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Just what the title says. How many people can play D&D, 40k Roleplay and so on. before there's so many players that the game is too encumbered? I played D&D for 18 hours on New Years with 8 people and I felt I had to save time during combat by having more than one person roll at the same time. What are the factors?

I think 6 per DM is pretty much max. I depends on how disciplined your players are as well.

It depends heavily on the game and the group, but anything beyond 6 is probably going to get rough. GMing is herding kittens the best of days.

My limit is ten, anything over that, which I've done a few times starts to get hairy. Largest group was thirteen in a Vampire the Masquerade game, which got real ugly, with those numbers folks can team up in threes and fours and plot against the rest.

Fun, but a little crazy to run.

Ideal group size for me is five to six.

Personally, I think the ideal number of players in a P&P RPG is anything between 3 and 5 at any one time. I've also seen multiple groups with intertwined campaigns work fine, though, but of course those were still separated by time.

Depends on...

A) Whether it's a roleplay-heavy, deep-characterization game.
B) How complex the rules system/how fast it runs.

For an intensive, character-exploration, mystery-solving, complex-plot-involving game, like a serious game of Vampire or Call of Cthulhu or something, 3 players, maybe 4 at the max. In that kind of a game each player needs substantial RP facetime, and the players need to be able to really focus on the plot and mysteries.

For a really rules-light, roleplay-light game, you can go way higher. I've played in a couple of convention games of Original D&D run by Frank Mentzer, which had 10-12 people at the table and ran fine. But that kind of a game usually has a couple of players at a time acting as "callers"/captains, speaking for the party most of the time.

For most games not at the extremes, with a moderately-complex rules system, and players who all want a chance to individually roleplay at least a little and get into character, 5-6 is usually the maximum workable number of players. Squeezing in more usually means combat takes a long time and RP-scenes tend to either also take a long time or leave at least a couple of people silent.

Personally as a player I feel that a group of 6 works out as the max that gels well together.

One GM and five players is the sweet spot, but six players is doable as well. Get any more than that it gets hard for everyone to have a say and play a meaningful role in the sea of voices. In something as mini heavy as 4E you also start having combats that take a long time and are difficult to balance for those numbers.

I know, first hand, that seven people playing Solars in Exalted is too much. Cthulhus mighty face tentacles it took soooo long to get anything done.

Ahtman wrote:One GM and five players is the sweet spot, but six players is doable as well. Get any more than that it gets hard for everyone to have a say and play a meaningful role in the sea of voices. In something as mini heavy as 4E you also start having combats that take a long time and are difficult to balance for those numbers.

Agreed. I also find 5 the sweet spot for 3rd or 4th D&D because you can play through combat encounters down one player (if someone has to miss the session for some reason) without the party being crippled.

My group is currently 6+GM and we're playing 4th edition D&D... We had a storyline event where we split into two groups of 3 for a few months and it was amazing how fast combat went with small groups!

For 4th, players really need to have their next move planned out before their turn comes up. Sure, sometimes something comes up and you need to change it up, but at least try to have an idea of what you want to do. I think someone on here mentioned their group makes this mandatory as in if you aren't ready to go in 5 seconds you will be skipped.

@Balance: Yeah, even in small groups, the biggest delay in my games is waiting for the person to choose their action. 90% of the time they could have picked before their turn came up, but they never do and that adds time. I could only imagine if there were more people.

I think this has been a problem with every edition though. Pre-rolling and decisions are a great speed increase. I remember the player who played a 3.5 TWF Dervish in one of my games. They were required to start rolling their 8+ attacks as soon as their last combat turn ended so they would be ready. lol

I've run games with myself and 5 players. Wouldn't want to run it with any more than that.

Agree that 5 players + GM is both the best and the upper limit, at least for rules-heavy games like D&D 3E onward.

Another thing to remember is not just managing time in combat, but also that the more people you have, the more time there will be between each of their turns. If you've got a group of 8+ players, you could have 1/2 an hour between each player's turn, and that could get boring for the players if they're sitting around waiting to do something (especially if they fail a few turns in a row and do nothing, wasting 1+ hours of their time having no impact on the game).

