Thoughts on Party Size in the game

[thornburgmp]

Currently running a 1E Doctor Who RPG campaign. It's been myself and four PCs for almost a year and recently decided to add another player. It definitely got me to thinking about another difference between running the Doctor Who game successfully versus, say D&D 5e.

Most of the 5e games I've played in are combat heavy and have had a large number of players (median is probably eight). The GM compensates (somewhat imperfectly) by increasing the difficulty of the combat encounters by adding more foes. This does tend to slow down the encounters a lot but our group has a decent system for keeping things moving.

It occurs to me that such an easy remedy is not really in Doctor Who RPG. The game is about solving problems and collaborating as a group and while there are assist mechanisms in the game, I feel like there's probably an upper limit on the number of players you can GM effectively with Who.

I guess you could split the party but that takes players out of the game. But you can't necessarily make the mysteries tougher because human group problem solving doesn't consistently increase with the size of the group.

I think my own game is still under the threshold for where the game starts to fall apart but curious if others support my hypothesis.

[satbunny]

My sweet spot is 4 so I try and have 5 players in case 1-2 drop out. I will always play if I have 3+.

I don't like 6+, too difficult for everyone to participate in a session.

You can split the party but you never stop the action in all places at the same time, the camera switches.. the players always know all the stories even if the characters don't.

[thewarchief]

I don't think there is an "upper limit" on Who compared to D&D because Who isn't built around combat "encounters" the same way D&D is. If you have six PCs instead of four you don't need to add more Cybermen to balnce the encounter,because in Doctor WHo you don't expect the PCs to take the Cybermen out in a head on fight. And with puzzles the number of players don't usually matter, as more players don't usually make a puzzle any easier. It usually one player who figures it and tells everyone the answer as opposed to some sort of team effort.

D&D is about "balanced" (read heavily rigged in the PCs favor) encounters and combat. Doctor Who normally biases the combat against the PCs, who are forced to think thier way out of the situation, not fight their way. A lone Dalek can usually take out the entire group of PC in a straight fight, and a group are unstoppable in a firefight. That's why the stories don't go that route. Look at the UNIT hera. The Doctor had a small army and it generally made no difference.

I think upper group size has less to do with the RPG, and more with what the GM feels comfortable with, their style of play, the sort of adventures they are playing, how well a group of player work together and stay focused, and how they handle "downtime" when the group is split, and when GM has to focus his attention on one or two of the group. Like when the GM spends ten minutes dealing with two players as their characters to land the alien spaceship, how to the other players handle waiting around for ten minutes.

Yeah a game where all the GM has to do is throw another fight at the group every hour can be easier to run, and can keep a large group of people busy, but at a certain point it's not a RPG anymore but a wargame. Even with a wargame more players mean more time waiting to take your turn.


In my experience espionage adventures, and groups that do a lot of roleplaying are the ones where I think a smaller group works best. Espionage because more PCs means more chances of someone blowing their cover and jeopardizing the mission. Heavy roleplaying because it tends to require more one on one interaction. If two characters state thier undying love for each other there not much room for anyone else to say much without undermining things.

[thornburgmp]

Jul 12, 2024 13:27:05 GMT thewarchief said:

I don't think there is an "upper limit" on Who compared to D&D because Who isn't built around combat "encounters" the same way D&D is. If you have six PCs instead of four you don't need to add more Cybermen to balnce the encounter,because in Doctor WHo you don't expect the PCs to take the Cybermen out in a head on fight. And with puzzles the number of players don't usually matter, as more players don't usually make a puzzle any easier. It usually one player who figures it and tells everyone the answer as opposed to some sort of team effort.

I think you and I are saying the same thing--at least regarding the difference between D&D and Who. Interestingly, the literature on group decisionmaking generally finds the optimal number of people for problem solving is about 4 or 5. After that, the quality of decisions made does not improve and even begins to decline. That seems to fit not only with my experience playing RPGs and escape rooms, but also with where I think Doctor Who really shines player-wise.

I think upper group size has less to do with the RPG, and more with what the GM feels comfortable with, their style of play, the sort of adventures they are playing, how well a group of player work together and stay focused, and how they handle "downtime" when the group is split, and when GM has to focus his attention on one or two of the group. Like when the GM spends ten minutes dealing with two players as their characters to land the alien spaceship, how to the other players handle waiting around for ten minutes.

