My post over the weekend generated a lot of comments and discussions, for which I'm grateful. I'm always very interested in learning more about readers' experiences gaming over the years. One topic that came up several times was the size of one's gaming group and how that influenced whether or not one player, one character was employed. Quite a few commenters noted that, when they first started roleplaying, they didn't have a large gaming group and so it was often necessary for players to take on the role of more than one character.
That makes sense to me, but I hadn't really considered it, since my earliest gaming group was relatively large – seven of us, including myself. We were occasionally joined by others, so our numbers would occasionally creep up closer to ten. In the circles in which I traveled, groups this large weren't uncommon, though I wouldn't go so far as to say they were the norm. In my experience, four to six players (including the referee) was more typical. Even so, I can't recall ever coming across anyone whose group consisted of only two or three people. That's completely outside my own experience.
With that in mind, I thought I'd create a little poll to gather some data about this question. Please take a moment to answer the question below, bearing in mind that it's about your earliest gaming group, which is to say, the one with whom you first played after entering the hobby. At the moment, I'm not interested in data about your current gaming group, so please keep this in mind when answering. Feel free to include any additional details you think relevant in the comments to this post.
Note: I opted to use another method of polling. Let's see if this one works better. Apologies if you voted in the previous version. You'll need to vote again.
7, late 80s AD&D
ReplyDeleteWell, it works, and I'm the first vote. I really had a small group to start with-- one person (besides me).
ReplyDeleteWorked for me...
ReplyDeleteI started with around six, but 4-5 has been the norm. However, there was a time when it was just three, and for the past several years it has been four of us including myself. For many of these games players have either had teo characters, or at least a henchman or two.
ReplyDeleteIt was back in 1979/80 in the UK when I first bought the Basic set, after reading a copy of White Dwarf magazine and being fascinated by the premise... someone made a game just for me! Unfortunately I had nobody else to learn from so it was all from the book (a bit confusing but things make more sense after playing a bit) and press ganging my younger brothers into playing, fortunately they enjoyed it. So 1 GM and 2 players for our initial group, we played a few games of Basic and then a sort of Basic/AD&D 1e melange plus I bought the Traveller LBBs and sort of ran a session of that too and now I think of it, also the CoC 2e boxed set and we did The Haunting. I would change two countries before I would resume again with AD&D 2e in the 90s and those answers will be for your what we are playing now poll. :)
ReplyDeleteSeems I'm the first to answer the poll. I started with myself and my two best friends. After a couple of years, my little brother would also join us. Living in the country, it was rare that all four of us would play together. Often it was just two of us. So whoever was the player would run several PCs, and the DM's characters would tag along to "help". It wasn't unusual for each player to have three or four PCs on the adventure.
ReplyDelete5 people in my 1st group ('77). We all had one character as I recall. Unlike typical groups however we all ran a game of our own and played in everyone else's game. Pretty much every weekend for a year (or more often during summer 78) would be a different DM and their game. we didn't run sandbox, megadungeons or hexcrawls but focused on episodic play with a "story" or "mission" focus. I.e. it was like a weekly TV show or the short stories by Lieber and Howard.
ReplyDeleteSo we would have a different character for each DMs game.
As teens we had four total, 3 + DM. It helped that one guy always wanted to play a thief and another a cleric, so the third character was variable. Over the years I've learned that adding a dog, easy to do, adds a lot of firepower to small low-level parties.
ReplyDeleteWhen I moved to smaller groups with home town friends we found the same thing. People were always buying war dogs and even livestock (as bait/distractions/bribes/trapspringers) to drag along to the dungeon. I suspect if geese had the reputation they do nowadays we'd have tried them out as well. :)
DeleteVoted "1-3" as it was just my cousin and I initially. After that, we added one friend. It was only years later that I was in a larger group.
ReplyDeleteErrmm.. I _might_ be the first to vote, if so, all is good with the world. If not, I only see the result from 1 voter (me), which might not be how it's supposed to work.
ReplyDeleteAegrod
When I first started playing (which was D&D 5e), our group consisted of 3 people: 2 players, and one DM. I never played any TTRPG before, the other player played some D&D 5e in an another group, and the DM never played or DM'ed any TTRPG before at all either. Another player joined the group within just a few months after we started, bringing the total to 4.
ReplyDeleteMy first regular 1st ed. AD&D group throughout 88'/'89 was comprised of three adults (including the DM), and a ragtag group of six teens ranging from 13 - 18 yrs old, being 8th graders to Seniors in high school. Early Saturday mornings at the Community Center!
