What is it about a game that influences average party size?

[Wik]

If you look at any RPG, you will see that it implicitly contains an ideal number of PCs in the average party. Different games seem to cater towards different numbers of PCs/Players.

Older editions of D&D seem to suggest around seven or eight Player Characters, often accompanied with henchmen, as the ideal. Later editions of D&D have oscillated from four to five PCs, with the question of henchmen/hirelings left to individual GM preference.

FASA games seem to aim at a smaller audience - Shadowrun definitely works better with smaller groups, and personal experience suggests that Earthdawn was built with a three- or four-person party in mind. Mechwarrior suggest the PCs are all part of the same "lance", and Battletech described a lance as consisting as either three or four mechs (my memory fails me as to the exact number).

Savage Worlds looks like it's aimed at five or six players, but also suggests that the PCs have multiple allies... I've run it with five players each running a PC and two NPCs, so a 15 man party. The rules explicitly say at times that its was built for larger parties.

And the list goes on. Call of Cthulu works best in small numbers. D6 often presumes six players. Warhammer Fantasy seems to aim towards four or five. RIFTS (from what I recall) aims towards smaller groups (presumably because few people want to play it! /snark). And...

My question here is this: how do you cater a game towards a certain number of players? My theory is that it relates to specialization. The games that allow more specialized characters tend to encourage smaller party sizes, presumably because these hyper specialized characters will have more "time alone" with the GM.

Games that encourage teamwork tend to be aimed towards larger groups - basically, games with "roles" that need to be filled (healer, tank, utility mage, master fence, etc) often seem to be aimed at larger groups.

Any thoughts?

 

[Wik]

Oh, and I realize there are holes in my theory. I really don't know the answer to my question, or if there really is one. And I'm aware that my game examples really only reflect my personal experiences with said games - that there are definitely contrary examples, and I could even be wrong about how said games were actually played.

But I think we can all agree that D&D works best with four or more players, while games like Shadowrun work better in smaller groups. And yet, both are similar games in how they are presented - a lot of rules, a lot of character options, and the like. What is it that makes them so different in how they should be run at the table?

 

[Beginning of the End]

Older editions of D&D seem to suggest around seven or eight Player Characters, often accompanied with henchmen, as the ideal. Later editions of D&D have oscillated from four to five PCs, with the question of henchmen/hirelings left to individual GM preference.

In the case of pre-4E D&D this was more descriptive than prescriptive: The expected number of players listed in the rulebook had more to do with whatever the author was seeing at his own game table or the most recent market research than anything else. It's as easy to run a group of 7-8 characters in 3E as it was to run 7-8 characters in OD&D or 1E (and vice versa for smaller parties). Sure, CR becomes less useful. But you didn't have CR at all in pre-3E games, so it's not like that's an added hardship.

(This could also be true of 4E, but I don't have enough experience with it to say one way or the other.)

 

[Wik]

In the case of pre-4E D&D this was more descriptive than prescriptive: The expected number of players listed in the rulebook had more to do with whatever the author was seeing at his own game table or the most recent market research than anything else. It's as easy to run a group of 7-8 characters in 3E as it was to run 7-8 characters in OD&D or 1E (and vice versa for smaller parties). Sure, CR becomes less useful. But you didn't have CR at all in pre-3E games, so it's not like that's an added hardship.

(This could also be true of 4E, but I don't have enough experience with it to say one way or the other.)

Well, I know when I played 2e, we definitely noticed that things ran better with a party of four or five. The game really had four "roles" that needed to be covered - divine healer, arcane trouble-shooter, fighter tank, and the miscellaneous rogue.

When we'd play with a smaller group, which we did often, we really noticed those missing roles and it influenced how our games would resolve. I remember playing in a game with a fighter, a thief, and a wizard, and we really, REALLY missed our cleric.

the exact number can be up in the air, but I really think the minimum for an "ideal" D&D group is four.

To be honest, though, I don't know if "ease" has too much to do with preferred group size. Twilight 2000, for example, wants a larger group (six or seven) and it's pretty complex.

 

[Lanefan]

In the case of pre-4E D&D this was more descriptive than prescriptive: The expected number of players listed in the rulebook had more to do with whatever the author was seeing at his own game table or the most recent market research than anything else. It's as easy to run a group of 7-8 characters in 3E as it was to run 7-8 characters in OD&D or 1E (and vice versa for smaller parties). Sure, CR becomes less useful. But you didn't have CR at all in pre-3E games, so it's not like that's an added hardship.

When I played 3e our parties were usually in the range of 8-10 characters.

The advantage to larger parties is players can try different classes without feeling the party's going to end up missing one of the main four roles because of it. For example, if a party's already got a Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User and Thief you can chuck in a Monk, or a Bard, or a sub-class of the main four, and not hurt the party.

Lan-"and you can never have enough fighters"-efan

 

[Nagol]

I don't see a difference between strongly defined roles and specialisation. A specialist fills a role. A generalist crosses roles.

A game that promotes many types of specialisation and/or requires multiple specialists of the same role for improved success tends to have larger parties. AD&D 1e promoted many specialists per role (meat shield walls, enough clerics to affect the undead on the battlefield and cover healing, magic-users having a very limited spell selection so promoting multiple specialists, and a thieves not being able to retry a failure so having a few meant substantially improved probability of eventual success).

A game that promotes generalists, has few defining roles, and/or only requires a single specialist for high success probability tends to have small parties. CHAMPIONS can fall into this category -- the defining roles there were Brick, Scrapper, Blaster, Skill Jockey, and Mentalist and not all the roles needed coverage in any party.

 

[DragonLancer]

I have always found that 4-5 players works best regardless of the game system.

 

[Rykion]

I have always found that 4-5 players works best regardless of the game system.

This holds true for me as well. It is enough players to cover most roles, and the maximum I really enjoy GMing with. In bigger groups, I find some players fade into the background, and the game is dominated by the most vocal members of the group.

 

[Verdande]

The maximum I like gaming with is roughly five. After that, side conversations and messing around tend to occur a little too often for my tastes.

I don't honestly think that party specialization or what-have-you is any indication of party size. After all, oD&D apparently was designed for parties of 8+ people, and there were only really three roles up for grabs. I think that the complexity of the game is what does it. If you're playing 4e, for example, it's harder to keep people in the game when each person is looking over their options and casting this Daily Power or this At-Will power and shifting Goblin X over Y squares and then drinking potion Z while moving backwards W spaces.

It's something I noticed when playing 3e, anyways, or even Descent: Journeys in the Dark. When you get above the critical mass per complexity ratio, people start to zone out when it's not their turn. And if everybody's zoning out, nobody's having fun.

 

[S'mon]

It's something I noticed when playing 3e, anyways, or even Descent: Journeys in the Dark. When you get above the critical mass per complexity ratio, people start to zone out when it's not their turn. And if everybody's zoning out, nobody's having fun.

Hmm, interesting point.