I was having a conversation with J over at 1nsomnia.wordpress.com regarding how bringing new blood into a game group can liven up play and rekindle the joy of playing. One of my comments was on the size of his gaming group:
8-10 is a massive group! Most group work is best done in groups of 4-6, studies show — from corporate environment, to fire teams in the military, to terrorist cells — above six becomes unmanageable (in the case of gaming groups, you have less “screen time” for the characters and it becomes hard to manage events); below four (including GM) and any absence can put the kybosh on a session and relationships between players become sometimes too comfortable and the play becomes stilted.
I’ve commented on group size before, but I think this is a nicely succinct take on my opinion regarding group size. Were it me (and it’s not, so feel free to ignore me on this), I would try — if scheduling permitted — to break the group into two. But that’s me, and as always, I could be completely full of shit.
In fact, it’s almost a certainty.
The Black Campbell 
20 April, 2012 at 10:31
I have often thought of splitting the group up, actually, but due to the irregularity of attendance (I have two players who attend every game without fail, the rest are hit and miss), no matter how I split it, I could have a full table one week and a vacant one the next.
For my session tonight, my core players will all be present and I think we’ll table some ideas and see what works for people in order to re-energize the table. After all these years, it’s time to mix things up.
20 April, 2012 at 10:54
I would have suggested spliting the party, but it’s not really my place to say.
Shaking things up does definitely help — I like to rotate the games we play regularly to keep things fresh (and give me time to react to player actions.)
22 April, 2012 at 22:32
Well my crew and I had a discussion (decent attendance… five players + me) and we agree that the characters we have are pretty ridiculous, even by Shadowrun standards (hell, we play 7th Sea and these characters are seen as over the top).
Ultimately the decision is that everyone will make a new character that functions well with the other members of the party and no one will play the same style of character they were playing before (my magic users are going combat/hacking and my technophiles are going magic). I think the fresh look on character types will be interesting (the character concepts trickling in are already looking promising).
So we’ll see how things pan out with a re-invented character roster. I am also considering having a second game night that will divide up my players across the two sessions and even potentially allow me to add new blood. It depends on whether the wife would kill me… at least she games. It helps with the understanding. 🙂
J.
23 April, 2012 at 06:17
My wife also plays when she can (not so much with the little one, right now) and that seems to be a big help. Spouses that don’t game either understand it’s your play time, or they don’t get it — the latter usually winds up causing serious friction, I’ve found.
20 April, 2012 at 16:11
I’ve gamed with groups ranging from two (me and one other) to about fifteen, and I agree that the sweet spot is about five or six players and one GM. I think if you go down to four (3 players + 1 GM) you’re really skirting the edge of sustainability unless you have a very detailed environment where you can have two, or even one, players go off if someone doesn’t show.
For me, the games with more than about 6 players become bogged down in the round robin nature of face to face gaming and it slowly devolves into either a miniatures board game of constant combat with minimal real story development or you have a couple people managing the players’ side of the game with everyone else just there for the ride.