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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Garnfellow" data-source="post: 3334881" data-attributes="member: 1223">An interesting topic, for sure.In my experience, if you graphed the level of 3e fun against the number of players, you would have a curve rising steadily until you hit 4 players, peaking at 5 players, starting to drop somewhat at six players, and then falling quickly above 8 players. I think the case for older editions being far easier to run with larger groups is vastly overstated*; in my experience the older rulesets might shift the curve a little bit, moving the sweet spot from 4-6 players to 5-7, but for me, effectively running 10+ players in any edition (or any RPG, for that matter) is a real chore. (See attached.)Physically it becomes hard to seat such a large group around a single table, and procedurally it's almost impossible to keep all players engaged at the same time. With 10 or more players I almost always have 1 or 2 snoozing or doodling or otherwise off-task, something I never get with 4 players.I run a weekly game with 6 players, but 2-4 times a year I get together with a large group of long-time friends for a weekend get-away, and for those weekends I almost always run a big D&D game with 10-12 guys. (Almost all of my weekly players are also at the getaway games.) Now, I love getting together with the big group, and right now the mammoth D&D game is just about the only gaming activity we can run with everyone at the same table at the same time, but I find the mammoth game far harder to run and far less fun than the smaller weekly sessions. Part of this is due to the difference between one-shot and campaign play, group dynamics, and other things, but I really believe that most of the difference is just due to the size of the group.* I suspect that many of the older-edition advocates are also seasoned and experienced DMs, better able and equipped to run larger groups. Meaning their success running Gargantuan parties is possibly due more to their vast experience than any mechanical qualities of their preferred ruleset.</blockquote>

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