How many Players in your game?

[kenobi65]

(Nice bell curve, centered on 5 players.)

I DM for three separate groups (though my wife is a player in all three).

Group #1 -- my old gaming group from my teenage / college years. We're spread out over 2 states now, and so we only get together 4-5 times a year (though two of those gatherings are long weekends, in which we play for 3 or 4 days). That group has varied wildly in size over the past 20 years (been as large as 12 or 13 regular players, as small as 4), but is now pretty stable at 6 players plus the DM (me, about 70% of the time).

Group #2 -- our Friday night group, meets about once a month. We've got a cap of 8 players in this group, which is our current size. However, it's rare that we actually have all 8 players at a session, due to RL constraints (one player even flies in from DC to Chicago to play!), and so 6 or 7 is a more typical size for any given session.

Group #3 -- our Sunday night group, also meets about once a month. It used to have 6 players, plus the DM, until 3 of the players moved out of Chicago. We're now down to 3, plus me as DM, but it's a great group, so we're keeping it going. And, the chemistry is so good with this small group, even though we talk about adding another player, we all agree it'd need to be the right player.

 

[ForceUser]

I have five players, and that's the perfect number for me. Just enough to have one character of every archtype, plus one extra (bard, druid, monk, etc.). Not that I have the perfect "fab four" setup in my campaign, just that I find such a setup to be optimal.

In my other campaign, which is run less often, I've got a monstrously large seven player group with all the archtypes filled and then some.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I'm at 8 players now. That's frankly too large. With one or two no shows on a given weekend, it's a comfortable 6.

Last session was the full 8 and it got a lil too much at times. It takes a concerted effort to move things along fast/fast/fast with 8 players.

5-6 would be ideal.

 

[Buttercup]

That is weird, if I can still read more then 50% of the groups are made up of 5 or 6 people. Why then does WOTC continue to use groups of 4 players as a base for CR and adventures they release?

Well, I have run a campaign for 7 people, and another for 8, and let me tell you, it's hard. I suppose that if all the people involved were college students with lots of free time (oh, how I miss that free time!) it would be easier, but trying to coordinate the schedules of that many busy adults is well nigh impossible. I ditched my last campaign when we couldn't even manage to play once a month anymore. Now I'm running a campaign for 4 players, and scheduling is much easier.

Now as for game balance issues, yeah, a party of 4 is much easier there too. There is far less tinkering on the part of the DM for a party that size.

I think that, given my past experiences, I'll never run a campaign for more than 5 players. A one-shot? Sure. An ongoing campaign? Never again.

 

[jeffh]

The game I recently canceled (after five years and change, though it was pretty sporadic for the last two) had seven for most of its existence, though not always the same seven. It dropped to five or six temporarily a few times. It seemed like I'd be thinking about adding an eighth player when one would drop out, leaving it never actually exceeding seven.

(Edit - on further reflection there were eight for about two sessions. Then two players - the two newest ones at the time - left in rapid succession, one due to scheduling conflicts and the other for health reasons.)

Towards the end things were getting so high-level that I didn't want to add a new player who wouldn't know their character's abilities well, which ruled out anyone who wasn't fairly experienced with D20, so I didn't replace the last person who left. Then I kicked a player out over her ongoing lack of contribution to the group, which was getting worse rather than better, for a final total of five.

The game ended with three of the original players but only one of the original characters. IN total 12 different players played 16 different characters.

 

[Mercule]

I've found 5 to be optimal. Fortunately, that's exactly how many players I have. Three couples*, which is really nice.

*DM (me) not included in the number 5, just to set the math straight.

 

[MerricB]

I think Wizards actually found the average number to be between 4 and 5. However, they took the lower number for their standard for a number of very good reasons. (It's easier to add difficulty to an encounter than to take it away).

Cheers!

 

[Chaos Drake]

4 or 5..

 

[Greylock]

The game I'm in has six players (+ DM). But the average number of players per session is four. Of the sessions since my invite to the game, all were four except for three. One with three players, and two with five.

That pretty much mirrors the PHB I suppose. An average of four players per game.

 

[Greylock]

And now that I've actually voted in the poll, I'm suprised by the results. It is a classic bell-curve, but it skews low. I'm most suprised by the # of folks who said one. Didn't expect that to be as high as it is.