How many players

[Finarvyn]

I've been thinking about RPG design, and specifically the number of options for players.

I'm curious as to what the "typical" number of players might be in your campaign (not counting the GM, of course) because that might help me define in my own mind how many classes there "ought" to be in a RPG.

Most of the games I play don't use skills, so the class selection gives in effect a skill package for each player. The White Box only has 3 classes, so when my 6 players get together there needs to be some overlap and have more than one person play a given character class. C&C has something like 8 classes, so each player can have a different one, but I don't like all of them (barbarian).

[Finarvyn]

Interesting. Growing up we usually gamed with 1-2 players but I notice with 6 votes in everyone is in the 3-6 range.

[Ghul]

We have 6 players + 1 DM (me). We've been gaming together since 1993, but two of the guys did not join us until about '95. We've been through lots of RPG systems, and many long and involved campaigns.

When I was younger, from about 1981 to 1988, I DMed for 3 players. But I also spent some of those years as a player in a larger group, comprised of 6 to 8 players and one DM. To this day, I believe that DM was perhaps one of the finest I've ever gamed with, and I absorbed a lot from him in those fondly remembered days.

Tracing back to my earliest gaming experiences, in 1981, I learned about RPGs and D&D from a pal in my 5th grade class. He ran me and another kid through B2, A1, X2, and G1-2-3. We had a lot of fun, but we had very little understanding of the rules. But who cares!

[Arminath]

I voted none of the above since you can only pick one category. The reason being -

In the '80s our group averaged 4-5 players

In the early '90s the group I played with at the local game store had 21 members

In the late '90s that group dwindled to 6

Since '01 that group has grown back to 11 players, but I also now play in another group of 4 players as well.

[tavis]

My White Box game typically attracts between 4 and 12 players, with 8 being about average. It has the advantage of being organized through the New York Red Box site, which both helps focus the interest of a larger community of folks and also promulgates the West Marches-style "whoever shows up is the adventuring party" ethos. (It's rare for all of the White Box players at any one session to have been at the last.)

Most of the other RPGs I play have between 4-7 players per session, with the assumption that most or all have to show up in order to game (although some of my best 3E experiences were one-on-one over the phone - my Black Enclaves submission was inspired by that campaign). For OD&D, though, I really like the big parties - the fast combat system makes it smooth, and the high lethality rate rewards having lots of fodder. The only drawback is that the intelligently defended dungeon entrances to Caverns of Thracia discourage leaving the caverns unattended, and we only play for 4-hour sessions. So there's a tendency for the PCs to pull back only to the surface, not all the way back to town, which makes it a nexus of improbability when we need to introduce all the new or missed-last-session PCs.

[greyharp]

7 to 8 in our group.

[thegreyelf]

I voted 6, but it's actually 5-7.

[Random]

In the campaign, probably five to seven.
In a particular game session, probably three to five.

I personally believe games are more fun if there are less than six players at the table. It simply gives each person more time to interact with the game.

[doc]

My Saturday campaign has been running off and on for a good 15 years. In that time we have fluctuated between 3 to 11 people at different points. For the past seven years we have been holding steady with 7 people (the DM and 6 players) and this seems like an optimal number.

My Thursday night group, which has been running for 2 1/2 years, started out with 4 people and went as high as 13 people, which turned out to be just chaos. Right now our Thursday group is sitting pretty at 5 members (the DM and 4 players).

In my experience, the best number of players is 5, with a standard deviation of 1 (so between 4-6 players, not including the DM).

Doc

[sham]

Jul 11, 2009 7:44:10 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Most of the games I play don't use skills, so the class selection gives in effect a skill package for each player. The White Box only has 3 classes, so when my 6 players get together there needs to be some overlap and have more than one person play a given character class.

I consider the Dwarf and Elf, and to a lesser extent the Hobbit, essentially seperate classes. In the LBB they feel different enough to be considered seperate classes, even though they are presented more or less as special types of the three main classes. In my mind there are six character choices in OD&D (or seven depending upon how you judge the Elf).

I hadn't considered this before and I'll be interested in your findings regarding player options. Great topic. Looking back, the reduction in the number of players has coincided with my gradual jorney back to 0e and a reduction of player options.

edit: Forgot to mention my response was 5.

[grodog]

Jul 11, 2009 20:49:43 GMT -6 Greyharp said:

7 to 8 in our group.

We have a core of 8 players with PCs (1 is the DM's PC that we control while he DMs), and an extended group of another ~6-12 folks who could join us for larger events/one-shots/playtests, etc.

We probably only have all 8 of us at any one session about 50-60% of the time, though, since often one or two folks can't make it on any given weekend.

[kenmeister]

I'd like to offer a twist on the question, as it is something I am grappling with myself. How many players do you have on your roster, so that you more often than not end up with the optimal 4-5. I'm thinking that if 7 people are officially part of my D&D group, that I'll usually end up with 5 for any given session. Of course every now and then I'll have a full table of 7, and I suppose that would be fine but I wouldn't want it to be a regular thing.

[tavis]

According to my XP spreadsheet, about 24 people have played about 36 different PCs in my Thracia campaign. It has the advantage of being part of the NY Red Box community, so that even though we only play this game once a month there are other campaigns to keep people playing actively, and the site serves to attract interest from people who drop in & try it out.

[Melan]

In my long-running campaign, we are currently at 5, although there were long periods when we had 4 or 6. The other, recently started campaign has 3 players, and a quite diverse range of ages (myself at 29, two people at ca. 17-18, one at ca. 36-38).

I've found that I can comfortably run a game for up to 6 other people; beyond that, there is too much bookkeeping and division of attention.

[premmy]

My not-Melan's-game group started with three people including DM, then went up to four until someone moved out of the country, and now it's at seven, including two ladies, one of whom is nine.

[Mr. Darke]

My group consists of myself and two players which happen to be my wife and daughter. Every now and then a friend or in-law plays but not enough to be consistent. I am hoping to introduce OD&D/S&W to some of the people at school in the fall semester.

[benoist]

At the moment I have one regular player: my wife. On occasion, we get to play with our regular group, before the world changed (i.e. before they left the island where we live). That is, with two more players.

About half the staff of the school where my wife works has been replaced this year, so I'm going to see I can recruit (and corrupt to gaming goodness!) some teachers out there. Cross your fingers for me!

[gkaralunas]

When I voted 9-10 I was refering to our group at the Bunker. we had 7 hard-core players that would be there every weekend and 2-4 transists. As I said earlier we had a strong Magic System & the GODS were very active. So we had 3 Wizards with Teleport Spells/Wands/Scrolls and a central location to start from each week (Town of Crossroads) where we formed up and then teleported to the Adventure site of that week (rotating DMs, so we never knew what was in store for us that weekend).