Minimum time and/or number of players to game?

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd say the game can easily be played with just one player. This often almost requires the use of the dreaded "DM's PC." But I've never had a problem taking that role; it's a matter of always keeping it in mind that this character is a supporting cast member, a side-kick. Moonglum as opposed to Elric.

As for your time concerns...

One of my tricks to speed my gaming sessions up is to start in the middle of the action. This has to be done with the permission of the players, who should be fine with it if they understand that time is a consideration.

Start out with the PCs already walking down the haunted defile, surrounded by goblins, or entering the dungeon, rather than bothering with the hook to get them to that situation. I try to make that opening scene as cinematic as possible, to make up for cutting to the meat of the first encounter.

I also take what could be one long session, and divide it up into a few short adventures. I tend to set them up so that the adventures then end on cliff-hangers. If an adventure ends on a memorable note, I don't have to spend as much time recapping when we begin the next session.

 

[Jdvn1]

I prefer having at least four players, but I'll run a solo game too. I'll run for any number of people.

Also, I like longer sessions. If a session only goes 4 hours, I feel like we didn't get much accomplished. I prefer at least 6 hours, but I could go for 12, probably.

 

[EricNoah]

Currently, 3-4 hours per session is ideal, with no more than one member of the group missing.

Edit: I have done smaller groups (one-on-one, and one-on-two), and for those shorter sessions work out great.

 

[Omro Gamer]

I think if you are running scenarios involving rogues in a city two people work very well, and two hours is enough for some fun adventures.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

To some extent it depends on the situation in-game. Sometimes you can break off and do stuff.

For example, I'm the DM for the game eris404 is talking about. We coudl have started at 3pm, would have had two players initially, and one more after 5pm. Thats a little slim, in my view - though it actually was a situation where I could have come up with a quick scenario - when all else fails, try to assassinate the Psion! - that would have worked for two or three players.

I generally like to have 4 players present. If its a game with 6 or 7 players or more, 2 or 3 or more missing players isn't a disaster. 4 hours is a good minimum, I don't really think you have time to get moving with less unless you're really good at limiting OOC distractions.

 

[Zappo]

I wouldn't play with less than 3 players, and I wouldn't play for less than 2 hours. The two factors aren't without a certain amount of correlation; I would avoid playing for three hours with six players for example, because large numbers of players introduce some overhead which requires extra time.

As for missing players - we virtually never have the whole party. Almost everyone in our group has a busy life and there are usually two or three missing people on average. On seven players, I think that 95% of sessions have between three and six. Sessions with the whole gang are exceedingly rare, maybe once or twice a year, and with less than three players we cancel the game (also, with exactly three, we try for a while to find something else to do).

 

[Arnwyn]

So, I'm just wondering if the rest of you have rules or any feelings about the mininum number of players needed for a session or the minimum time you require for a game.

Yes. Minimums = 3 players, 4 hours.

 

[Mercule]

We have 5 PCs in the group. We game weekly for 3 to 3.5 hours. For that size group, that's as short as I'd want to go. I won't DM unless we have 75% attendance (i.e. 4/5 of the players), but that's mainly because I try to run more character-driven stuff.

If it were beer-and-pretzels (i.e. kill things, take their stuff), I'd be willing to run with 50%, maybe less. If we gamed more often, shorter sessions would be okay, too.

I've run games with my wife and another couple that worked pretty well, but that was Mage. I also did a long-running solo game in high-school, where I got really good at breathing life into the NPCs.

 

[the Jester]

My group is huge (around 10 players). For us, a quorum is 3. One of the best things about a large party is that the game can go on even if not everyone can show up.

As for time, I'm down as long as we can squeeze out at least, say, 3 hours. I prefer 6-12.

Gamin' whore, me.

 

[Space Coyote]

I would prefer to play with no fewer than 3 players + DM. My group usually has between 4-7 players + DM. Usually if we have less than 4 players + DM, we will usually do something else. We usually play from 16:00 - 23:00 on saturdays.

I would think that 3 players + DM and at least 3-4 hours of play would be the minimum to have a "worthy" session.