How Many Players In Your Game, Then and Now

[MonsterMash]

Generally with older editions it averaged 4 and the same with 3e. I've had bigger and smaller, but find for D&D that 4 is a good size for a party, though I think I've had about 8 in OD&D and five in 3e. I think that 3e would suffer in combat with large parties as there tends to be a lot more to do and refer to than the earlier editions routine of just rolling for initiative, to hit (x-ref against chart to see) and possibly rolling for damage.

 

[KB9JMQ]

In the Red Box days I had 3 steady players and occasionaly a 4th but never more than that.
In my Red Box/AD&D mix just before 3E days I had 3 players only.
No one was a DM but me back then.
Now I have 6 steady players in my group and 3 of them can and do DM also.

 

[William_Ward]

Looks about the ame for most from the survey, wouldn't have expected that. Mine has reduced by half, but not really due to the system as much as graduating college.

 

[Henry]

The groups before and after 3E have been about as fluid as they always have; in both editions, and 2E besides, I've had tables of up to 13 people, with as few as 3, and the usual number being 5 to 6.

 

[Dragonbait]

While many of the players have changed, the number remains the same throughout the editions.

 

[Lanefan]

I was sort of confused at first. I did not play before 3e and I currently do not play 3e either (I play 3rd Edition Revised!). But then I figured the question of the poll was in the context that there was not a 3e Revised in the making.

3e includes anything 3.0 or newer, for these purposes.

Lanefan

 

[Arnwyn]

In previous editions, I had 7 players in my group on average.

In 3e, I have had 6 players on average.

 

[Klaus]

Pre-3e, between 5 and 8 players + DM.

Post-3e, 3 players + DM.

 

[kenobi65]

My groups have almost always been on the big side.

I answered the question based on one of the four groups I'm in, which had several campaigns both pre-3E and now one each in 3E and 3.5. While the size fluctuated over the years, it's typically been in the 6-8 person range in both eras (though maybe a little bigger now; I gave an answer of "7" for pre, and "8" for post).

With 134 voters as I'm writing this, you've got enough respondents that you can start to talk about the results with some confidence; additional voters probably won't move the numbers around very much.

The center of the distribution, for both the "pre" and "post" curves is at 5 players...slightly above what WotC found in their study, but not so much that I'd say that there's a fundamental difference between EN Worlders and the original survey respondents. Also, it doesn't look like the distribution of group size is fundamentally any different for these players in 3E days versus earlier; in both cases, the majority of game groups are in the 4-6 player range.

 

[Lanefan]

With 134 voters as I'm writing this, you've got enough respondents that you can start to talk about the results with some confidence; additional voters probably won't move the numbers around very much.

Getting there, but it hasn't been up for a full day yet; let's give it a bit more time. That said,

The center of the distribution, for both the "pre" and "post" curves is at 5 players...slightly above what WotC found in their study, but not so much that I'd say that there's a fundamental difference between EN Worlders and the original survey respondents. Also, it doesn't look like the distribution of group size is fundamentally any different for these players in 3E days versus earlier; in both cases, the majority of game groups are in the 4-6 player range.

This doesn't surprise me very much; if only because it's the one part of the WotC research results that held true with my own experience. I'm still mildly curious to see if group size has changed pre- to post-3e, but the overall result here seems pretty much what I expected...so far.

Lanefan