, partially due to the challenges of training 8 players to start and stop the recordings, and partially since each laptop already struggled at times for our VTT. Plus, future games may not use those devices anyway.

Our current setup includes 4 hanging microphones (omni-directional) above the table – this does a passable job at pickup but can vary quite a bit based on the player and the direction they are speaking towards. I am at one end of the table with the audio capture (the H6), but it could conceivably be placed closer to the players, reducing the distance to 8 feet or so each (with several down to only a couple feet. I record all the audio thru the H6 into an OBS stream as separate audio tracks, which I then can raise or lower during editing, but its only with Davinci Resolve’s advanced audio processing that it really cleans up – I can’t change individual players up or down.

For our table, cables running over the top isn’t a major issue – we either use a VTT or would have a battlemap anyway, so that would not interfere. Alternatively, I can hang items from the ceiling, if that is better. I have no ability to run cables below or thru the table.

My basic plan is to use something similar to this (Condensor Studio Microphone), but at $16 each for 8 microphones, that breaks the budget. Each 3.5mm plug would then connect to a splitter, coming in as mono signal to a y-splitter than then converts to a single stereo 3.5mm, which in turn plugs into an XLR stereo connection into the H6. At the H6 level, it records 4 stereo channels (each a pair of mono signals from 8 mics), plus a 9th channel from my lavaliere.

All of this is theoretical, I can’t really test it until I have hardware, and I don’t want to buy hardware if it’s too expensive and may not work. Thus the puzzle, and ask for guidance.

If you have any experience in this area, what suggestions might you have? Or are their other options that I am not considering? Or should I simply prepare for cost, and realize this isn’t possible at my price range?