How large is your RPG group? Small? Large? Average? What are the ramifications of each size of group? Do you have too few players? Too many?

It all depends on what you’re looking for in your games and sessions. Back in early high school, the largest group I was part of had 15 players and 22 characters spread across those 15 players. Joe, our wonderful GM, ran it all with ease and style. He did have a co-GM sitting at the far end of the table to wrangle the players and help keep them focused. Joe made all final rules arbitrations, but if a rule was clearly written (kinda rare in those days of the late 1980s), then the co-GM could make a ruling for his end of the table. Joe handled all story elements and NPC interactions. Of course, this is an extreme example of a large group.

Then again, people think that my current group of 7 players (plus the GM) “too large,” but it works very well for us. We can continue playing even if 2 or 3 of the players have to miss for various reasons. We like being able to consistently get together on a weekly basis for our 6-9 hour sessions. Yeah. You read that right. Our “short” sessions are 6 hours long, and it’s not unusual for us to hit 9 hours of game time on Saturday. However, the length of sessions is a topic for another day.

Today, I’ll be talking about how group size changes up how the sessions are played and managed. While talking about “group size,” I’m working with the assumption of a single GM and the numbers presented below are the player count.

Size Definitions

I’ll be using the phrasing of “small,” “average,” and “large” to describe group sizes. For the purposes of this article, a small group has less than 4 players. A large group has 6 or more players. This leaves the middle ground of 4-5 players being average. These numbers area all based on what I’ve seen across 41 years of tabletop RPG experience.

Spotlight Time

Small groups allow for more spotlight time for each PC during a session. It can also cause the spotlight to change or cycle between PCs in a faster fashion than with larger groups. This high level of attention being quickly moved about leads to less boredom, downtime, or lack of involvement with each player. This is generally considered a good thing, which is why recommended group sizes have shrunk over the decades since those days of yore when a dozen players could be called typical.

Larger groups are on the other end of the spectrum. Even if the spotlight cycles quickly between players, there are more cycles to get through as a player waits their turn. This is not just during combat, but during all other facets of the game. This puts some more weight on the GM to be aware of when a player has not had the spotlight in quite a while.

Average-sized groups seem to be the sweet spot for spotlight time. The GM can spend a little more time with each PC to get things accomplished with that PC before shifting to another PC. Also, each player doesn’t have to wait overly long before their turn to get the attention comes along.

Threat Level

With smaller groups, the threat level has to be carefully considered and balanced by the GM. Even one monster too many in a combat can leave the entire party in danger. This is especially true if the monster has some method to neutralize a PC (or more than one!) with a single action. Things like hold person, paralysis, petrification, knock-out poisons and such like that can remove one-quarter (or more!) of the party’s potency in a fight. This can turn an “easy” fight into a “difficult” one or even up to a “deadly” one.

Larger groups don’t suffer from this as much since the still-standing characters can fill the gap of the fallen character, or come to the rescue to revive them and get them back into the fight. Taking out a large percentage of the party’s firepower in one fell swoop is much more difficult in larger groups. Of course, this means the GM will need to increase the power level or numbers of enemies found in a published adventure.

Trying to stick with the average party sizes works well for published adventures since this is the expectation in modern games and their published adventures. A good adventure will have advice throughout for scaling the adventure up/down based not only on character power levels, but the number of PCs involved in the adventure as well.

Energy Levels

Here, I’m talking about the player energy levels. Smaller groups can exhaust everyone (player and GM alike) more quickly since they don’t have as much mental downtime between actions or spotlight time. This can lead to shorter sessions, more breaks, or a need to just pause for a bit to let everyone catch their breath.

Larger groups usually don’t have this problem, except for the GM. Juggling 6, 7, or 8 players’ desires and actions and reactions and consequences and abilities can be mentally taxing for a GM. I personally can’t run Fate because I can’t remember (even with cheat sheets) the aspects for 3 PCs let alone more than that. I couldn’t imagine trying to run Fate with 6+ PCs at the table. I’d completely and totally melt. The GM energy levels might dictate shorter sessions like with small groups. This can lead to the players leaving the game session amped up and ready for more while the GM just needs a glass of wine and a hot bath to recover from juggling all that was in front of them.

