D&D – Scheduling and Player Counts

I was hoping to play in and DM several sessions of D&D this weekend and write a report on them, but since scheduling  conflicts got in the way… here’s a post about scheduling.

Smaller groups are easier to schedule. That’s pretty much a given, but it’s worth mentioning. Also, younger groups are easier to schedule, back in Junior High and High School getting together every Friday wasn’t an issue in the slightest, no one had any real commitments.

The group I play with now is a subset of the group I played with in Junior High. There were 10 of us then, and while we actually managed to meet every Friday, getting anything done was a nightmare. We’d get through about one encounter per four to five hour session.

Now there’s six of us, so at most we have five players and a DM, but more often there’s three to four players.

At least with regard to the group I play with, three people is the ideal group size.

It’s worth mentioning the difference between 3.5 and 4th Edition here, 3.5 assumes a base group of 4 while 4E assumes a base group of 5. I don’t have nearly as much experience with 4E, so maybe three people isn’t enough, but just in terms of how the players interact with each other and the game world, three is the sweet spot.

First, everyone must contribute. There’s no room for a dead weight on a team of three and it forces the players to work together. In addition, because there’s just three of them it’s easier to get everyone’s opinion and work out a plan. Second, the players all feel important, because they’re working together and everyone is contributing, no player feels left out. Third, there’s a smaller gap between turns. This may not seem like much, but when you only  have to sit out for two other turns instead of four other turns it’s easier to stay involved.

Finally, as a corollary to the above, things get done. Players are much less likely to get distracted when they’re forced to cooperate and work to win the encounters, and there’s less down time for them to zone out.

So three person groups are pretty cool, but there are of course advantages to larger groups.

The primary advantage is in scale, a bigger group can take bigger challenges head on. If the players in your group don’t like coming up with inventive, non-combat solutions for taking on or at least weakening a significant foe, then they will be better served with the extra muscle of a larger group. While it comes down to personal preference, a larger group allows characters to specialize more, rather than the necessity of versatility that comes with the three person group.

I enjoy playing versatile characters more than specialists, and all this advice on group sizes is quite subjective and heavily based on just who is in the group.

As with anything D&D, the best judge is player interest. If the players are leaning in to the table, discussing their plans passionately and cheering/cursing the dice as they roll well/poorly, then they are interested, and whatever the DM is doing must be working.