Eric Tenkar has started to read an old book by Gary Gygax I've long wanted to read but have yet to track down - Role Playing Mastery.
In his first post on the subject he's talking group size, and ideal group size. Gary Gygax expressed an opinion that a fairly smallish group is ideal, but a lot of old school D&D legend is of gigantic groups and massive campaigns full of a huge rotating base of players. How true that was, I'm still not sure, but either way, for all the Mordenkainen and Robilar solo adventuring ("solo" as in "one player" not necessarily "one character") you think of RPGs as having a party of adventurers, not Conan going solo.
I started my DF campaign with five players plus one guest star (he can't commit to even our intermittent games). We ended up adding two more, for a total of seven plus one. We had a potential newbie guest star who ended up not making it. We have a line on a potential eighth player.
We've had one session that I recall with every one of the regulars there although we've been close. Usually it's closer to 3-4 players, and we've recently had a few sessions with only 2 players. Two of those, if I remember correctly, went down to one player for a while since one of them had to pop out to work in the middle of the session to take care of a few things before he got back.
I could run a game with more, but mostly we want a bigger pool because it's more fun when you've got 4 or 5 people instead of 2 or 3, and scheduling wipes out plenty of play time for everyone. We just can't reliably get that many people there. So we're always keeping an eye out for a friend we can lure back into the dungeons and who is in the right frame of mind for this kind of deliberately light game. Still, it works out to less than 5 people per session just about all the time.
So how many guys do you run for? What's your attendance rate like - lots of missed sessions, rotating pool, or play only when everyone is there?
One player can work for James Bond.
ReplyDeleteTwo or three players can work for Doctor Who.
Four players can do the A-team.
Five and six is the norm for what most people tend to expect in role playing games-- I'd say both for modern D&D and for more "advanced" story-oriented games like GURPS. My assumptions are based on convention play, though, which may be different for other people.
B2 and X1 with B/X D&D rules really "wants" lots of characters. Six players with everyone having one or *more* hirelings/henchmen/retainers is ideal. I was surprised at how well having nine players at the table seemed to work with X1, but even they really should have had some red shirts and meat shields along with them.
Ending most sessions back at "town" is a nice way allow for the premise of a rotating cast. It keeps things focused and allows for the campaign to survive the inevitable schedule conflicts that adult gamers bring to the table.
Ending in town is the whole reason I can run my game the way I do - start in town, play, end in town, next session play with whomever can make it. Running someone else's PC or "we can't play because (so-and-so) can't make it and he's important" is minimized.
DeleteWe're grownups with kids and jobs and such, we can't just assume we can all play after school any given day like we used to.
I love this idea, but I tend to run more ongoing campaigns that dont lend themselves to that type of play. I just have to work all that much harder to make it work. If someone isn't there to play their PC, I often have them take a side trek, run an errand, or some other plausible reason to get them out of the action. If we stopped the previous time right in the middle of it, and there is no good way to remove that character, I will just have them do their thing but on the most basic level in the background. If important rolls come up for that character, I have the other players take turns making the rolls for them.
DeleteWe did that for years, but it always ended up with a few people being critical. So I really had to put my foot down and say, this is a pick-up game and we'll do our absolute best to avoid it. I'd love to run another big campaign, but realistically, the pick-up game approach allows for a mix of group sizes and attendance levels. I really could, say, just have someone in for a single game when they made it to New Jersey or have a player that lives in Boston (this is true) and be ready for him to drop in when he drives down. With an epic game, I'd have to sideline them or make them peripheral to the plot.
DeleteIn the online GURPS campaign I run, we currently have 6 players, and normally they are all present, though occasionally 1 might miss a session. We play every other weekend on Sunday nights and honestly it seems like I'm most often the one that can't make it. I won't run the online game unless we have at least half the party (3 players) present.
ReplyDeleteIn the tabletop GURPS campaign that I run we have 8 total players, though I think in our 3 years all 9 of us have been there only a few times. Usually we have 5 or 6 at the table. One player comes from out of town (1.5 hour drive) to play and 2 of the players are nurses and they usually have opposite schedules and can't every play on the same weekend. One of those nurses got pregnant shortly after the campaign started and missed a lot due to that and now of course has a little child, which does not make it easy to come game for 6 hours, though she did bring lil Sully to the game one evening (the hosts are her parents in law) which was not TOO distracting. We only play once a month on a Saturday evening, and sometimes (like this last time) its more like once every 1.5-2 months between sessions! I have played with as few as 2 players (the hosts) but will play the session with as many or as few show up.
I hear on the "not too distracting" thing - one of our players brings one of his sons sometimes. It's not a problem, really, although it's a little distracting (the hum of video games, explosion noises, "Dad come here!" etc.) it's not a big deal. It beats not having my player there, plus someday we figure he'll wander over to the table for a look and never leave. ;)
Deleteexactly!
DeleteWe currently have a GM and 3-4 players. For some genres, we've started running 2 PCs per player, which has worked out fine - it allows for a little more specialization, and even makes "split the party" more viable if every player sends one PC along.
