How many players in a session is 'too many'?

I guess the consensus is that 4-5 players is the perfect amount. I wanted to make sure I wasn't being unreasonable when I'm splitting the group to run a 4 + GM session out of our current group of 8 regulars.

I am in a game with six players at the moment and it's a bit much. I think 4 is the absolute perfect middle ground in most cases, five is fine, three is a bit sparse.

At one point my group swelled to 9 players and it was a goddamn clusterfuck.

Depends on the game.
6 is "FUCK OFF WE'RE FULL" for D&D, but Everyone is John or We is Goblins can probably endure more players

>Have you ever kicked players out of a group because of this?
If you have 6 or more players and find unmanageable its best to split the group in two. Then run separate games.

By the way : Did anyone ever attempted or succeeded in having multiple GM's ?
Its crossed my mind recently

In my group, me and a buddy swap out GMing Shadowrun every two or so sessions. Or do you mean at the same time?

At the same time.
We kinda did it once where we were 10+ at the table but only for character creation

I co-DMed a session with a buddy of mine for Paranoia once. It was novel and the players got a kick out of it, but I can't imagine doing that to cover a large table of players.

I mean, I imagine one DM could do some of the NPCs. It would help with planning too. The DMs could riff off each other for improv.

Still would work better with fewer people.

I once had 7 + GM. It was great fun, but a absolute clusterfuck too.

4 is too many.
3 is ok.
2 is better.
1 is perfect.

>veteran magical realm GM

I have seen GMs reasonably be able to manage groups of about 6, but 4 is about right for RPGs.

More than 4, and it helps immensely if you've got some players who know the rules as well, so that you're not completely bombarded with questions to the point that you can't progress the game.

Wargames, unless the individual number of player units are very limited, free-for-all games can be a real hastle above four players. Battletech's grinders that they often do at cons though, you can get some seriously huge tables going with 12+ players all in one game.

My group is co-DMed by these two brothers. Don't get me wrong, they work well together, but they can be seriously weird.If we do something they don't expect, they stop, exchange this sidelong glance, which seems to communicate very rapidly, whatever statement comes out next is invariably prefaced with the pronoun "we" think/do/rule/whatever.

Four is the absolute limit. Three is perfect. Two can work. One is great.

fpbp

Tough there are SOME games for more than that, but they're rare, and obscure to everyone on Veeky Forums.

The Final Girl for example.

I DM a group of 10 people. We've been at it for 5 fucking years.

Luckily, its rarely more than 5 people at one time in one session, but we've had 8-10 man combats going several times.

It's possib,e and it's insanely fun, but you need to be playing with your closest friends like we do.

That includes the gm right?

Depends on a lot of shit. Text

Yes.

Best game you can have, is 1 gm, 1 player.

I've ran a game for 9 players and it burned me out enough that I didn't DM again for 2 years. I stick exclusively to 3 or 4 now.

My ideal is 3-4 players, but I have run games with 1-2. However, 5+ is too much; you are more prone to running into scheduling issues, you have less time per session to devote to any one player or scene (past the 3-4 hour mark pushes the boundary of most people's availability nevermind fatigue settling in), you have to adjust any combat encounters around having more players than most ganes or modules intend for you to have, you are more susceptible to having less quality players join and more vulnerable to people having to go on hiatus, leave or quit potentially putting you in a bad spot.

Ans in general my personal experience with 5+ people is the group being less engaged with the game by treating it more like a social spectacle and they become more prone to social conflict as people take sides or favor some more than others.

But that is just my experience from 11 years of GMing. You might be better at coordinating a huge gaggle of eager nerds, I prefer a few close friends gathering for a ln intimate and gripping story of heroism, horror or tragedy.

You're a gentleman and a scholar, user.

Nah mate the best games are 1 gm and 0 players.

Gygax and Arneson ran with 12+

It's why you have a party caller and a game structure (like a dungeon crawl) that's conductive to large groups.

I like 5 because of several reasons.
-Odd number in case of party disputes.
-Not too many people to engage at once.
-If one character dies the rest of the party is not boned. Playing with only 3 characters tends to create a death spiral if one party member is even stunned for a turn or two.
If I don't have 5 players I'll usually let them pick and NPC to come with them and fill whatever role they want for the fifth slot.

