As a gamerunner, what is the ideal number of players you aim for?
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It goes beyond staff, however. Staff capacity is one thing, for sure. But also–a given setting or plot really only has so many ROLES for people, and you can’t infinitely expand those roles even if you somehow end up with a bounty of GMs. Inevitably, as populations increase, either each individual PC is going to have less impact on the world, or there is going to be a disparity in inherent impact between some PCs and others - a ‘privileged’ class and a ‘supporting’ class. This isn’t malicious, and usually isn’t even intentional. It just happens because any given conflict or situation can only hold so much ‘space’, and some people are very good at jumping on those spaces, while others–for various reasons–aren’t.
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As many as you or your staff are able to feasibly handle. That number is largely dependent on that answer.
However, there’s plenty of staff that believes they can handle X amount of players, but the actual number after the game has been open likely changes once what you imagine becomes reality.
But as a player? I like 30. It’s not so large that you feel insignificant in your actions, but not so small that it feels more like a private affair.
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My personal sweet spot is 20-35, though I tend to go a little higher than that at times because I also dislike a stagnating playerbase.
There are tiers of activity, and usually 40ish players is 25 pretty active players, 8-10 semi-active players, and 5-7 barely-there players.
Fewer than ~15 active players and people can’t keep themselves busy. Staff work can actually go UP because less story happens organically, socially. 18-25 active players is a really, really good sweet spot for social RP providing enough drive to keep things rolling when plot is on a cool down, IME. It’s also big enough to provide lots of player GMs without anyone having to run constantly.
The top limit, though, is not actually about staff capacity. I would not raise it if I had more hands (in fact, I have a lot of hands!), because it’s not about how many people I can get on plots or provide story for.
It’s about the reasonable size of a community that functions well together, develops healthy norms, and builds interconnected personal relationships that contribute to a cooperative play space.
This is important to me for all kinds of reasons, including maintaining the trust for folks to feel comfortable reporting problems, paying enough attention that I can often be alert to their presence even before a report bubbles up, the ability to keep an eye on how story is spread, and generally just… having a feel for stuff.
Even with help, I can’t do that at more than 35-40 players (and it’s a big part of why I count by player and not character).
I’m not perfect at it by any means, but I know I get much, much worse at it when there start to be so many people on the game that I don’t actually know a good portion of them.
And I tend to think that a community where folks know each other is a more pleasant place to play for lots of other reasons, too. Players are more cognizant of much work their fellow players put in to GM for them. They know who’s having a tough time in RL or that weekends are rough for that person they’d love to catch . THEY are aware when something feels ‘off’, and are more likely to let staff know.
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I chose 1. I am the only player, and I’ll write all the characters. Don’t even need any fancy code, just follow my own internal rules. I can even publish the logs. We can call them books.
ETA: In seriousness, most of my game thoughts/ideas don’t get past the one player point. Hyperfixations only last so long.
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I personally don’t know if this is a black and white question. My head goes into numerous factors that would change the answer.
So just looking at how I’m aiming to setup my game, 30 to 45 players would be ideal. So I put 45 as a response.
However, I can see with some adjustments I can see it being higher or lower.
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I count a game’s success in gaining and retaining players issues not by numbers but by activity blocks. A handful of players is enough if they play together consistently enough to move story at a pace they enjoy.
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3-5.
Those were the numbers Keys was made for – us three admins and a couple of buddies. As it turns out, more people have turned up and we’re delighted with that – but we’re still not aiming to support hundreds.
We love making new RP friends – but ultimately, we are aware that the requirement to be somewhat self-sustaining also turns a number of people away.
It’s okay. No game should be for everyone. You can please some of the people all the time etc.
So I guess our ideal is whatever works – whatever achieves that fine balance where people have something to do and friends to play with, but we’re not burning through staff like charcoal in a polar winter. And that’s very difficult to put into numbers because with the right people, you can support a lot of other people – and without them, you can’t.
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i’m so tired
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I’m curious how many of those 24 people who voted 30+ have run a game that big, and know the difficulties involved.
I’ve been adjacent to running a big game and it’s not as easy as it sounds.
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@Polk Well, at least one of the major difficulties has been made pretty publicly apparent on the boards in very recent memory.