ReplyDeleteIf a player can't make it (esp long term), we'll sometimes switch to a new campaign - we may end up with specialized campaigns to handle being down any particular player!
I think my brother-in-law's group does this - a game for each combo of players, so they can always play an all-hands game no matter who shows. My experience is that drives me, as the GM, totally crazy.
DeleteFor a sole GM, that does seem like the road to madness. Fortunately, we pass GM duties around, so I can't imagine any one of us running more than 2 campaigns even with all player iterations populated.
DeleteI used to GM for a group of five players who would pretty consistently make it every time. Then two of our players, a couple, had a baby and had to stop coming. So we continued with three players. Just recently I started going over to the couples house and doing a two player campaign. We all tend to like the smaller groups actually, it gives us more flexibility as far as playing time and keeps the action more focused. However we have talked about doing a larger one shot campaign together, all five of us again.
ReplyDeleteI'd really suggest making some kind of pick-up game that can be run with whoever makes it out. You get the flexibility of a one-shot but the ability to keep returning to it whenever you've got a mind to.
DeleteMy record is as many as 15 people around the table playing GURPS. That was in two campaigns, the first what really should have been dungeon fantasy (but that didn't exist at the time), the other was a mashup that felt like Dark Conspiracy. That was too many, and I think 4-8 is ideal, wiht 5-8 being preferred.
ReplyDeleteFifteen seems like a bit much for any game. I'd insist on a Caller. :)
DeleteSome of that was a weird effect of inviting many with the expectation that a third or more would flake out on any given day. That didn't happen as often as it did.
DeleteAs a teenager, I started out gaming with just me and a friend, and we slowly added players one at a time every couple years--I remember, when we eventually got up to 4 players, marveling at how "huge" our group had gotten!
ReplyDeleteNowadays, I look for 4-5 players as an ideal, with 6 being an absolute maximum. I'll only cancel a session if we hit a 50% or lower attendance for that week, which is the main reason I like 5 players--it allows for a couple cancellations and still being able to play.
I'm lucky in that I've never really had to deal with maternity leave or child-rearing. (For some reason, I seem to attract childless gamers to my groups!) And as a general rule, I try to make sure any prospective player is going to be able to make the majority of my sessions (which I run weekly). I've found it's just better to schedule for weekly sessions, even if that means a slight bump in cancellations, because then you only have to go two weeks between sessions instead of a month, as you do if a biweekly session gets cancelled. If someone habitually cancels more than, say, 1 in 4 sessions a month, I start to get grumpy. So yeah, by adult gamer standards, I'm pretty spoiled right now, and I'm doing my best to enjoy it as much as possible!
You're really spoiled! I'd play more often but really, I can't dedicate all of my free days to gaming. And if we waited for everyone to make it, geez, we'd have had maybe two sessions so far instead of, what, 30? ;)
DeleteI don't think I've ever run a game with more than three or four. I've played in a few games with maybe 5 tops. I think initially the small size (for groups I've run) stemmed simply from lack of player availability. Then the small-sized group just ended up becoming my "comfort zone" through habit.
ReplyDeleteOne correction, I did just briefly play in an PbP game that had nine players. But I think that's the only one I've experienced with more than a handful.
Delete3-4 really does seem to be the average, with some extremes on the high end.
DeleteFor me, it's 4-6.
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ReplyDeleteMy record is 16. Last Saturday I had 10 players in my World of Tiglath campaign using Google Hangouts.
ReplyDeleteHow well did that work? Is there a point over Hangouts where it just becomes too much? Or no more than 10 people FTF would be, with the added bonus that the cat can't knock over your miniatures (but can hit "screen refresh" or something by landing on the keyboard)?
DeleteThe biggest issue I always faced with many people was where to put everyone, rather than any in-game consequence. I did print out a huge mess of combat cards, to speed decision time (GURPS), but by and large it was "do I have enough chairs" more than "group too big to have fun."
16 Doug. You thought 15 was all kinds of awesome but he's one-upped you man. ;)
DeleteWe have ten players plus me. However, we have never had everyone present at the same time. One guy is deployed, one guy has had some health stuff, and three people live an hour away. My wife plays about half the time, and is more likely to decide to play when it is a smaller group. I can fit six players, in some reasonable comfort, in the living room. The most we've had was eight, I think, which was a long session and cramped for sitting space.
ReplyDeleteWe always try to get back to town, or at least a base camp, at the end of every session. I remember one session where I thought we were done after six hours, and then they all wanted to go after the big bad, so committed to ANOTHER six hours. I'd never run seven players through a 12 hour session, and I will never do it again. I was physically exhausted, even though it was pretty fun.
Generally we have 6 players, including me. We rotate GMs in approximately 15-20 week "rotations." Our rule is that we play if we have at least 4 people. Sometimes even with 4 people, we will put away the RPG and get out a board game or a card game (Race for the Galaxy is popular, and now that I own it post-PAX, Dominion will be too). With 3 people, we either cancel entirely or just have an evening of talking, playing the aforementioned card games, and just generalized hanging out.
ReplyDelete