Large group sizes

Hi. My background is in 5e D&D where the number of players for online campaigns is almost always 3-5 people. Its the group size that version of the game was designed for. I’ve successfully played and ran campaigns with a GM and only two players before with some mechanical adjustments and it worked fine. Since I’ve started migrating over to OSR games, it seems like larger groups of players are more typical. Nearly all the games I’ve played in so have been 6+ so this isn’t a remark on any particular game I’ve been in. Classic modules suggest running with higher numbers of players. Keep on the Borderlands, for example recommends 6-9 players. My uninformed gut reaction is that seems like way too many!

In theory I get that OSR games are mechanically light and can support fast turns without everyone digging around in their character sheets, however, one of the highlights of OSR play for me is teamwork. From articles I’ve read on group dynamics, once a conversation grows beyond 4-5 people it becomes harder for folks to meaningfully contribute and requires more discipline for the participants.

I’ve brainstormed a few potential reasons why I’m seeing larger sizes:

  • they’re not, I’m in a bubble
  • active or subconscious balancing efforts in response to lethality
  • famine response from when OSR was less popular
  • built in social fail-safe from past experiences where players drop out or have a low engagement playstyles.
  • not wanting to turn folks away or belief that more is merrier

So with this in mind, I wanted to pose the question: How many gather around your table (virtual or otherwise)? If you happen to rock a larger table, are there some advantages I’m overlooking? Thanks!

My sweet spot is 3-4 players, but I’ve happily run games for 5-6. Beyond that is tricky, especially in person. My biggest issue with a system like 5e is that combat is slow, and folks inevitably get distracted, look at their phones, etc. This does not happen in OSR games. At least, not for me. I’ve also heard that it’s different depending on your group’s age, neurodivergence, etc.

Sweet Spot: 4-6
Largest? Probably close to Two Dozen :grimacing:

To facilitate those larger tables, we often avail ourselves of a lot of Player Roles like the Caller (and even Sub-Callers!), Quartermasters, Lucifers, Chroniclers, etc. to try and cut down on a little bit of the cognitive overhead. I find that I can generally run a 3-4 table without a Caller, but larger than that and I do start missing it a little bit to just confidently query “The Party” rather than having to go round-robin individually. There’s still quite a bit of spot-lighting from time to time of course, but the Players confer among themselves while I get to take care of other matters (rolling on tables, invoking procedures, etc.) I am always listening in and happy to quickly clarify or answer questions though.

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I appreciate you mentioning that size can vary depending on demographic composition, because I think my autism is coloring how I am perceiving this issue. Its just not something I was accounting for, so thanks! I’ll try and cut myself some slack next time I feel apprehensive about running for a large group of people.

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Something to be considered here is that while it might say 6-9 players it really only requires 6-9 characters. One of the main facets of old school play is hirelings and retainers, which serve as extra muscle, filling in gaps in the class breakdown of the party and often serve as backup characters for when someone dies. They function differently from PCs so they dont require a juggling act of playing 2 full characters, and they give the party a little extra oomph. I’ve also found they can be useful for conveying setting tone, and story beats as they are a sort of “shared character” between the DM and the Players.

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This makes a lot of sense to me. One of my favorite OSR podcasts is 3D6 Down the line which regularly features only 2 to 3 players who each operate both a PC and a retainer. Its interesting to me that some other OSR-adjacent products I enjoy, namely Shadowdark, break with traditional and intentionally don’t include retainer rules. I think I read it was in an effort to emulate sword and sorcerery more directly rather than classic D&D play.

I’m definitely intrigued by your comment on how retainers can improve the flavor of a campaign. In the past when I’ve tried them out before to fill in gaps its been hit or miss, so I may need to try an be more intentional about their inclusion. I’ll keep an open mind going forward, because I can more easily see myself running with a smaller number of engaged players that have retainers rather than 8 players.

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As an example, in Nick’s “Twilight Age” megadungeon campaign, the retainers were a guild unto themselves, which due to various things in the plot of the game ended up being leveraged by a powerful local NPC in an attempt to regulate delving in the dungeon. The whole ordeal is handled in a set of rules that are diagetically enforced by the guild itself. I always thought it was a really cool way of incorporating not only hirelings/retainers but also a homebrewed ruleset for them. I highly recommend this blog to anyone interested in megadungeon games (it has over a hundred sessions logged of events during the game) and lots of interesting worldbuilding on top of that.

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Playing mostly online, my sweet spot is 3 players + GM. 4 is ok, though I prefer to run with just 2 players. I‘d refuse to play with a larger group, both as GM and player.

This of course means I cannot use OSR systems RAW, I usually play OSR adventures, but with more freeform systems like Trophy Gold.

I think needs and preferences concerning player count differ wildly. To me, it was important to find out what I wanted and try to find a like-minded group, rather than deal with such big groups.

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Cool idea! Thanks for the recommendation.

I’ve run groups of up to 8 players, but I find that, at a certain point, it becomes challenging to run anything more than a hack and slash, beer and pretzels style game.

If I had to pick my ideal group size, it would be 3 players. Four also works fine. I’m a huge advocate for 2-player sessions or even 1on1 sessions. My current campaign has dropped down to two players, and honestly, it’s been great. We get a lot more done because the sessions are more focused and intimate. With fewer players, decisions happen faster.

I didn’t fully realize it until later, but the more players you have, the more divergent their ideas and goals tend to be, which can slow things down.

