Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Rockopolis on <02-24-11/2221:47>
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What do you find to be a good number of players? Both in meatspace and (more pressingly for me) online? I'm currently thinking half a dozen, tops; am I overambitious, too shy?
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In meatspace I hate going more than 5, 6 if they can stay focused. More and too much side talk goes on distracting those involved with the GM.
Just getting into PbP so no input in that theater.
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4-5 is good. Our group gets the most done when only 2 or 3 players make it to the session.
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A Tacnet R4 takes 6 people. Just Sayin'. Our group has fluctuated between 4 and 7 and I just started a game with 3. Really, the beauty of Shadowrun is it can be played with any size group, as there are always missions to go on that can fit small groups. My preference is for 5 PCs tho, and a TacNet R3 purchased with the proceeds of the first run.
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We're running with six, including 1 skyping in from interstate (that would be me).
It's a mixed group, including runners with 1st Ed history and a couple of complete newbs (Note: Not me :P) and it's a bit messy.
I normally favour smaller groups and just outsourcing the non-specialty components. If you're missing a mage, hire one through a fixer to run overwatch (as a repeated NPC). Same for a Hacker/Rigger
My favourite sessions have been with 3-4 PC's with a focus on meatspace activity. The games have just run much smoother when we're not overlapping domains (Real World, VR, Astral) and the crossover of rules there-in.
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My group is between 6 and 10. It helps that we have established relationships outside of gaming so we can take social ques in-game right off the bat. For instance, the game includes one woman, her husband, her son and her granddaughter. With that dynamic already established, getting a bead on how to keep my players engaged and how they can keep me focused is determined before we sit down to the table.
It also helps that I am a madman about preparation. Shadowrun is a sandbox game is ever there was one, especially with creative players and so many avenues of man, magic and machine to travel down. Knowing your players and establishing a baseline of what will go down when given the many options available is a must for that many people.
A double-edged sword is that most of my players don't know and aren't too keen to learn the rules. Not just "Does threading take an action?" rules, but "What do I roll to shoot things?" rules. While this can be a thorn in my side on multiple occasions, it does help by establishing what kind of game we want to play. We never waste our time debating whether or not hardliner gloves add to unarmed adept powers or whether they can make unhackable commlinks, because these things aren't entirely academic to my players. This means I get to spend more time describing the world and the people who live in it and less time describing the specifics of range penalties.
Now, I don't recommend playing with people who don't want to read more than a few paragraphs of the book, but it is helpful to decide things like Explosions in Space and Mario v. Improv before the game begins.
Mostly I like running for such a large group because it is diverse. We have people from age 16 to 60+, three Census ethnicity form boxes and mostly girls. Not my normal gaming experience. This leads to a diverse exchange of different experiences, ideas and thought processes that reflect the kind of diversity that would come from a group of ork mercs, human mages and elven technomancers.
I might not play something like Paranoia or CoC with that many folks, but for Shadowrun I say the more the merrier.
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My gaming group went from around 10 people about 5 years ago to 3 to 5 now, and as much fun as we had with those big games 3 to 5 is much easier to handle
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For Shadowrun, 4-6 is ideal for me as a GM (and to a large degree as a player). It's a small enough group to be manageable, but large enough to get some good interpersonal activity. In Online games (chatroom play) I find that anything above 4 PCs starts to lag the game, and over 6 is extremely slow going.
The largest group I've ever had was in another game system where we had 15 PCs, 2 Assistant GMs plus the GM. That was a heck of a game, but it was rough to manage.
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I've found out - the hard way - that four people are the optimal team. I know DnD established that, but i never follow any roleplaying dogmas i don't check out myself. GM'ing for more is a lot more stressing and needs more effort, but the main problem is time.
As a rule of thumb, a game that leaves all people at the table satisfied, and lets the GM complete both the story, and the player's personal stuff, along with the occasional combat takes as many hours as there are players, plus half an hour of character spotlight for each of them... That's six hours. And for Five people it would be 7,5 hours, and so on...
