A scheme is presented for generating entangled states of multiple atoms in a cavity. In the scheme the atoms simultaneously interact with a cavity mode, with the first atom driven by two classical fields and the other atoms driven by a classical field. Our scheme is valid even if the cavity decay rate is larger than the effective coupling strength, which is important for experiment. The generation of entangled states is conditional on the detection of a photon decaying from the cavity and thus the fidelity of the entangled state is insensitive to the detection inefficiency. Furthermore, the scheme can be applied to the case with any number of atoms in principle.