West matches style is cool for a large group. I know some people who have over 120 players who divide amongst eight or so DMs. The head DM keeps everything in order but they go on separate adventures in the same world.

Biggest group I've played with was 14. It was just as tediously slow as you'd expect, but they kept coming back, so they must have either liked it or developed some sort of Stockholm syndrome.

I don't really have any problems with up to 6. But there's definite diminishing returns after that. I don't think I'd ever kick players out, if they are all good players. I might suggest splitting the group into two, or more, different sessions.

Personally I like to GM for 3, no more than 4. I did 5 a couple times, but at that point I found it extremely difficult to give personal attention each character's individual story, which is what my group likes best. I also played in a group with 6 players, but at that point the GM effectively focused on two PCs that he was most interested in, and the rest of us were left to do our own shit.

[spoilers]He was also a shit GM who was hard up on telling 'his story' and refused to change his plans for anything.[/spoilers]

Really depends. I personally find that 3-5+GM is the optimal number. You can do fewer but you get less diversity of opinions/characters and it tends to move very quickly. More than that, and it tends to turn into a slog, especially if you have any problem players. Expect to never make any progress and to devolve into OOC and arguments a lot

With most OSR modules, they recommend 4-10 players. But those modules are mostly lethal dungeon crawls. For a narrative driven campaign, I would cap at 5 players.

2 is good, but only if they generally agree on what course to take
3 is ideal
4 is good
5 is the maximum acceptable, and only if they're good players
6+ is always a clusterfuck, the most I've gmed for is 8 and it just doesn't work.

Idunno. Matt Mercer seems to do a good job with 7.

I've done 8. It was workable but I also pitched the idea of splitting it into two groups. The players weren't really on board with it though. We were also a fairly social group, in the sense that everyone was at least acquainted with or friend-of-friend with one another, so it kinda meshed with just hanging out at someone's place on a Sunday. I imagine it would be a lot more awkward if you were getting people together purely for a game and the relationships were more distant.

I still prefer the kind of golden zone of 3-5 players and a GM. 8 was pretty vibrant but also something of a headache.

I've run games up to eight, and I think six players is probably doable.

But that's the limits of the format, and a lot of combat systems will fail you (by slowing to a crawl) way before that.

(You can also handle much larger groups if you don't put them all in the same session, for example in a West Marches style format.)

>two brothers

I was gonna edit the transcript from that Rick and Morty sketch but it turned out shitty. Are they identical twins by chance?

More than four.

When I ran an online campaign, I announced in the IRC, "ay senpaitachi, I'm running a game, I'll take like six applicants, but only the first four of those to show up will get a slot. Fair warning. Be punctual. And feel free to come back week two or three because >online game"

It worked very well.

I find that four players/PCs is the sweet spot. Three is easier for a GM to run, but having that extra character tends to make the character interaction among the PCs more entertaining. Five is the point where things will be hectic but manageable. Anything beyond that is going to be hell.

Even as a player, having about 5 is too much, since the focus keeps shifting about what each person wants to do.

Been in a group with like 12 people and one DM. And yes, there were at least three "lol so randum" people. Was a fucking nightmare and I hated it.

My first group was hosted at a local board game night. The DM was running a noob friendly hands to try and bring new people into the local gaming community, but the group got way too big. We had around 15 or 20 people and while the DM handled it quite well all things considered, it was just way too much. He eventually split us into two parties that met on alternating weeks by sending half the party through a portal.

Four or five is optimal, six can work depending on the system. Seven or more is a terrible idea.

I have never kicked anybody out, but i have asked for volunteers to leave once I realized a game of eight people was a terrible idea.

More than you can handle.

I find that in most systems they tend to work well up to 5 players + GM, 6 players is when it starts to bog down.

My personal limit is 7 players + me as the GM, and I only allow it if one of the players picks up rules question slack while I focus on story and combat movement management as needed (I connect my laptop to a large TV and use a battlemap in Photoshop for larger battles, theater of mind for small stuff and or random encounters).