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As a GM, 5 players is my maximum, and 3 players is my minimum. 5 is the limit of what I can handle but it means that I probably don't need to provide NPCs for outsourced roles. 3 is the absolute floor - below that it starts to feel a bit weird, you know? ;-)
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When I was running my weekly game it had 7-8 players, but usually I had 5 or 6 show up any particular week. This gave good interplay and rarely did the team have to outsource for skills. It allowed for interaction between characters and NPCs with each player getting some "shine" time almost every week. I typically like a bigger group because it gives me as a GM more flexibility about what I can through at them.
When I GM the missions at Gencon last year I had one group Sunday morning that I went up to 10 players for since it was the last chance for anyone to play. It was a nightmare to keep everything in line, and I was constantly battling side conversations. I had two very experienced players who help out (one kept track of damage to NPCs for me the other ran the initiative order.) and this helped in combat (actually the combat was the smoothest running part because everyone didn't want to miss anything.) I wouldn't want to do it on a regular basis unless I had a really established group. I have run 8 players several times at Gencon and found that not bad to manage personally.
In PbP it really depends on the players you get no matter what size the group. I started a game here last fall and all of the players weren't dedicated to the game and just stopped posting so everything lagged and eventually died. The more players the more chance of a lag and implosion, but more players also give more opportunity to do cool things.
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Here's a good mix:
- A cybered street-sam (melee, big guns, take a beating and dish it out)
- A sniper adept (stealth, long-range, scouting)
- A B&E hacker (Matrix security, infiltration)
- A rigger (wheelman, drones, ECM)
- A generalist mage (astral security, magical toolkit)
- A face (negotiation, info-gathering)
So, with a team of six, you can cover nearly every role mentioned in the Runners Companion. Some aspects won't get as much specialization as others, but the gaps will be pretty small. This also has the advantage of including every aspect of character-improvement (augmentation, gear, adept powers, spells/spirits, software).
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I played SR with 15 people a few times and I was glad that I had such gaming-centric group, but I'll agree that it goes a lot smoother with 5-7 peoples.
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I just want one GM so I can play. :'(
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5 seems to be an optimal number based on my experience. It allows a couple of hitters, a hacker, a mage and something else(typically a face type.) It is also an odd number for party decision making, which is infinitely better then an even one.
I have run tables with as many as 12 players(seldom more then 8 at a time, until an end of storyline combat. OMG that was brutal) and also with only one, and honestly 5 seems to work best. Good PC interaction, no need for support NPCs, good range of skills etc.
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Mastermind, Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief.
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Five is a really comfortable number, but I often run groups of six people. I've run solo games as well (my in/famous martial arts game played with Ninjas and Superspies/Mystic China), and also games of a dozen people or so. Six is my comfort limit, as my attention tends to get spread too thinly.
However, I have found that if you approach a large group of players (6+) and let them know beforehand that you will focus on different players for different games, and that they will all get a turn in the spotlight, then the game goes a lot smoother. An odd case in point, the martial arts game that started with one player, ran solo for several games. When we started adding people in, I let them know that this was the original solo player's story, and it will focus on him for the most part. Everyone got some spotlight, but it was centered around the shaolin monk and his eventual ascension to enlightened immortality.
Used the questionable Palladium rules system, but the game remains one of my favorites to this day.
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I like 6-8 it usually gives a good spread of archetypes and won't bring the game to a halt if 1 or 2 players don't show up.
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Four, on my games. A razor/gilette, a caster, a secondary razor/gilette (or maybe an adept) and a face-or-hacker-or-rigger. Always seems to work fine.
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Mastermind, Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief.
Somebody watches Leverage. :)
I'm currently running a 2 man game of semi-newbs, 1 punchy adept and a technomancer, they were my first shadowrun game experience and I theirs. (Yes, I jumped straight into gamemastering, I'd like to try SR as a player but I'm picky about my GMs)
I'm about to combine that campaign with another I'm running with 3 folks. 1 newb and 2 SR3 novices. I just need to do a very technomancer-centric run to teach the techno what he's capable of and then tie things together on the storyline side of things and we'll be set.