Yeah a game where all the GM has to do is throw another fight at the group every hour can be easier to run, and can keep a large group of people busy, but at a certain point it's not a RPG anymore but a wargame. Even with a wargame more players mean more time waiting to take your turn.

In my experience espionage adventures, and groups that do a lot of roleplaying are the ones where I think a smaller group works best. Espionage because more PCs means more chances of someone blowing their cover and jeopardizing the mission. Heavy roleplaying because it tends to require more one on one interaction. If two characters state thier undying love for each other there not much room for anyone else to say much without undermining things.

I generally agree with this. I suppose there's theoretically a way to GM an 8 PC Doctor Who RPG session effectively, but it is probably more difficult than D&D, which--like you say--you can turn into a wargame. The most miserable experience I ever had playing the Doctor Who RPG was at a Con. The GM tried to include a couple players who showed up without tickets. We used all the pre-gens and I got stuck with Mickey Smith. Not only did the GM struggle with the larger party but it being a Con game we didn't have much chemistry and there was no aspect of the game where Mickey shines above others so someone else was always better at making the roll. It wasn't an ideal experience but it definitely opened my eyes to these issues.

[thewarchief]

Jul 12, 2024 13:54:30 GMT thornburgmp said:

I think you and I are saying the same thing--at least regarding the difference between D&D and Who. Interestingly, the literature on group decisionmaking generally finds the optimal number of people for problem solving is about 4 or 5. After that, the quality of decisions made does not improve and even begins to decline. That seems to fit not only with my experience playing RPGs and escape rooms, but also with where I think Doctor Who really shines player-wise.

Yeah I don't think we are that far apart here. As for optimal group size I think the limit is more what given GM feels comfortable with and that can vary not only from one GM to another but also from one group of players to another. I've seen groups of three that were dysfunctional and a group of dozen players who worked so well together that they were easy to GM. At least as far as the actual running of the game. They were a terror to prepare for.

Jul 12, 2024 13:54:30 GMT thornburgmp said:

I generally agree with this. I suppose there's theoretically a way to GM an 8 PC Doctor Who RPG session effectively, but it is probably more difficult than D&D, which--like you say--you can turn into a wargame.

Yeah. You can run eight easy enough (we used to do 8 players per table at some gaming conventions) but to do it right for something other than a series of fights, you probably need to set up the adventure for it. Have taks and subplots to keep everybody occupied. Set it up so that one group has a puzzle or some such to occupy them while you run another group. I can be done, but yeah, it's more work. I ran campaigns where some people had to miss sessions while on vacation, and would try to put together some sort of solo handout for when they got back to see what thier characters were up to during the sessions they missed. In one instance I mangaged to get everyone to meet up at a castle under siege so they could all start the next session up to speed at the same place. It wasn't all that hard to do, it just took a lot more time to make the handouts for the solos.

It's not really the game system, per say, but the way people run the game and the sort of adventures they play. D^D comes off as easier because it tends to use simpler adventures and is focused around combat. That's pretty easy to set up.

Jul 12, 2024 13:54:30 GMT thornburgmp said:

The most miserable experience I ever had playing the Doctor Who RPG was at a Con. The GM tried to include a couple players who showed up without tickets. We used all the pre-gens and I got stuck with Mickey Smith. Not only did the GM struggle with the larger party but it being a Con game we didn't have much chemistry and there was no aspect of the game where Mickey shines above others so someone else was always better at making the roll. It wasn't an ideal experience but it definitely opened my eyes to these issues.

Oh, that brings back memories. Way back I was running a Stormbringer game at a Con where they overboooked events, thinking that as it was the last event of the evening, some people would do a no-show. Instead EVERYBODY showed, and I found myself running a group of thirteen players. I was actually putting out some of the character sheets from my campaign to make up for the extra players.

It mostly worked though since it was a quest through a ruin for a item, and I could just up the quantity of monsters by 50%. But it was more work than I had planned for at the last day of a three day event, running on 4 hours sleep. The players seemed to have a good time though.