Not the same guy but probably 5 + GM.
I'm running 4 + GM and can confirm anything more than 5 would quickly become a logistical nightmare, even if it's an online thing

3 *minimum* (I generally cancel if less than 4, because 3 is rough. 2 isn't doable). 5 is optimal. 7 at most.

At 5, there's a good amount of party banter, and if someone can't make it because of life, I don't feel like I should consider cancelling the session outright.

All those numbers do not include gm.

Technically speaking, there is no hard upper limit.
But realistically, 8 plus the GM is the maximum feasible upper limit.
But that's like getting on an elevator and filling it just past the weight limit.
You could be okay, but it's to be avoided and doing it all the time will lead to wearing something out that shouldn't be worn out.

I'd say 5 plus GM is a comfortable upper limit.

In the words of Gygax:
>At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts.

Official best opinion coming through.

>no players
Read a book silly.

>one player
Read a CYOA book for them, silly!

>two players
Lack of party dynamics make for a boring game, silly!

>three players
This is okay.

>four players
This is good.

>five players
This is great.

>six players
This could work.

>seven players
Probably wont work.

>more than that
They better work like a squad or this will get really messy!

I played in a two sessions "campaing" that was about asaulting the other team fortress. Now, how many players do you think that we were?
Assaulting a fortress might seem as a PCs & allies against NPCs enemies right? Maybe 3-4 PCs in each side, yes?
We were 30 players, it was messy, bloody and insanely fun.

preferably 4+GM, 5+GM is doable and 6+GM is pushing it but possible. I have never let my games get any bigger than 6 players, though I try to keep them at 4. I have certainly left games because of this however.

I ran a group with 8 players. I wanted to shoot myself. Keeping track of initiative and including everyone, it was all a cluster fuck and the game disolved. Out of those 8 I grabbed the 5 good players and we started a new game. Its been going well.

>How many players in a session is 'too many'?

You should basically never have more than 5. More than 5 means it's going to be near impossible to keep everybody engaged at all times, and the thing will turn into a clusterfuck.

>Have you ever kicked players out of a group because of this?

No, because when the sixth guy wants in, you just split the group into two groups of three people.

Lowest number of players should be 3, highest 6. Anything below or above is just bad.

4 is optimal
3 if most efficient but not as fun
5 can be fun if very coherent (but that's rare)
More is an unmanageble mess.

>Five is the most you can have and maintain coherency of ideals and objectives.
I ran a Delta Green game with 8 people (after a decade or so of not having GM'd and even almost not having played any games) and it went more or less perfectly. None of the players except 1 had ever played a role playing game before.
I think it all really depends on what game you're playing and how your scenario is constructed. For systems that are combat heavy a smaller number of players is probably better; for games that rely on investigation and buildup you can manage as long as you are able to keep everyone invested.

Would the game I ran go even better with less players? Possibly. But everyone said that they were thoroughly entertained, so it doesn't matter.

I fucking hate this goddamn Matt Mercer meme

>b-but user, Matt Mercer has 7 players, why can't I invite my friend/girlfriend/wife/neighbour/cousin/pet alien into the game??

I have co-GM'ed with an another GM. It was my first time GMing. Two sessions later became the only GM because the party asked me to.

6+GM is kind of a soft limit. Seven works, but isn't great, at eight it's a mess. I've seen the grognards that take up the entire student lounge at the college run Only War and Dark Heresy with 12 players. It was entirely shopping, fighting, and character advancement.

Six players is probably pushing it for me. If that many people showed up I'd probably suggest we play a board game or watch a movie or something instead.

I wasn't aware this was a meme.

I meant more along the lines of making sure they're all engaged in the story, tracking their movements, NPC interactions, highlighting their strengths in combat, taking over when the player isn't there, etc.

Currently in a campaign of 6+GM.

It works fine because we all get along well and compliment each other well however I think 4+GM would be best.

Did a 4th ed campaign with 8+DM once, was awful.

Six is the maximum I will let in a game, and no, because I never let the game get to more than 6 people.

Can someone explain how exactly a West Marches game works?

I've had fun with 2+GM. It moves very quickly and is much more focused.

Adding to this, if players aren't on task, five quickly becomes impossible. At least 4 is somewhat shepardable.