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I usualy GM 6-8 group of people. We had a times when there was 9 players actualy at the table and another 2 via Skype..that was a hell but we had done well. Funniest thing was when I used projector and have those online players videostreamed at the top of tactical map and pictures I used for the atmosphere.
Whenever it happens again, I would split them to more teams. And talk mainly with leaders/representatives they chose.
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When you are gaming online, it is easier to focus on one player without neglecting the others. But the biggest downside to online gaming is that, unless the group is separated doing their individual things, you are stuck at the speed of the slowest poster. This can be frustrating if you are trying to get through a combat and one guy is only posting once a week, especially if everyone else is capable of doing daily posts. The other thing is that you are likelier to have 2 or 3 players simply drop out altogether at some point.
So for online games, I would recommend starting out with a larger pool of players, and expect to lose a few of them early in the game (or sometimes even before the game starts). Have a reserve player list, maybe, and have some strict posting guidelines - let people know that you will NPC their character if they are holding up a scene, or kill off their character if they don't post within decent intervals. Because that's the biggest game-killer that I have seen online, and it is tragic because usually there will be a few players who would have kept going if one or two players hadn't bogged down the game.
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I'm planning a new campaign with three people. The exception I am making though is that they will be able to create two characters so I'll have a total of six PCs.
There are rules for the characters too:
They have to be different personas.
No relations between the characters (Family, friend or other).
Cannot pool resources during creation.
I'm doing a high power campaign and I want to offer some flexibility with character creation with the low amount of people I have. I believe this will give them great opportunities to try things they otherwise wouldn't with only one character.
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Six is perfect for my GM'ing plus couch space and player preference. Since we only game twice a month and are schedule masters, most every game I have six.
I blog some insights if anyone cares to look.
http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/blog.php/2735-Blond-Gamer-Girl
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3-5 is ideal, potentially you can do 2 in 4e though starting characters should be 750BP rather than 400BP to make up for their lack of numbers.
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In my experience, 4 - 5 + GM is usually best. Less can be a kind of lacking group, while more tends to be hard to control. We once (in a different game) had a 13 player group, which was terrible, it'd be like an hour between people's turns.
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I prefer from three to six players when I'm GMing.
On the low end, with three players it's much easier to keep them focused and let them each have their moment in the spotlight. The bad news is you're going to have to use NPCs to assist the players more, unless they're higher level or the run is simpler. (A three-man team of a street samurai, hacker/technomancer, and mage can do pretty much everything if they have the skills.)
On the high end, with six players you're pretty much guaranteed to have a player for any given scenario and, as a result, the players are usually much more comfortable in specializing. Faces, riggers, CQC specialists, and even hackers are much more common when you have larger groups. The bad news is that it's a pain to get everyone to focus, for the team to agree on courses of action, and for the GM to keep track of everyone. It's also harder to give everyone their moment of glory, and the games take longer.
(Four or five players is, obviously, the happy middle ground.)
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In an ideal world 4 to 5 players is perfect. In my current game I am at 3 players its working well, although they are magic heavy and a bit NPC dependent at times. I have done a couple of 2 person runs with part of the group that went well.
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Three person runs work alright, but four is the best number for rpgs. It just works.
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I find that it really depends on your group of players some 3 PC groups were calamitous and would only last 3 sessions before I wanted to Kill all the Players (not the characters) ware as I ran a 16 player game for 2 years without a hitch and everyone had a blast later they had to split in to 2 groups of 6 and one of 4 and that is what I run now sadly we lost out on some of the day in the life of sessions it is still great to get them all together from time to time hand the 3 teams the same Run but with different objectives, this is where having a tablet with an auto roll program helps, I hand all of them the mission objectives on 3 different flash drives and let them at it.
It dose require a bit of maturity to handle PVP shadowrun and not metagame but thus far everyone is understanding and no ones feelings have gotten trashed
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I find that it really depends on your group of players some 3 PC groups were calamitous and would only last 3 sessions before I wanted to Kill all the Players (not the characters) ware as I ran a 16 player game for 2 years without a hitch and everyone had a blast later they had to split in to 2 groups of 6 and one of 4 and that is what I run now sadly we lost out on some of the day in the life of sessions it is still great to get them all together from time to time hand the 3 teams the same Run but with different objectives, this is where having a tablet with an auto roll program helps, I hand all of them the mission objectives on 3 different flash drives and let them at it.
