And Why Four is the Perfect Size
Hey friends, this is the first post in my ‘Opinion Corner’. I know you usually open the door to this dark dungeon and hope to find some magic items, but sometimes you just stumble upon a rambling npc. Now, let’s get to the matter!
We Just Want Our Friends
We DMs and Players just want to get the party together. This usually means grabbing all of your nerdy friends by the ears and strapping them to chairs for three or four hours each week, hoping they’ll like our weird nonsense. Does it make sense then to talk about player party sizes at all? Are you really gonna alienate one of your buddies because you want the nice feeling of a well balanced group? Of course not!
I find myself very much in luck to have in the past defeated the BBEG of Any Game: Schedule (More about this nefarious creature in another post). That meant I had at times too many players and had to say no to some of my friends. Having a big party paradoxically also means that not everyone is gonna show up everytime. Some players also wanted extra content, others were up for more one-shots. This truly blessed state resulted in me having played with any number of players at my table and noticed key differences in the kinds of stories we are able to tell when the number of main characters drastically changes.
Recognizing these core differences, between a table of 6 and one of 3 for example, could help us to better fit our game to our players’ needs and also have matching expectations when running the game. This is my attempt to sum up those differences.
Kinds of Adventures
Here are some adventure ‘moods’ for different party sizes. Think of them less as steps on a ladder and more like the even flow of a river. All of these are still DND, don’t worry, but you’ll see that as you lose players you lose something and gain something else, transforming the game.
6 or more – the War
Huge groups like this tend to break the game. What I mean by this is that mechanical balance is lost, the natural flow of storytelling is altered and the time lost in understanding each other is maximised.
A group with many elements is prepared for combat, throw at them everything you got, especially at higher levels. The Action Economy is a real thing and just having two to three turns more than the enemy usually guarantees an eventual victory. At this player count you’ll want to keep your head out of the character’s sheets as much as you can, maybe relying on one or two rules-savvy players to deal with noodly stuff. You have one job: Flow. Keep things moving because everything is gonna take SO much time.
If you have players who are ok with sitting back and enjoying what’s happening it will be bearable, but be sure to point the spotlight toward the more quiet ones often.
In a campaign like this, it is still possible to roleplay and explore, but combat is gonna be so big and epic that sessions are gonna be divided. In my last 7-player campaign we had entire sessions of roleplay shenanigans and exploration, alternated with big set-piece boss fight combats or dungeon crawls. At higher levels you’ll want to skip easy encounters all together and get to the good stuff that matters quickly. Almost every fight past 11th level was a matter of life and death, the ones at the end of the quest.
So what kind of campaign can you run with this group? I say wage War on them. Challenge their capacity to overcome insurmountable odds, or impossible decisions that will alter the world. A group of powerful heroes is not gonna be forgotten by the communities they meet. They’re gonna be a Faction, even if they don’t realize it, make the world and major shakers of it take notice of their advancements. A group this big has the deciding power of a council, make them discuss important issues and remember to lead them to big crunchy confrontations with the enemy. Combat has the intrinsic characteristic of giving each of them something to do, which is not a guarantee in exploration or roleplay when there’s a lot of overlap between character’s skills.
A group of many players also tends to split up and have conflicting goals. Do as much work as you can in Session 0 to make sure they are all on the same page morally and goal-wise, but be open to offer spin off sessions. Use the time between regular games to manage downtime activities and shopping sprees. It also helps to have a ‘shot caller’ player, who has a final say on group decisions. They can be the captain of the pirate crew, or the guildmaster of the rogue guild. Make sure they’re not mad with power and that no one is overpowered, but it will save you a lot of table discussion.
So what kind of narratives suit this kind of group? Big on-the-field military campaigns. Make them combat an infinite amount of enemies in huge boss fights (use minions for an epic feel) and have them make important grey decisions about sacrificing more than their hps.
Lastly, if you have too many friends and are running a party of 8+, maybe you’ll be better off with a West Marches game.
5 – The Quest
Now we’re in the limits of DND. Four and Five players is the number the game is balanced and designed on. That shines in the number of roles players can occupy. You’ll have the one player who kills everything, the one who talks to people, the one with neat magical tricks… They’re gonna be a well rounded balanced party and you can really start having fun with encounter design. They start to be a manageable party, so have fun in highlighting singular abilities of the characters: in combat by having challenges they specifically are good at resolving, and in roleplaying by bringing their background to the spotlight.
A group like this can really enjoy a classical travel quest to get to the other side of the world. That not only gives you the ability to show them your world, but their world too! Have them visit their original village, confront what became of their lost tribe or deal with their magical destiny! As the player count reduces you can give them more space to breathe and shine. With five try to encompass all areas of the game, and feel free to dedicate entire arcs or locations to only one of them.
4 – The Fellowship
Ok I’m a little biassed on this player count, but I’ll try to explain why I think it’s the most comfortable party type. Four has all the strength of Five in being a well-rounded party. You can throw at them quick easy encounters and epic boss fights, they’ll manage. The main difference, and maybe here I’m being picky, is that a party this small can really start developing interesting relationships between them. Sure even 8 players can all get married and forge steel bonds, but I think with Four we can start expecting it to happen.
I call it the Steel Tetrahedron. As a DM you can start thinking about what these characters have in common and push them in cool situations in which we can explore their dynamic. Sure this implies that your players are into roleplay, and that’s the amazing thing: if they’re not you can still throw them in a dungeon and have a fun hacking and slashing time! You’ll see as we descend down the player count that this is not always a guarantee.
