Ideal Group Size

[Seghast]

So in our group, we have a rotating chair of GMs and while we've been kicking around the idea of a new campaign lately, there have been questions as to what to do and who would want to run it.

Someone finally has an idea and has volunteered and is now trying to figure out who wants to be involved. He says he has six players already lined up (not including himself), and he wants me to be number seven. We may also have an additional one to three people show up on occasion.

We've discussed ideal group size internally before: we agree three is generally the minimum and four to five is perfect. Six is really pushing it (but manageable) and anything beyond six becomes a nightmare of people talking over each other with ever-increasing volume, some players/characters being completely neglected and ignored, arguments over tactics and rules, and other general chaos. Adventures end up getting cut short because of flaring tempers and too many discussions from bored players waiting their turn distracting everyone else and, in some cases, people simply fall asleep waiting on their turn (this has actually happened a lot; two or three individuals will get in a very spirited 'discussion' about tactics and keep everything tied up for hours...we've had what should have been simple three hour adventures turn into a ten hour long marathon of the same few people arguing semantics while the rest of us fell asleep in our seats).

And despite the fact we always say four to five is the ideal number when we discuss it, everyone always strives to get as many players as they possibly can regardless. We've already seen time and time again that for us, six players is hard and seven-plus becomes virtually impossible.

Our worst was in the line outside the theater waiting for the premiere of Episode II; we organized a game with other groups and random people in line and had somewhere north of a dozen people all trying to talk over one another.

I don't think I'm going to even bother with this campaign based on the projected group size alone. Six players just isn't fun for me and seven or more usually leaves me with a migraine (and yes, I do mean that 100% literally), whether I'm playing or GMing.

So, what's your ideal group size? What's your minimum? What's your maximum? What's your "Dear God, I'm Never Doing That Again" number?

[garhkal]

4-7 for me. Anything less, and loss of one PC can spell doom. Any more and its to hard to handle everyone. 6 is my safe spot.
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[Leon The Lion]

My ideal group size is 2 or 3 players. That's the group size I "grew up with" as a gamer, and that's what I'm keeping to. It lets me give adequate attention to every character and their interactions and sub-plots without leaving anybody alone for too long if I have to focus solely on someone else for a while.

It follows then that minimum size is 1. I've run entire solo campaigns, and while it's not my prefered play mode it still works well enough for me. And some stories don't really work with more main characters anyway.

4 players is already too much for me. It could work short term, but is ultimately too many balls to juggle.

5+ is to me a recipe for a logistic nightmare, or at least a bland, flavour-sacrificed-to-time-constraints game where nobody has the time for (what I consider) proper roleplaying nor for the NPC and world to be properly developed, presented, and interacted with.
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[Bobmalooga]

6-7, anything more and it's to many and anything less and they're tripping over each other or trying to full niches where they really dont belong.
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[garhkal]

[DougRed4]

It really depends on the game, but for me Seghast's numbers are exactly where I'm at. Ideal is 4-5 players, though some games I can handle 6. 7+ just starts becoming too many.

My supers game is like that. At one point we had ten regular players!

Star Wars d6 is actually a game that can (at least occasionally) handle more. A friend ran an annual SW game (at our local con), and he sometimes had around 15 players! He's a really good GM that is excellent at improvising, and this campaign had very little ground action or individual character stuff going on. Mostly it was large-scale space combat, with us controlling an entire Rebel squadron (even capital ships). But with that many players, it still went really, really long, and was tough to manage.

I'm also okay with 2-3 players sometimes, but think you get better interactions and role-playing with 1-2 more than that.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Leon The Lion]

[Seghast]

When I first started doing Star Wars, the group I joined already had six regulars. I became number seven, then we picked up a number eight... That's the group where three hour adventures became ten hour long crapfests (I honestly think our longest was about thirteen hours; 7 pm Friday night til 8 am Saturday morning).

