Minimum and maximum player/character counts for roleplaying games (especially D&D)

Interestingly, I find that there's a difference between online games and face-to-face tabletop games. For online play, such as with skype or roll20, three players turns to be just about ideal, and with four I start to see a lot of people talking over each other to the detriment of the game. Whereas in tabletop games, 4-6 is the sweet spot.
 

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As DM, I like 3-6 players + DM. 2 and 7-8 is okay and I'll go up to 10 for a good reason. I've played in games with 12+ players and it was fine because the DM kept things moving and players engaged. For me it's really about the number of players, not the number of characters.
 


I think it highly depends upon system. For the two editions of D&D I'm most familiar with (3rd and 4th,) the sweet spot seems to be 4-6. That being said, I ran a very successful 3rd Edition campaign which only included 2 players; it helped that one player was a druid (and thus had an animal companion) and the other had a NPC cohort... so, really, I suppose that mimicked having a 4 player group. The most players I ever had for a 3rd Edition campaign was 11; I handled that by breaking the game in half and having a second DM help with a lot of things. It worked pretty well, and it allowed for the group to be split for some pretty interesting story telling scenarios in which not all of the group was together.

Most of the 4th Edition games I've run have had 5 players. That is the recommended amount, and it does seem to be best for 4th. Four players works well too, but it depends upon what roles are covered. Larger groups worked well in some of the games I ran too, but I noticed that doubling up on certain roles really throws the system assumptions out of whack. For example, I was a player in a group of 6 that had 2 Warlords; no controller; one fighter (defender) who could put out damage similar to a striker, and three strikers. With the extra attacks and bonuses that two warlords could throw around, the enemy rarely survived the first round. The group also had plenty of healing. In contrast, I DMed for a group that had an over-abundance of defenders; while they had great defenses, they often had a hard time finishing a fight... they had a lot of staying power, but very little in the way of offense, and -since the increased group size meant more monsters per encounter- they were often outgunned; encounters were even more grindy than usual.

My experience with older editions of D&D is very limited, but (thus far) they have seemed a little more flexible when it comes to party size.

For non D&D games...

I haven't noticed any significant difference in how the system works when GMing GURPS for groups ranging from one player to eight players. The challenges which the group is best equipped for certainly changes depending upon the group size. However, I haven't felt especially pressured to change my method of building encounters. Also, since combat tends to go quickly -due to combat being a bit more lethal than D&D tends to me- it takes a lot of moving pieces before I feel overwhelmed. It's rare to have grind, an the flexibility of the system allows for non-combat encounters to be handled in a variety of ways.

It's been a while, but I seem to remember Rifts getting a bit crazy with a large group. I feel it was a difficult system to handle when more than 4 players were involved. I think a large part of that may have been due to the clumsiness of the system in general though. Also, I was far less experienced with rpgs in general back when Rifts was one of my primary games.

edit: my ideal size depends upon what I'm running. For D&D, I'd say 4-6. If I'm running GURPS Vietnam, and the players are members of an infantry platoon, I'd feel comfortable with a large group. If I'm running GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, I'd feel most comfortable with anywhere between 1-5.
 
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For me, absolute minimum number of players is 3 and maximum is 8, with 5-6 being ideal. I prefer to skew slightly larger with AD&D and B/X while skewing slightly smaller with 3E and 4E.

I've found that with a six person gaming group, you inevitably have one or two no-shows, so that way you always have 4-5 players.
 


I've found that with a six person gaming group, you inevitably have one or two no-shows, so that way you always have 4-5 players.

I agree heartily to this, having a slightly larger group(1-2 players more than you would "normally" have) you can be more tolerant with no-shows. It's a nice way to allow your best buddy who just had a kid, or got a new job, or whatever to play with you, without demanding they always be there. It's a bit of a problem if every player had highly irregular attendance. Last time I ran an 8 person party...but most of the time more than half the party didn't show or needed to leave early. Once a game gets going with 8 people, playing with 3 of them doesn't work too well.
 

It depends upon the game system one is using. If each player is playing to the DM 1-on-1 as the default and ongoing process of play, then 5-6 is probably a good top end. 1 player is probably the best as then no one is ever waiting for their turn.

For a game where the players are strategically better off engaging with each other rather than the DM, then the top end is limitless. Sort of. The DM still needs to run the game and his or her limits with the game tools used are going to create a limit too. In this case I would think the DM would be the one to cap the number of players at any one session. For everyone else? The more the merrier. It's a party remember.
 

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