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Hey there everyone,

Thinking of starting up a CoC game in the near future as the Keeper, but I'm wondering what the sweet spot number for investigators is, in everyone's opinion.

As many as you can manage given the investigative nature of the game. I've seen games run for between 3 and 15 players, and it was all down to the Keeper pacing the slow, relentless, insanity inducing horror with the need to dish out clues and drive the plot to reward. Also if you can manage player tendency to split up and "Scooby Doo" then you'll do fine.

Plus it depends on what era and style of game you want, and how many potential investigators are interested.

I'm involved in one at the moment and there's 6 of us investigators. It works really well as we can split up occasionally (in-game) but not be excluding people for too long when that happens.

I'd say 4-8 is about right

below 4 and the Keeper is more likely to have to go soft on the investigators or risk killing the lot and ending the game

above 8 and people's tendancy to split up can make it hard to keep all the players involved and entertained

It's also worth having at least 1 or 2 backup characters available and 'introduced' in game to allow anybody who's character is killed or locked up as insane to get back into the game quickly

(personally I'd suggest everybody generates a backup and hands it to the keeper so they're around in story to use if necessary)

Hmm, this is really useful information, but also a little worrying, as I have about 2 players who are interested... :\ Is 2 an impossibly low number?

The only issue I think you will have is that (in my experience at least) the 'typical' stories usually kill one of the characters. You could try running a couple of NPC investigators along with their characters or adjusting difficulty accordingly.

In the end, I would really try to find a few more players. The experience is vastly improved with more people involved.

I don' think 2 players for CoC is problematic, although it really could depend on the style of game you're looking for. You could do something X-Files-ish, which was generally two agents as the main characters.

Some good inspiration if you're familair with it is Charles Stross' Laundry novels, which have a CoC-licensed rules RPG. It's basically CoC, but a shadowy yet marginally competent British government agency is keeping things from getting spread around in a futile effort to prevent the End Times.

Note: It is funny, albeit dark humor.

 curran12 wrote:
Hmm, this is really useful information, but also a little worrying, as I have about 2 players who are interested... :\ Is 2 an impossibly low number?

No
2 players is nice.

I prefer 3 or 4.
5 is my maximum.

Or let both players run 2 characters at once (perhaps as 2 separate teams) so both are involved which ever location they are in

Cthulhu does not have to be lethal if the keeper does not want it to be, just think carefully about what opposition you have for them and stay away from the more dangerous ones especially if your players like combat

Some of the published scenarios would work well with that. The Innsmouth stuff, for example, was set up with room for both personal horror (a PC or two have the 'Innsmouth look' and have to deal with it) and other sections that are more combat oriented (playing the raid on Innsmouth, which I believe is split into at least two different plot-threads occurring at the same time, anyway.