Like with above, average-sized groups are perfect for maintaining the energy levels of everyone involved. There’s just a good balance there for downtime, activities, and allowing the GM mental space to track the PC vitals (just the vitals, not every little detail).

Plot Complexity

This area gets tricky. With fewer PCs, the GM can inject more complex plot elements into the story because there are fewer details to track and get involved with on the players’ side of the screen. With more PCs, the plot can naturally be complex and deeply interwoven as each player brings their character’s goals and motivations to the story. With larger groups, the GM might have to let the PC’s desires and goals direct the flow of the game. There is nothing wrong with a PC-driven plot.

With an average number of players, everyone (including the GM) can get involved in putting things into the plot elements of the story. While some will float up to be an “A plot” and others are relegated to “B plots” and “C plots,” everyone is involved in the story.

This is another article topic on juggling plot elements, but don’t let one PC’s goal become the “A plot” for too horribly long unless several other characters have their backstory or other aspects wrapped into the A plot as well. Let the A, B, and C plots shift and change position on the priority scale as makes sense and to allow different PCs to have “story spotlight.”

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different things that come out of having different groups of different sizes. There’s lots to handle and juggle here, but I hope this insight and information can help you be better prepared for what you present to your group (regardless of size), how you manage the group at the table, and how to be a better GM (and player!) within your cohort of gamers at the table.

NPCs in your RPGs come in all shapes, sizes, purposes, abilities, and reasons. It’s near impossible to enumerate all of the facets of an NPC or why they are in the storyline. Despite the Herculean task before me, I’ve done my best to outline what I think are the basic elements of NPCs in your games.

Purpose: Provide Information (Rumors/Clues)

NPCs can provide information to the PCs. This information can be true or false, somewhere in-between, or a little of both. It can be helpful, sidetracking, direct, or indirect. The NPC might actually know things that can help the party. On the other hand, the NPC might have heard from his cousin’s best friend’s ex-girlfriend’s former roommate that something is going down on Elm Street at night. These kinds of rumors need to be couched as such instead of having them being presented as full truths. The exception to this is if the NPC absolutely believes in the truth of what they are saying.

One the point of providing information that sidetracks the PCs, this might fall into the category of a “red herring” depending on how the information is delivered and if the PCs can detect if the NPC is trying to intentionally deflect the party from the main goal or mission. Tread carefully with information that will intentionally throw the party off the main trail, especially if it will take a long time to resolve the sidetracked nature of the information.

Purpose: Provide Support

NPCs can also be supportive to the party. This could be as simple as a shopkeeper staying open late to allow the PCs to reequip at the last second before delving back into the Forest of Tears as the sun goes down. The support can also be monetary or with aid from other NPCs. Factions go a long way into playing into a support structure for the PCs.

NPCs can also provide non-monetary support in the form of favors asked, owed, or due. This could be free henchmen/hirelings, cheap mercenaries, the loan of a powerful item, free/cheap healing potions, or a handy map that will lead them down the safest path through the Forest of Tears to reach the Necromancer’s Citadel in the heart of the forest.

Purpose: Provide Inspiration

Rah! Rah! Rah! You can do it!

No. Not that kind of inspiration… kinda.

What I’m talking about here is to give the PCs motivation to go forth and be the Big Darn Heroes of the story. This can be a quest giver, a mission handler, a faction leader, or someone else that will put the party on the path to greatness. These don’t always have to be people in positions of power. The lonely orphan on the street begging for loose change so he can pay for a cure disease spell to help out his headmaster can inspire the party to delve into the orphanage to cure the headmaster, and/or find out what dire events are plaguing the orphanage.

Purpose: Provide Opposition

NPCs can also oppose the efforts of the party. This is usually in the form of minions, lieutenants, bosses, the BBEG, monsters in the way, and other things that can result in combat. This doesn’t always have to be the case, though. It could be that the old lady in the back of the tavern is the bandit captain’s mother. She might not be proud of her son, but she doesn’t want to see him dead at the tip of a PC’s sword, either. She might misdirect the party or sabotage their equipment while they drink it up or sleep it off.

Purpose: Fill in the World

Lastly, there are more non-important people in the world than important people. At least, this is true of storytelling efforts. Each person is the hero of their own story, but you’re only telling the story of the players’ heroes. If an NPC doesn’t fulfill an important role, they fill the world with their presence. This will make your world, setting, tavern scene, or street movements feel authentic by having people present. They don’t need to be named or detailed or even given descriptions, but they still need to be mentioned as being there. A street devoid of people is an oddity that the PCs might get interested in… even if you don’t want them to.

