How many players/characters in your campaign

[EOL]

I must confess I'm a little surprised at how many people play in groups of one, two or three. Perhaps I misjudged, perhaps 4 is average.

As to the claim that it's easier to scale up then scale back... I'm not so sure. I don't think anyone would argue that higher level NPC's are more difficult to generate than lower level NPC's. Also, is it easier to remove one of the magic items from the list or page through the entire list of magic items in the DMG to find one more?

 

[Lunn]

There are eight members of my group. This normally gives use 7 players and 7 PCs when everyone is there. This happens about 70% of the time. Most of the time we do keep it to one PC to one player. From time to time, I have had to run two characters at once, but this only happens in one of the campaigns of the group.

I was never sure if 4 PCs in the average group was right. But that is what WotC set for their game balance. I just have to make my encounters a little tougher than those listed in the DMG.

 

[LostSoul]

How do you deal with everyone if you've got more than 5 players? I've never been able to cope with everyone at once.

 

[Falcon]

The best campaign I ever played in had 2 players. I currently play in a campaign with 6 players, which is too many for any serious long-term role-playing session, IMHO. I DM a campaign that started with 5 players, went down to 4 then 3, now back up to 4. I prefer the 3-5 range.

 

[Lunn]

It can be hard to deal with a large number of players. But I have a pretty good group. Most of us will sit back and let the DM deal with one or two players for a good deal of time. We all know that we will get our chance sooner or later. True, our adventure have more combat and wandering than role-playing, but we do have nights when not a weapon is used.

We have one player who gets upset if there isn't enough cambat. But we have learned his moods (being a group that has game together of 15+ years helps). Most of us try to keep the action moving.

Now if you mean how do you handle all the side chatter, that is hard. It will happen. As the DM, I just try to keep the players busy with the adventure. I don't have music going as this is just more noise to add to the problem (even mood music is bad with large groups).

 

[Avantgeek]

Critical Mass

I've recently taken over GMing duties (going into the fifth week of things this coming Saturday) for a small army. Our regular group consists of the GM and 10-12 players. Needless to say, I find myself winging things a great deal.

 

[Zerovoid]

Game 1
DM(me)
4 Players

Game 2
DM(me)
6 Players, usually missing two or three

Game 3
DM(not me)
7 Players, usually missing one or two

I would say that I enjoy the mix of characters in a 5 or 6 player game the best, since you can throw a druid or bard on top of the 4 archetypes, and create a more interesting party.

That said, with anything more than 4, games can very easily bog down.

 

[Trellian]

3-5 is perfect for me. We used to play with one DM and 6 players, but it got all messed up. People get bored when nothing happens to them in a while, and combat is slow as a snail's slithering...

We usually have 4 players, and it is working out pretty well... now, one of us will move to the USA, and one is pretty much occupied with his soccer games, so maybe I will eventually end up with 2 players...

 

[MythandLore]

4/4 + 1DM (most of the time, some times more)

 

[Black Omega]

One DM, six steady players, one who shows up part time. I'd say seven is reallyabout my limit, I think past that it would quickly get to be too much work.