How big is your gaming group?

[S'mon]

Huge groups are possible to be successful and fun, but smaller groups are better. IMO.

Seconded - I've run campaigns with 7 players, but currently I'm capping number at 6, I find standard 3e works best with 4-6 players. For roleplay intensive games a group of 2-3 also works very well although the 3e CR/EL needs adjusting.

 

[the Jester]

We have approximately 9 players on a good night. Add in cohorts and mounts and it gets frickin ridiculous- but we have a blast. One of the funnest groups I've ever played with.

One great thing about a large group is that if you're willing to handwave it, the game can go on if only half the players are there. This is one of the best things about a big group in my experience.

 

[MonsterMash]

The group I DM for has four players usually with occasionally a fifth joining us. I find that this is a good number for 3e and D20 games, also CoC and Paranoia can run well with this number, though I find Paranoia scales up well.

 

[Flyspeck23]

1) Finding a mutual agreeable date to play. You might think you're all friends and it's easy, but add in work and school schedules, family and significant other obligations, and other random things and it becomes a huge hassle. The same group I was talking about above just got scaled back to around 7 people and it took us two months (two months!) to find a date for our next session.

Our group is pretty large too - currently we're 7 too, but have been 9 a year ago. And finding a date is difficult.
We've got a rule that if one person will miss the game, that's ok for the group. Works good so far, but nevertheless we're thinking about raising that to two persons.

2) Combat takes forever, especially when you factor in the "I'm not sure what I should do..." mixed with a healthy dose of 5 unhelpful people saying at the same time, "You should do this!"

Yes, and that's for me - as the GM - the most difficult thing. You just see that your players are loosing focus if combat drags on, and I tend to be pretty harsh on players who take their time (not that I want to do that, it just happens - I'm sort of loosing my temper).

 

[isoChron]

I play/DM in two groups with 6 people (including DM). Since the DM-job is rotating there are always 6 PC in the group.
Sometimes it is hard to find a date. 6 PC work out just fine. But you must always accept that 6 PC's are more than the sum of 2 PC's and 4 PC's. There are sometimes strong synergy effects that power up the group beyond expected. Must not! Can be. Depends of the classes present in the group.

 

[Nihm]

I find that every player (not including DM) after 5 doubles the amount of time it takes to run an evening. If you are playing a published campaign you should make the monsters beefier and the rewards greater to accommodate the larger party.

If you do not mind taking extra time and altering published adventures it is not that bad. Oh, you might want to have something for the people who are not active in the game to do, like an xbox or something.

Personally I find 6-8 managable but I like having only four players at the table. At 9-12 I think it would be time to create two groups.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I have DM'ed as many as 17, but it was awful! Eight is a decent number with the right room and table (don't go for a long table, but a more squarish table works). I ran a game for eight at my house for months.

My current group had 4 the first session, 5 the second session and is about to add another. That said, 2 of my players miss about 1/3 of sessions due to work commitments and the new player will probably have to do the same. Thankfully, they usually don't miss the same session.

DM

 

[diaglo]

20 is optimal.

but the closest i had was 14.

 

[S'mon]

We've got a rule that if one person will miss the game, that's ok for the group. Works good so far, but nevertheless we're thinking about raising that to two persons.

I've got 6 players, a quorum is 4 - in an emergency I'll run with less but hopefully the absent players' PCs can be run as NPCs.

 

[Desdichado]

No, I don't like such big groups, other than for oneshots and the like. We've got two games, and the groups mostly completely overlap (i.e., there's one more couple in one game, and otherwise it's the same crowd). The smaller group is four people, the larger six. Five players + GM is kinda my max "ideal" number, and 3 + GM is my min "ideal" number.