Small groups

[KaosDevice]

Anyone here routinely run with 2/3 players+1 dm? Call of Cthulhu obviously is fine with just two players, I was wondering about other systems that work well with that few numbers. Any observations out there?

 

[gizmo33]

Anyone here routinely run with 2/3 players+1 dm?

Yea. I ran 3E a few years ago with 2-3. IMO it depends more on the personalities than the system. Actually, for 3E, combat goes *alot* faster IME than it does with 5-6.

 

[Emiricol]

I run TrueD20 and Riddle of Steel with 1-2 players, regularly. Works great. D&D is built around having a balanced party, but that's not the case with all flavors of D20 and especially not of many other game systems.

Running D&D with only 2 PCs could be a challenge though, unless it were heavily roleplay focused.

 

[Crothian]

I've yet to come across a game that doersn't work with few players. I've done Buffy, Paranoia, D&D and many others with 3 or less PCs.

 

[iwatt]

Yea. I ran 3E a few years ago with 2-3. IMO it depends more on the personalities than the system. Actually, for 3E, combat goes *alot* faster IME than it does with 5-6.

This is true. I just split my 6 player campaign into 2 groups: tuesdays a party of 4 and sundays a party of three (we added an extra player).

Other systems that work well with small groups: Star Wars and d20 modern. Sans magic, it's easier for less PCs to cover necessary basics. You don't need the Tank, Medic, Scout, artillery pack that is so intrinsic to the DnD CR system.

 

[AIM-54]

Personally I like small groups over larger groups any day of the week for just about any game. The ideal is, I think, 3-4 players + GM. An experienced GM should be able to adapt to the particular challenges of having smaller parties. Across the board combats will be faster (even more important at higher levels) and everyone will, IME, stay more focused.

With groups that are any larger, it's more difficult, at least in the games I've played in, for everyone to stay as focused and it's easy to get people falling out of the action when the camera's focused elsewhere for too long. Of course, there are probably GM's that have no such problems, but I haven't had the pleasure of playing with them.

 

[MetalBard]

I ran a two night Eberron game with three players about a year ago, but that's not routine.

About 11 years ago I played in a Lankhmar game where there were two players and the DM. It was 2nd edition AD&D. That was fun and it fit the Lankhmar theme. The other player played a thief and I played a beefy swashbuckler-type. It was fun and I think we played around 10 sessions.

 

[yennico]

I ran as a GM a 3E special campaign with only two players. Both players played orcs. It was fun to run this campaign.

 

[Grunk]

i am currently running a 3.5 games with 3 players. It actually started as 2 players running two pcs a piece. A third player was added, who started out playing 1 character and eventually adopted a second.

This has been good since it's hard for our group to convene regularly. Combat has run preety smoothly since no one player is out of the action for very long. The one drawback is roleplaying. The 2 characters that are controlled by the same PC tend to follow eachothers lead (so there is much less time spent debating, but also less time developing characters). I have tried to offset this with a good deal of character background for each of the PCs, but it tends to work out taht there is one primary PC (who does all the talking) and the secondary (functional PC).

Defintely something to think about with small groups.

 

[Dakkareth]

We play with only two players + DM about half of the time. Depending on the other player it can be much fun, but I definitely prefer having more players - there's just so much more variety .