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Mine was from about ten years earlier, even larger but skewed younger since it was the open "kids' table" at the semi-local community center. Ran on Saturday nights, and sometimes Friday and Sunday as well, often quite late - like "bars closing" late. My mother worked a late shift back then and would provide a ride home around 2AM if I couldn't get another lift. Used to stop at an all-night diner on the way back, something that kickstarted a love of diners that's never left me.
DeleteMr, Gee, that's fantastic. The Community Center seems like a great place for kids who wouldn't have otherwise played. Also, there's a randomness of personalities injected into the game as opposed to a more curated group. I can imagine it feeling a little bit like leaving a rock concert that late at night, heading to the diner, streetlights drifting by through the car windows, your head swimming with the session's battles, roleplay, and other shenanigans...
DeleteOur Community Center was on a navy base 45 minutes away. Games started at 9am Saturday morning and could last 8 hrs. If I couldn't get a ride that early from my parents or my neighbors, the McLaughlin's, I'd feel crushed!
@Ben Rose Yeah, I had about a 45 minute drive to the (urban) CC from my (rural) home town as well, although this one was in a shopping plaza rather than a military base. My gaming groups became a lot more "normal" in size (4-8 people) after we started gaming back home in high school, but my experiences at that community center sure did open my eyes to other playstyles and systems so I was never just stuck on D&D (or whatever) like some folks seem to have been. Helped make me more of an extrovert as well - at least when it comes to gaming - which was probably why the parents were willing to support it. My sister and I were the only kids for miles until well after I left for college, so we were growing up without peers and I know there was unstated (at the time) concern about that "warping our development" and similar child-psych BS.
DeleteJim Hodges---
ReplyDeleteAbout four players (controlling one character each) plus the DM was our average group size, once we had eight guys playing, a few times six, but mostly four players. I remember winter '83-'84 spending a couple weeks making it through TSR's The Lost City (pyramid) module with me as DM and my friend as sole player and the remaining party was NPCs. It wasn't our first choice to play one on one that way but circumstances set this up and it ended up being one of the more fun campaigns of the era, which showed me that particular style could actually work, and when you had the right energy going between DM, player, and setting, it could be fun.
As a kid when I started playing there wasn't a dedicated gaming group, we played with whomever was around. If we were at Scout camp it might be 10 people, if it was a Tuesday night just my brother and I.
ReplyDeleteMy first games were at a community center where there was an open "kids' table" (or sometimes two) for younger players. It regularly had a dozen or more players with ages ranging from 9 to 16-ish. Proving yourself mature enough to merit an invite to play at one of the "grown up" tables (which were only slightly less open, with constantly shifting participants) was something of a rite of passage for many of us. Even those tables regularly saw 8+ players.
ReplyDeleteI can't say that any of that was typical, and my broader experience involved a lot of the more common 3-6 player groups. But it was how I started out, mixed in with a few 2-player test runs with a few of my school friends that were no more D&D as written than a game of cowboys & Martians.
The groups I played with in middle & high school were in the 4-6 range and played with one PC per player, unless someone was covering for an absent player and their character sheet was available. That was my vote, but I also had nearly as much experience playing with just my brother and I. I remember he would roll up 3 or so characters and then GM, while I played my PC and ran his 3 as well.
ReplyDeleteThree for me, although it very quickly -- perhaps even as soon as the second session -- became four, and later more. It never got bigger than six though.
ReplyDelete8-9 players in the beginning, playing D&D or a big powerful superhero team like the Avengers.
ReplyDeleteOver time, our group got smaller but it worked for the genres we were playing by then; spy, 1930s pulp heroes, sci-fi, horror, street-level superheroes, post-apocalyptic, etc.
In either case, we were always one player, one character.
5 DM included
ReplyDeleteIn my case, I was the only player, apart from the DM.
ReplyDeleteMy very first group had five people in it, but that lasted only two sessions (there are some stories there that perhaps I should share someday. After that, it was just me and my brother for a while, until I roped in the girl next door.
ReplyDeleteI put down 4-6, but it depends on your definition of role playing game. If you count murder mysteries (like how to host a murder) 20+
ReplyDeleteI started playing in the UK, in the late 70s. The game was introduced to me by an American friend, so my first "group" consisted of just the two of us.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested to see the size of people's "regular" (as opposed to "first") gaming groups, with finer granularity.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I would also like to see the size of people's "regular" (as opposed to "first") gaming group (but not necessarily with finer granularity). And would also like to see other polls, like for example (but not limited to): how often does your 'main' group play ? (every week, every other week, once per month, less than that), how long a typical session lasts (1, hour, 2 hours, 3, 4, more), etc.
DeleteMe (14 years old) as the GM, my brother (9 years old), a cousin of mine (8 years old) and my twin sisters (5 years old). Playing the old MERP ruleset and, later, RuneQuest.
ReplyDelete5 players, RQ, 1978
ReplyDelete