It dose require a bit of maturity to handle PVP shadowrun and not metagame but thus far everyone is understanding and no ones feelings have gotten trashed
Wow, a group of 16 players is hard to pull off. We had about that many in one game that lasted a few months, but most of the players did not pay attention unless it was time to kill things. After Missing Blood, we took the name The Orkan Army.
I am looking at starting up a new game and I am not sure if the 4 players will be enough and am wondering if I should add two more. Right now we have 2 mages, a technomancer, and a street sam.
-ARCimedes
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Two mages, a technomancer, and a street samurai should be able to handle most anything. They could use a rigger and a face, but those are really secondary roles anyway.
It also sounds like the name of a sitcom. "Tonight on NBS: Two Mages, a Technomancer, and a Street Samurai. While on a run in Neo-Tokyo, the gang have to go undercover as anime characters! Hilarity ensues. Brought to you by the all-new 2073 Ares Humvee Civic: Now You're Driving With Power!™"
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Wow, a group of 16 players is hard to pull off. We had about that many in one game that lasted a few months, but most of the players did not pay attention unless it was time to kill things. After Missing Blood, we took the name The Orkan Army.
I am looking at starting up a new game and I am not sure if the 4 players will be enough and am wondering if I should add two more. Right now we have 2 mages, a technomancer, and a street sam.
-ARCimedes
The hardest part of it was finding a Place to meet the easiest part was snacks... we had enough people to get catering from the local KFC/Taco Bell it was epic and it will be missed
you would be amazed what you can do with a business license and a regular meeting place and time.
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Two mages, a technomancer, and a street samurai should be able to handle most anything. They could use a rigger and a face, but those are really secondary roles anyway.
It also sounds like the name of a sitcom. "Tonight on NBS: Two Mages, a Technomancer, and a Street Samurai. While on a run in Neo-Tokyo, the gang have to go undercover as anime characters! Hilarity ensues. Brought to you by the all-new 2073 Ares Humvee Civic: Now You're Driving With Power!™"
I am sure that is a reality show in L.A. The Technomancer's P2.0 rating is highly respectable, though some people claim it was tampered with.
-ARCimedes
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Never find the groups make up to be very relevent. You can randomly pick any group combination and it will work if the PCs work it. 6 faces can make a great group of grifters, etc. Screen time and screen time rotation is a big deal for my groups. Most of my players really milk incredible play out of the characters but don't like to be out of spotlight for more than a couple of sessions. Even the most team oriented, back up, and bit player on the crew wants to get his part high lighted for about half a session once a month. 3 To 7 characters max is what we typically game with but we play outside of that when friends are back in town.
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Wow, a group of 16 players is hard to pull off. We had about that many in one game that lasted a few months, but most of the players did not pay attention unless it was time to kill things. After Missing Blood, we took the name The Orkan Army.
I am looking at starting up a new game and I am not sure if the 4 players will be enough and am wondering if I should add two more. Right now we have 2 mages, a technomancer, and a street sam.
-ARCimedes
The hardest part of it was finding a Place to meet the easiest part was snacks... we had enough people to get catering from the local KFC/Taco Bell it was epic and it will be missed
you would be amazed what you can do with a business license and a regular meeting place and time.
We always got pizza. There was a Gumby's or something and you could get a small for like $3. So we ordered 16 small pizzas every weekend.
-ARCimedes
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Just remember the golden rule the more people you have the less likely that everyone is listening so handouts maps and miniatures become extremely import past 8 players
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Just remember the golden rule the more people you have the less likely that everyone is listening so handouts maps and miniatures become extremely import past 8 players
Or let the players that are not listening suffer the consequences.... <Mwahahaha>
-ARCimedes
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Just remember the golden rule the more people you have the less likely that everyone is listening so handouts maps and miniatures become extremely import past 8 players
Or let the players that are not listening suffer the consequences.... <Mwahahaha>
-ARCimedes
Word.
