Gaming Groups and their size.

Archived post by Mort. I think I agree with everything here...

One of the big questions about gaming groups is what size of group is the correct one?

Of course in the end all it boils down to is personal preferences, if a GM is comfortable with handling a large group, and the players don't mind there's nothing wrong. But I think there are certain points worth talking about. Most of these are obviously my personal opinion on the matter.

First off, I think a good group size is about four or maybe five people, excluding the GM. When I first started playing RPGs and most of my active time I've been in smaller groups, and I've always found the group dynamics to work better with a smaller set of people.

Now, a good group size also depends alot on the game you play, in a heavy combat D&D game you can afford to have a larger group, as long as you tailor the encounters to take this into account, and give each player a suitable challenge. While a heavily involved political Vampire game will bog down into a stalemate with a group larger than four people. However, most games seems to work fine with four to five players.

Now why would you care about group size? Well I personally feel that when I'm playing in a smaller group it's much easier to avoid excessive out of character banter, and if it does happend it tends to involve the whole group. If you have seven players sitting around, chances are that atleast two of these won't be actively involved in what is going on, and might decided to discuss the latest episode of their favourite Sci-fi show, something which can instantly ruin any kind of tension built up by the GM. Also in a smaller group you can sit closer together, which makes it easier to communicate things between players, and the players and the GM. I always feel more "in character" when I'm playing in a small group.

Also, in a small group the GM can spend more time wich each player, making sure everyone gets equal amount of screentime. In a large group it's easy for someone to just sit back and do nothing until he is either confronted directly or involved in a fight. This fosters an attitude of not caring, the forgotten player stops caring about his character, and usually ends up doing something really stupid, or silly, just to get some notice.

So that's my view on the issue, but as I said at the start, sometimes a large group works, but only really if the GM is capable of handling it and the players can accept having less amount of screentime per game.