How many players?

[Dark Knight Renee]

The 'standard' assuption of DnD is a DM and four players (playing the fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard roles), but I know many games don't follow this assumption, mixing up the party roles and, often, the number of players.


So, how many players do you usually play with? What's the most you've seen in a single group? The least?

[comicshorse]

Most I've seen is 8, but that game did have 2 G.M.s

Least: In DnD, 3 players but one was running 2 characters (warforged cleric, shifter ranger, changeling rogue, bard)
Played in a Cyberpunk game with just 2 players. It was a cop game so wew were partners for Nightcity Major Crimes ( a netrunner and a fixer, we tried to avoid fights)

[Sstoopidtallkid]

One of my games is a living world, so we have ~30 players and 10 GMs, though mostly only 20 show up a week and only 3 sessions get run. I've still seen one GM run 8 people on a regular basis, though, and he handled it just fine.

[Kizara]

My group has 6 players and it works alright. Personally, I'd rather have 4-5 instead.

Me and my friend also play 1on1, which makes the game less interesting in some respects but allows a whole lot of RPing and different campaign ideas that are impractical in the larger group.

[Da King]

3-5(+DM), and even 5 is a bit too much at times. >2 is just not enough, and <5 causes a lot of distraction and the game slows down. This is probably just the group I play in though.

[Vortling]

I've run in groups of 3 up to groups of 12 where the GM split us up into two groups of 6 and ran each side separately. For myself GMing I find 3-5 works well.

[Squash Monster]

The most I've GMed for was 8. The least was 4, though they played 6 characters.

I think 5 is really the best number.

[FMArthur]

With the right people, up to 7 is okay with me. Otherwise, 4. 3 (or less) find themselves pressed for resources if they don't have a lot of class variety (and are boring), 5 or more with annoying or slow players is frustrating.

[Starsinger]

I've been DMing for 4-8 (usually 7) since like February

[Darth Mario]

I run two groups, one with 8-9 players and one with 6-7 characters.

The former is actually a Gestalt game, so all the party roles are covered 2 or 3 times over, and is VERY high-powered. It also has had the most character deaths of any game I've run. The latter is a D20 Future game.

I don't think I've ever DMed a group of less than 5 for more than maybe a day.

[Ascension]

I've most recently played with a party of six (a rogue/scout (me), a paladin, a (crossbow wielding!) fighter, a wizard, a druid (she had a level adjustment and she was still awesome), and a cleric (who tried to be the party face even though I had better social skills... )), and a much less well prepared, much less optimized party of three (a gnome fighter (who rolls insanely well on everything and kills everything despite being unoptimized), a dwarf fighter (who has terrible luck and does almost nothing to help the party), a human sorcerer (me... I spend a third of my time actively trying not to overshadow anyone, a third of my time doing so anyway, and a third of my time realizing that the DM is trying to specifically counter my common strategies.).

The party of three has an NPC cleric to heal, but we still feel the sting of missing character archetypes (no rogue, for instance, and really no good party face). We were recently placed in a tense social situation and only got out of it through my insane bluff modifiers and the gnome's lucky (as always) roll on an untrained disguise check.). I much prefer the six-person team dynamic, even if the fighter often felt redundant and the paladin was beginning to become so as the druid and cleric got stronger.

[its_all_ogre]

it all comes down to the player styles frankly, i have played games with 3 players that drag like nobody's business and yet ran games with 6 players that have been smooth and great.
current group is 6 strong including 2 sorcerers, sorcerer/rogue, scout/barb, fighter/prc, ranger with dire wolf companion.
main issue with this group is again the players...
i like 5 players as you have an extra person to play with, so you can cover all 4 roles and have a spare overlapping character who can support 2 roles well without stealing someone elses specialisation

[DMfromTheAbyss]

I've run with up to twelve. Though that didn't work out too well and we ended up splitting up the party after 2 sessions... just as well as anything over 8 is tough to handle... though it really depends on the players. I've run sessions with 2 players that were more of a headache than with the 12, just matters on the players really.

[AslanCross]

I used to have six players, but now only have five. I find it's the ideal number for me.

[Xefas]

I've played 1on1 before, but that was my first experience with D&D ever. I was in 6th grade, and my older brother had just decided that he'd rather renounce his gamer lifestyle and spend his life chasing pompous bimbos with personalities like week-old oatmeal.

Anyway, so I salvaged his 2nd edition books from the garbage and decided to find out what this whole "D&D" thing was about. The book was fascinating, but it said I needed a friend to play, so I recruited my science class lab partner who was also curious about it. He rolled up a Fighter, and I took up the mantle of DM.

It was truly a turning point in my life. I mean, beforehand, I was actually tan and athletic. I played soccer, and spent all my free time outside biking or swimming. Now I'm...considerably whiter (though I've never gotten pasty by virtue of being 1/4 Hispanic), and maintain exactly enough exercise to stay skinny (which isn't much, in my case). Plus, that lab partner who I barely knew became (and has stayed) my closest friend ever since.