I once had a L5R GM who didn't like to leave any friends out of a game and, believe me, he was thorough; turns would take 30+ min, so in a table with 12+ players each of us would have one or two turns (individually) and the game'd last ten hours or so.
And no one's attention deviated. But then, it was because he was a good GM, not a punisher one.
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Wow, a group of 16 players is hard to pull off. We had about that many in one game that lasted a few months, but most of the players did not pay attention unless it was time to kill things. After Missing Blood, we took the name The Orkan Army.
I am looking at starting up a new game and I am not sure if the 4 players will be enough and am wondering if I should add two more. Right now we have 2 mages, a technomancer, and a street sam.
-ARCimedes
The hardest part of it was finding a Place to meet the easiest part was snacks... we had enough people to get catering from the local KFC/Taco Bell it was epic and it will be missed
you would be amazed what you can do with a business license and a regular meeting place and time.
We always got pizza. There was a Gumby's or something and you could get a small for like $3. So we ordered 16 small pizzas every weekend.
-ARCimedes
For the first meeting, you can get a restaurant with a semi private dining area. Once you're done with recruiting and you have at least one session behind you to make sure that you all get along, you can decide on a more perm location. Someone might have room at their house.
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If everyone wasn't bringing there own food on planning on going to get some on a break we would take turns either making or getting food. Back when McDonalds had their 0.20-0.25$ hamburgers and cheeseburgers we use to make a pointed break to head over there and raid the place. I think they put a cap on how many an individual can buy in one visit because of us (20 then 10 then 5), though we'd just exit the building and come back in.
Food is a weird topic... I went to an invite only session on this "big time" group and they were friendly people until food came up. Then it became like territorial dogs fighting over a bunch of scraps. That topic became such a point of contention that I quit playing with them. I heard recently that with how much fighting happens over food that it cost a married couple their relationship, though it's purely hearsay at this point but it's a juicy rumor.
We never seemed to have a problem finding a large enough place to play, though I will admit to playing in a barn several times. One of my favorite rustic places to play involved a bit of a hike but there was a "pool," a fire pit, and no electricity. Some of those long (weekend) teenaged games were spent there. Nothing like splitting wood to have light to play by...
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I need noodles to run properly... :)
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4513/kinogif.0/0_78c0e_34d14b2b_M
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Food fights....hmmm
Actually, I cook a main dish for the group and everyone else brings snacks, drinks and dessert. It helps me to write my recipes for recipe exchanges: southern chicken & dumplings, white lasagna, peanut noodles, fresh rosemary potatoes, slow cooker mac & cheese and a bunch more that are cheaper than ordering a pizza and much more delicious. Besides I like to cook but rarely get the chance to.
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Frag you ;) i need to see my fridge. BRB ;)
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You're more than welcome to come over any time you feel like cooking! One of my more dyslexic friend volunteered to cook for around 12 of us. So he brought a bunch of boxes of mac n cheese, but needed the rest of the components. We were happy to comply since he was gonna cook. We provided the jumbo sized pot and told him to fish through the fridge for butter and milk. He came out about 30 minutes later asking whether it looked right or if he had just been hovering over the pot so long that things didn't look right. We went in and everyone started laughing. The pot was filled with what looked like macaroni and wax. We had sticks of Crisco and they look like sticks of butter except they say 'Crisco' on them. Up until that day, he had a tendency to grab whatever looked like closest to what he needed. The funny part was that he ate four boxes of mac n crisco instead of tossing it out and starting over.
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Thank you and ugghhhhh! Messing up mac and cheese. :-[ Tell your friend. While the mac is boiling, prep the sauce. Equal parts whole milk with a shredded cheese blend that includes cheddar plus 1/4 c. fresh Asiago cheese for every cup of milk melted on low heat. That should make up for the fu-bar. :D
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It happened around 15 years ago. He made up for it by BBQ'ing half a cow, literally, on his homemade trailer-towable grill, which more than made up for it (he knows his way around the grill). We were in cattle country to quickly explains the cow...
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Be it online or face to face...4 to 5 players is a group that I can handle as a GM. More than that and things start dragging.