I tend to run those when somebody needs to leave early or roll a character, its a good change of pace.

Whats a Matt Mercer?

Long version: arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

tl;dr:
>Get a fuck ton of players (like, 2 normal groups worth, minimum)
>Don't have a dedicated game night
>Instead, tell them that a game will happen whenever a group of a certain size (IE the amount of players you need for a normal game, not the full group) gets off their ass and organizes it
>This includes not only real life logistics, but also a goal for the session that everyone is on board with
>Run an exploration focused sandbox with plenty of leads everywhere and encourage players to talk about those leads so that the folks that are excited about those leads can follow them and the folks that aren't can sit that session out and organize an expedition they want to do more late

This seems like a ton of fun. I've currently DM'd a couple campaigns with 4 newbies who have grown to love the game. We have several more friends interested in playing but I was intimidated of running a larger group. There's probably 10 of us total that want to play.
My current group of 4 are interested in DM'ing to give me a break so I can play too.

I think a West Marches-type game would be perfect because the new DM's don't have to be intimidated by running an entire campaign, just a dungeon or two depending on where the players choose to explore. Everyone can swap out playing and DM'ing so no one gets burned out.

Anyone have any experience running a game like this?

>How many players in a session is 'too many'?
Depends a bit on the system and how comfortable I am with it, and perhaps the sort of campaign I'm trying to run, but 6 or 7.

>Have you ever kicked players out of a group because of this?
I have had to, yeah.

6 seems like the magic number for most GMs. I've been a player in a few large group campaigns, but they get derailed so often by the players just waiting to do stuff.

Ideally I like 3. Typically requires some degree of teamwork and occasional conflict to make for an interesting party.

The blog goes into pretty good detail about what worked/what didn't, but I would be interested if any anons have first hand experience as well. Seems like it would be fun

This is false.

Same with kevin simbiana, guys few and far between made adventures feel like a joke they are so rugged if you have 4 or 5 players.
Then you here it was challenging but fun for his table, of fucking 16.
I can't imagine finding 16 adults to sit and do shit with let alone play an rpg with.

I find 4 players easiest to GM for, because for some reason that's the number that makes them most inclined to sit around joking in character to each other and have a good time.
3 is fine but there is less PC-to-PC interaction (and thus more GM talking time).

I'm playing in a PF group with 6 players and there have been sessions where I've been on the verge of walking out in the middle due to boredom. I'm talking fucking two hour combats for encounters of the most trifling difficulty.

>Experienced DMs
Minimum 3
Maximum 7

>Newer DMs
Minimum 4
Maximum 6

Anything less than 3 people and you don't have enough personalities to be a party
Anything more than 7 is madness

I'd go:
>Experienced GMs
Min 2, max 6
>Inexperienced GMs
Min 3, max 5

I started GMing with 2, and it worked okay, but once I added a third it felt much more cohesive.

I'm running a group with six players right now and I'm not sure if it was a good idea. It works, but I'm stretched thin and combats sag some. Party banter is improved, as a plus.

My 'best' campaign had only three players, but each of them was completely on point. Four or five seems to still be the sweet spot for most groups.

...

3 players is the most I'll allow. I like to keep groups small so combat doesn't drag.

If we have 6 or more players, I'm going to try to draft one of them for a second DM/co DM. That way we have smaller groups, and I can teach someone else in case I get sick or have a horrible migraine, or something else.

How the fuck does co-DMing even work?

4 is ideal, but chances are not every player can come every week.
Add a fifth after you've got your group started so that you usually have at least 4 present, and on the days that you have all 5 it's still very manageable.
I imagine better DMs can pull of 6 with ease, but having taken the 8+ crowds of rejects at stores on game nights, I wouldn't trust any kind of GM to keep such a game engaging and moving.

Lots of ways to do it. When my bro and I co-DM, we'll make a semi-improv session out of a loose idea. While one of us is flipping through books, prepping statblocks and notes, the other is narrating and handling the players, then we'll switch off every scene or two. It works amazingly well.

I've been managing 7 so far. And it's OK unless NONE of them want to lead. They're getting the hang of it though