That almost drove me away from gaming entirely; after a handful of sessions like that, I just quit going. A few of the others quit, too, and we formed our own smaller group and that's what kept me involved over the years.

I think the local comic store has a group that's about seven to ten players strong for their weekly D&D (one of my friends is part of it), and apparently that works for them, which is part of the driving force behind him wanting to gather up seven-plus players for Star Wars despite our failed history with groups that large.

[Raven Redstar]

For me, I prefer having 1-3 players, because it gives each of my players a chance to shine well. Plus, with 3 players you can sort of cover the major group roles well enough to get by in the galaxy at large. I've noticed that although it can be done, players start to get bored the larger the group is. I know it's been that way for me.

If folks manage to have fun in groups of 6 or 7, I say more power to them! But, for me, I prefer my smaller, more intimate games where I can concentrate on the personal story lines of all players in question, anything more and I spend more time just trying to wrangle a bunch of gamers and keep them on track. Plus, the larger the group, the more side conversations and distractions that end up popping up. Maybe it's just the groups I've played with, but for some reason, most gamers feed off of one another and it eventually just breaks down to a joke fest. Which is all fun and games, unless you're the one who has spent hours prepping for an adventure that never gets out of the cantina/ship/etc...
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[DougRed4]

There's a lot of truth in that, Raven. Saturday night we were down a couple of players (so me as GM and 4 players) and it went significantly faster and smoother (with way less side conversations and joking).
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Whill]

I've ran a couple entire campaigns with only 1 or 2 regular players (sequels to group campaigns with more advanced PCs). I've also ran a couple 10 or 12 player adventures. 3-5 players is my preferred range, with 5 being ideal. 5 PCs can adequately cover the basic PC group skill set and are not too many characters that everyone can still have something to do operating a light freighter. With a 5-player group, game night can often still be salvaged with a modified or alternate adventure when 1 or maybe even 2 players have to cancel. More than 5 players tends to become unwieldy, but I'm ok with a campaign having 5 regulars and a couple additional occasional players. I can make do with 3 regular players if I have to, and in that case a couple semi-regulars are especially welcome to the campaign. I prefer not to even run an adventure for less than 3 players so rarely do, and it's almost always minor mini-adventures completed in one game session.
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[Lane Arroway]

My ideal group is 1-3 like some others have said. I started playing this game with a large group, like 6-8 of us. Then that number began to drop to about 3-5, then just 3. Finally, I ran games for 1 player for many years. Now my group is 3-4 again and I won't play with less than 3 assuming all 3 players started the adventure together. In my current campaign I have adventures planned for just one of the pcs, pairs and the whole group of 4.

I find its easier for the characters to shine is small groups. On the flip, it's easier to personalize adventures for smaller groups. This way they want to play because of the story not just to roll dice and advance their characters.
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[Zarn]

I prefer five, or perhaps four. I won't play with less than three. With five, that allows one or two to flake out before the group can't play any more.

I do tend to have a mechanism so that it is feasible to change player characters, for instance a guild, base, or other plot device, and I do tend to let player characters use their skills when they're 'offline', so to speak.

[DougRed4]

That reminds me of something. Some genres make it tougher to carry on (game) when a few people can't make it (or "flake out", as Zarn put it).

In our supers game, for example, we have a large stable/roster of heroes. So unless we leave things off in the middle of one adventure, it doesn't matter if we only have three people or if we have 7-8.

With many fantasy games, due to the difficulty of travel, it can be tough to soldier on when a couple of players can't make it (or you almost have to have somebody else play their characters).

For Star Wars, we tend to have the person who can't make it that night just "stay back at the ship" (with the NPCs).
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Ral_Brelt]

I honestly think that comes from the roles ideology of other systems. Its ingrained into players that without the tank, medic or crowd control the party is flawed. A big portion of this thought process comes from D&D where you do need those roles filled. I'm running into issues getting people to try d6 cause of 'the math', and the lack of levels. I wonder if gamers are getting more lazy as systems evolve.

Sorry for the rant.