Five or six is my personal sweet spot as a GM. Those numbers allow one person to cancel last minute without affecting scenario balance (i.e. turning a tough encounter into a TPK). I used to run a campaign with 8-9 active players with the average person showing up 2 out of 3 weeks generally. The few times everyone showed up, I had to institute some previously agreed upon shortcuts to prevent people from sitting around doing nothing in game for an hour between their own turns. No companions or familiars or followers doing anything other than moving with the owning player and possibly providing a flanking bonus or making a standard single attack against the same target... Only about 30 seconds to decide their own actions with no cross table guiddance chatter (that could be done quietly BEFORE their turn). Looting the dead in encounters and treasure chest items would be handled on the mailing list after the game.

Before we instituted those draconian shortcuts (especially the nix on cross table chatter advice to the active player), people would spend 10 minutes arguing about what they were doing on their turn in regards to the overall plan (they wouldn't bother to plan their turn till it was upon them and would zone out due to the sheer time inbetween actions) and players could literally walk away from the table and finish eating something from McDonalds before needing to be back for the next 6 second combat round.

Depends on the game and how it's played. A game over skype can't take anywhere near as many players as a game over a text based chat client or in person.

I refuse to run a game with more than 6 players, it just grinds to halt in almost any game/system. I prefer fewer, say 3-4. The more rules intensive the system, the fewer players a I prefer. I'll play in a game of almost any size, if only because I can goof off and not pay attention during the massive amounts of time the game is tripping over itself.

As a perminent dm (seems no one else in my group is imaginative) i've found it depends more on the plot. Are you running many battles of huge proportion, have a few rather challenging enemies, or does the plot cultivate thinking and more roleplaying? I play world of darkness and d&d 3.5 and 4 oftenand found that if I'm running multiple battles with many enemies 3-5 works well. I've run up to 12 but it really begins to drag past 5. If the enemies are fewer and tougher i reallly like 6-8. As for the campaigns that rely more on roleplaying and talking it really depends on your group. I've run 3 before and it took forever and I've run 6 no problem. Some people get into it more than others and some are just there to kill things.

A lot of it depends on the GM's experience, and the synergy/friendship between players. More of both, you can push the PC ceiling a bit higher. But in general 5 PCs would be my maximum.

I know when i was in a group not to long ago the DM had a hard time with 6 people, and he has been DMing for a long time... I think the main reason he had trouble was because almost everyone with the exception of myself and one other had ADHD.

Not only the synergy between friends but how they make their characters and actually role play them. I've seen groups fall apart because friends play their characters so well that their characters end up hating each other and unable to group together well.

Agreed on 5 plus GM being the best number, and on pre-rolling being bloody useful in most games for taking your turn.

I wouldn't want any more than 5 players+1GM in a group either, 4 I find is usually the best number, 3 the minimum for playability (you can do 2 players with DMPC's, but it's not as fun). 5 starts to stretch stuff, 6 starts to get out of hand and players often end up splitting into subgroups during adventures naturally at that point and stuff takes forever.

4+GM is usually ideal.

My games tend to fall apart with any more than about 3-4, with the best game I've done so far only having two. I don't think I've ever enjoyed myself playing in a game with more than five people.

I agree that four is max, two min. The best number i've found is 3. Not enough to make it unwieldy but enough to ensure the party is balanced and that it is easier to have more difficult enemies.

I like to have 3 or 4 PCs - when I can get them all together at the same time. I seem to be stuck in perpetual schedule hell.

I'm going to agree with a few others and say 6 is about as many as I can personally handle without it becoming a circus,

I ran a D&D campaign with 11 players once, but it quickly dwindled down as players would bored waiting for their turn. People would actually get enraged at someone taking a bathroom or smoke break when their turn was almost up and it held up the turn.

My D&D group used to have 8 players, we were playing 3.5 at the time and it was really slow. It didn't help that I was playing a Necromancy specialized cleric with a bunch of Zombies running around. Combat was really slow.... Now we have 6 players and we're playing 4e, it's still boringly slow...... From previous experience I would have to say that a 3-5 player group is ideal. The only problem with smaller amounts of players is when 1 or 2 people can't make it to the session and it ruins the session for everybody else.

I think it depends on the DM and the group itself. Sometimes when we have played it feels like 2 people is optimal other times it feels like 6 people is too few. In the group I used to play with we ususally had 5 people and a DM. I found five usually works quite well.