Features: Notable Appearance Details

Give each important NPC two or three appearance details. Clothing, facial hair, hair style, jewelry, level of cleanliness, smells, and so on are important to keep your NPCs memorable in the minds of the players and important to the attention of the characters. This is one reason the “affectation” chart in Cyberpunk 2020 is so incredibly potent. I just wish the list were longer, so there would be fewer repeats. The solo with the cybershades and three interface ports on his forehead is more memorable than the rockerboy with a chromed guitar. Though (and this is from one of my CP2020 games from ages ago), a rockerboy in full chromed-out, hardened body armor is certainly memorable, especially while on stage under all those lights.

Features: Personality Quirks

Give your NPCs a quirk. Maybe they don’t make eye contact, or they make intense eye contact at all times. Maybe they don’t blink much at all. Always smiling is another good trait. Then again, so is never smiling. Popping knuckles is a good one. Maybe the NPC has a phobia or hates the taste of ale or has zero-g sickness. Pick an appropriate quirk for your setting and apply it to your NPC.

I recommend only one quirk per NPC, and I only recommend spending your time coming up with that quirk if the named NPC is going to directly interact with the party or intersect with the story arc in some manner.

Features: Accents/Speech Patterns

I can’t do accents. Period. Full stop. I don’t even try. If you can pull off accents, go for it! Yay! Though, not everyone is going to have that “odd” accent, so don’t overdo it. You might find yourself using the wrong accent for the wrong NPC or driving the players batty trying to remember which NPC had which accent.

I fall back to using speech patterns. Rapid-fire speech. Run-on sentences are good (especially if from the mouths of young children). Fragments getting used all the time. Delayed or hesitant speech. A long, thoughtful pause before answering a question or delving into a conversation. Using lots of contractions… or none at all. Another good one to use is someone saying, “umm” or “errr” or “hrmm” before each paragraph like they’re trying to piece together what they want to say. Applying a stutter to an NPC’s speech pattern will call them out as being memorable as well.

As an example, I had a great uncle who would start every affirmative statement with, “Yep, yep, yep.” He would also start every negative statement with, “Nope, nope, nope.” This happened without fault, and I found it quite endearing. My grandfather, however, found it annoying. Regardless of how we perceived my uncle’s speech trait, it was memorable.

Features: Goals

Everyone has goals. Period. Full stop.

It could be to turn a coin or make a buck by the end of the day to pay for rent. That’s minor, applies to almost everyone, and is important, but it’s also a goal. The goal could be to conquer the neighboring nation, or as personal as finding their lost cat.

Each NPC that impacts the story (meaning just a handful of them) or has an important encounter with the PCs needs to have at least one goal in mind for their interactions. The more important NPCs could have as many as three goals. Yep. Three of them.

I learned from the great author, Kevin Ikenberry, that important characters in a story should have a professional, personal, and private goal. Each of those are subtly different and may have some overlap in them. The professional goal is how the NPC is going advance their position in their job, society, faction, or similar arenas. The personal goal is what the NPC holds dear in their heart to cross off their bucket list before the last day comes for them. The private goal is one they attempt to accomplish, but will never tell another soul about.

Features: Motivations

Each goal must have a motivation attached to it. Just trying to accomplish something is hollow. It doesn’t ring true. There are motivations behind every goal, so when you attach a goal to an NPC, you need to attach a motivation to that goal. Just ruling the world for the sake of ruling the world creates a “mustache-twirling evil person,” and you want something deeper than that to drive your plot, your story, and your PCs into action.

Features: Secrets

Most people have secrets. Not all of them will impact your party or the story you’re telling. If that’s the case, don’t worry about generating a secret for the NPC. However, if the NPC secretly supports the bandit captain (see the mother example above), then that’s probably going to be kept secret by the NPC.

If the secret never comes out in front of the PCs, that’s okay. It doesn’t need to. However, if it doesn’t, then it must drive the NPC’s actions, reactions, goals, and motivations. This indirect influence on the NPC will make the NPC feel more authentic and three-dimensional.

Conclusion

What did I miss? Are there any other facets of NPCs that you feel are important? Let us know!