When it comes to playing good, well-rounded, tears-inducing and critical-hits-rolling DND, Four is the magic number. The group can still just kill monsters, or convince the king of the impending doom, but you finally have time to have them talk to each other and enjoy their personalities clashing, making what’s not on the character’s sheet shine.
So, any adventure will fit four players, but the important thing is that they’ll form a strong Fellowship between them, it’s a natural side-effect of playing together. Enjoy the warmth and sustain that fire.
3 – The Family
When the number of players at your table shrinks below four things get personal, very personal. If the five people archetype in media was the amazing Power Rangers and nothing much else, we have plenty of young adult adventure stories about three close friends against the world. Three friends are a small family, and we can play with that.
Even in huge party counts we can have close relationships, but if with four we had the time to explore those bonds, in three those bonds become core to the adventure. Make sure the party is well knit from the beginning, maybe they are a literal family, and make sure they have each other’s back. Now you can shape the adventure around these bonds, make the problems come from this found family’s past, make the villain an ex member of the family and be sure to test the tight bond between your pcs.
Three is also where you can’t just trust the game when combat breaks out. They probably lack some key role and have very few actions in a round. This is a strength. Use this lack of combat prowess to open your ears and be receptive to non-combat solutions your players think of. Sneaking, charming, thieving, hiding, running, ‘making a small village revolt’, these are all D&D shenanigans we love and with three players there’s room to make an effective plan that includes each character’s unique skill set.
Avoid all-out confrontations and don’t be afraid to split the party to offer unique challenges. With only three it’s easier to move the spotlight back and forth with minimum wait time.
2 – The Buddies
I’ll have you know, from here the DM’s work, in prep and at the table, grows exponentially. The player chit-chat is at a minimum and you have to provide almost all of the speaking. If with big parties sometimes you can just sit back and watch them argue on anything, now these moments are rare. But, oh boy, if they aren’t the best DND you can have.
Having two people bond in the flesh of their character is so intimate it gets a little difficult for the most awkward of us. How can we favor this? Well, it’s more about the players, but we as DMs can give the power-couple some moral dilemmas to start a conversation. Make them be in charge of a situation where they have to bring peace between two opposing but appealing arguments, or better start the campaign with them having to make big political decisions. Propose to your players a campaign about running a village, or a caravan of fleeting people. Make the cast around them diverse and represent different approaches to the current problem.
The real unspoken focus of the campaign should be on these characters’ relationship, there’s a reason buddy cops movies are so fun. If the characters are different enough, making them have to collaborate is gonna be a whole fulfilling arc. When there’s no conflict in the couple, throw at them external trouble until there is, and then pause things and let your players explore.
Combat should be at a minimum, but it could be a very tense 2v1 or 2v2 duel against villainous npcs. Never throw more than a couple of enemies at them and use minions (1hp monsters) if the situation forces you to go bigger. In Three we can enjoy the round because you have practically no wait time, but in Two the back and forward could be kinda boring, especially with standard move and attack monsters.
Make them care for others and grow on each other, you’ll forge a real friendship.
1 – The Hero’s Journey
One-on-one games are a completely different beast. If with two you were still a busy DM, now you’re a computer engine and your singular player is playing Mass Effect. You have to render everything yourself and offer them an entire world, this is daunting. An easy solution, at least to manage it, is to start the adventure in an enclosed dungeon, where the options are limited and you can go forward one room at a time.
Stealing from big video game rpgs we can understand what a single protagonist wants. They want to feel like the main character and they want to make choices. Have npcs around them praise them, have their action truly shine in wonderful and impactful ways. This is their story, not the one of your world or factions. Make it blood-bound to them. It’s not the barbarian against the orc invasion, it’s the revenge quest of Korr, whose village was destroyed. It’s not the Necromancer’s search for power, it’s Lamia’s Undead Empire Prequel.
Offer them plenty of choices, moral ones and simple ones, and shape the adventure session-to-session to suit their needs. If nine people can’t decide to traverse the mountains or the mines, a single person is not gonna hesitate. Be prepared to change scenery real quick and end your sessions right after such a choice so you can better reshape the world.
To get some roleplay out of it avoid the Many vs One scenario. It’s easy to talk to yourself for a long time, summarise these moments and get to the player’s interaction quickly. A quick fix to get the player talking is to give them a simple sidekick, a character that they move in combat but that you roleplay. Imagine the player choosing their party as they meet them, amazing. Avoid the call and don’t make too many DM-pcs tho. The purpose of such sidekicks should always be to ask questions on the current situation, that’s a way to make the character shine and summarise what’s happening. The solutions should always come from the protagonist.
If you get a grip on the character’s main inner conflict you got it: you have found the personal story they were seeking. Make them shine and get your player comfortable in reacting and shaping your world, while slowly changing themself.
So, Anyway
Thank you for reading and I hope you got a piece of advice to better fit the adventure around your group, there are as many exceptions to parties as there are to people and surely your preference matters. I won’t be surprised if this article made you realise that running a political intrigue campaign with 8 players is not really what you want as a DM, the same goes with running an hardcore tactical dungeon crawler with only one. The point of it all is to have fun and you’re a player too, run what maximizes that!
So here’s a bonus idea I had while typing: wouldn’t it be the coolest to run many One-on-one games, only to have your players realise they are in the same world, and have them group up when the quest becomes bigger than they could manage alone? I have to go make some calls…