Two-player or solo sessions also provide much more room for characters to explore their individual interests. This approach works especially well in sandbox campaigns. Hirelings and retainers become important for obvious reasons, and I strongly encourage stable play, where players can create multiple characters but can only use one at a time while the others remain in safe havens or settlements.

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I generally see large group sizes mentioned in online spaces where people aren’t sure if they’re going to get another chance to find a game, so GMs are kinda pressured towards large groups.

…but that doesn’t explain Keep on the Borderlands at all /shrug

I sometimes have as many as 8 teenagers (which is like having 13) and a few of us have ADHD (so add a few more to the 13). In a large, rambunctious group like that two things really help us:

  1. Side initiative with everyone rolling at the same time (I wrote this about how it works for us). Declaring actions creates a space for planning and everyone contributes. Rolling together reduces waiting and it’s very exciting to see all those dice rolling on the table.
  2. Jokes and horsing around affect the game. So a joke can literally happen in-game and horsing around in a dungeon attracts monsters. It prevents a few jokes from derailing the game. I only enforce this when/if it’s a problem.
  3. I’m a teacher so I use a call and response to get the groups attention if needed. May not be for everyone.

A large group of teens can be exciting but definitely requires some strategies for handling them. I don’t think all groups need things like this, but we do and it helps keep the game moving forward and fun.

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My regular group consists of seven people. We gather on a Discord server every Saturday and play for four or five hours. Our game has been going on for a little more than two years. We play the Ashardalon “Adventure Path” from D&D 3e in Pathfinder 1e.

The best parts for us are that we rarely have hiatuses, every party role is covered, and there is always someone in the party who can assist you in whatever idea you have—be it role-playing a specific topic, scouting ahead, or even asking for money or trading items.

As a GM, I adore the freedom a large group provides me. There are always different plots moving forward, a diversity of targets the enemies can focus on, and the risk of TPK diminishes greatly. I can also ask them to role-play some secondary characters from time to time!

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For me, I like a group of 2-3. It avoids the group subdividing which imho ALWAYS happens with larger groups (even a 4 will divide into pairs on some level). Plus in a problem solving/decisions focused game (which is my preference) having less voices at the table helps. Discussions are more focused and teamwork is easier.

More people I think tends to result in more ‘beer & pretzels’ style play (on average), which is great if that’s your vibe.

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As a man of science, I started a 5e campaign with 8 players to explicitly stress test the limits of that game. I used a Swords & Wizardry module as the campaign setting (Blackmarsh [affiliate link]) and under the city I used the Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor [affiliate link]. Initially the player count was a buffer against outages to ensure we could continue play with up to 50% call outs. This almost never happened and I ended up running the campaign mostly with 7 - 8 players at the table per session. By level 5 this was pretty much GG for most encounters and by level 10 (the campaign capstone fight) the party took out a Lich, 2 Vampires and a Balor with only two PCs going down (brought back up of course).

I’m going to be running an OSE campaign using Dolmenwood, Stygian Library, Gardens of Ynn and the series of OSE adventures from Necrotic Gnome this year with 8 players as well with the intention of comparing the experience from both campaigns.

To be clear, the players enjoyed the campaign A LOT, I was able to largely curtail issues of combat bloat with clear communication. Sessions ran 3 hours every 2 weeks like clockwork. The largest game I’ve ever run was 13 players, it was a mess but we had a lot of fun. Very beer and pretzels.

All of my experience is running and playing in-person games, I don’t play online, and I love running for big groups. Pre-pandemic my largest consistent public tables were a dozen or so kids aged 10-14 in a Cyberpunk game (glossing over some of the combat complications) and nine adults in a Deathwatch game. I am somewhat disappointed that the best turnout I can get for a non-5E FLGS game these days is eight, and the average four or five.

In focused, combat-heavy, mission/heist-based games I think the bigger the better really. It lets me go all out with outrageous challenges knowing that a lot of heads and a lot of bullets should be able to come up with something. For more paced games focusing on exploration, investigation or intrigue I suspect the sweet spot is smaller since players getting properly involved in that sort of play just takes up more time. I’ve played in a couple more narrative/storygame short campaigns recently and the way players in those tended to really chew the scenery makes me think it would be untenable with more than five.

For big groups there’s a few helpful things I’ll usually implement. I get the group to elect a caller (this is mechanically formalized in Deathwatch) and I do side initiative, but when it comes to the players’ turns I just start on my left and go around the circle so I’m never asking who’s next or taking anyone by surprise. I try to run things that can be reasonably completed in 150-200 minutes so that campaigns can be more episodic, with upkeep and downtime every session and no-one needing to quantum warp into reality halfway through an adventure. I try to never sit back and wait for a decision after the initial planning phase and deployment is done. I’ll keep going around the table asking people what they are doing, and I try to discourage “what ifs” as much as possible. I generally map things for everyone myself as I describe environments, too.

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It depends on the game I’m running. Its complexity, themes and the systems it offers do have an effect on my preferences for the number of players.

But I’m really someone that prefers smaller tables, so I always lean on the smaller size.

For party-focused games like D&D and such, I find that four players is the sweet spot. I can stretch to five and to three, but it affects the dynamics at the table.

For some very light games, I can go up to five or six players. Think the 2400 pamphlet games by Tocci. I have more mental bandwidth to give the players.

My absolute favorite group size is one. There’s something incredibly precious in running RPGs one-on-one and focusing on their experience.

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