It didn't take long to find someone else to play. Surprisingly enough, it was someone who used to bully me in elementary school. After one session, he also became (and has stayed) a very close friend of mine.

It just sort of continued like this, with us bringing in more and more people who we only barely knew, and them becoming part of this group of close friends. While our games nowadays are usually only 4-5 players and me DMing, if we could coordinate everyone on the same day, we could probably do 13-14 players.

All that said, the most I've actually DMed at once was 6.

[Agamid]

I've played 1 on 1 before, but it was a bit too much pressure, sometimes i like to sit back and let other people make the decisions.

I've also been 1 of seven players before, which was just crazy, you couldn't get a word in anywhere and it took hours just to do one combat encounter.

I'm usually in groups of 3 - 5 players (+DM), which are nice, rounded amounts.

oh, and i just remembered a game a played in a fews years ago that had about 10 or so people in it, but we were in 2 different parties of 5 (run by the one dm), we were in the one world, dealing with the same problem, but our characters had never met and were even competing in a way.
The two groups met on different nights at different houses, so their was no chance for meta-gaming (i don't think we even knew the names of the characters from the other group).
The Dm had, i think, had planned either for us to band together at one point, or to pit the two parties against each other, but it started becoming a bit too difficult to run as the group i wasn't in couldn't meet as often as us but would get really pissy if we went on ahead and, say, cleared an area that they were going to go through or to thwart their schemes while they weren't there. And then some of them stopped gaming with us altogether.
Was a pretty cool idea though.

[SoD]

I have never been in a group with a DM and four players. At the moment, it's me (DM) and three players, and at home, it's the DM, and at least five others: DM (Ducky), me, Captain, Cat, Nick, Josh/Tristan/Cat's Brother/Bernie.

[SamTheCleric]

In the two games I'm in now...

One has 5 players, the other has 6. Both seem to work out fine. Once you get more than that... things start becoming complicated... especially combat.

[CTG]

It depends on the system being run. I have foun that for D&D, 5 is the golden number. This will give you one combat intensive character, the theif/rogue, the healer and the spell caster, and a support PC.

Never underestimate the support PC. Your multi-classer, bard, paladin, druid, ect can always find a niche in the group to fill, and often times will find something that the group is lacking as far as capability wise.

In more horror types you can go one on one easially.

However in ANY tabletop gaming group, 5 players per DM/GM/ST is about the right mix.

[Triaxx]

The largest group I've ever run was 24 players, and it was at the begginning of a campaign. We split into smaller groups for the campaign, and then rejoined at the end. The final tally was 20 players, with one of the groups experiencing a near TPK, and those players couldn't make it to the final event, so that was what we had for a final battle. Fortunately we landed on a three-day weekend so we were able to play out the final siege properly.

[Szilard]

Right now, we have 4 players, a DM and 7 characters.

[Saph]

My ideal number of players per DM is 4-5.

However, you have to adjust that to factor in the probability of any given player showing up for the session. If you want a minimum of 4 players per session, you'll want to have 5 players total, as everyone will miss a session from time to time.

Our current group has 6 people plus the DM, but we average somewhere between 4 and 5 players at any given session.

- Saph

[valadil]

I like 4-6. 3 players is good too, depending on the group. Your characters figure each other out quicker, but there's a lot more room for characters with two roles.

The biggest group I played in was 15 people under one DM. It worked out way better than I'd expect. The DM was a special ed teacher so he had no trouble handling us. The only problem was that it was 30 minutes between turns in combat.

[Charity]

One of the first games I played was with a DM who used to run Play by mail games, he used to make a living doing so believe it or not... This was back in AD&D's heyday but we used to play with 13 players, that was an epic game he was the measure of all the DM's I've encountered since.

Mostly I don't like to go above 6 players, I tend to find it heavy going with more than 12 eyes focused on me at once.

[Lucyfur]

My group currently plays with 7 and I don't like it at all. The game is really slow and we don't get very much done during a session. 4 or 5 sounds wonderful to me.

[Triaxx]

The trick is to make sure everyone is planning ahead. Say you roll initiative and the Rogue goes, followed by the Cleric,Fighter,Wizard...etc.

While the Rogue is making his move the Cleric needs to plan his spell, or where he's attacking. The Fighter picks his target and the Wizard needs to skim his spells and select a target. Half the battle is preplanning the encounters so you don't spend five minutes setting up. A preplanned sheet with cut outs for each enemy is exceedingly useful. So you end up with this:

{table=head]A|B|C
Ewizard||Ebard|
Ecleric||ERogue|
Efighter|Efighter|Efighter|
[/table]

Fighters across the front, cleric and rogue in the middle, squishies in the back. Of course this is a simple sample, but you get the idea. Just line up the corner and click the minatures in place. Makes the start SO much easier.

[skeeter_dan]

The most I've DMed was 10 and that was my first time DMing. It worked out pretty well because there were a few new players that got coached by the veterans and one was pretty much just a cohort to another player. Things never got too bogged down.