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Message no. 1
From: Heimhilcher Christof <96PSI020@******.FHWN.AC.AT>
Subject: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 15:34:21 +0200
I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What =
expirience do
you have
Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?
Message no. 2
From: Lehlan Decker <DeckerL@******.COM>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:08:03 -0400
>I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What >expirience =
do you have
>Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

Bryan C, runs the current group, and there are what...roughly
five or six of us who seem to make it each time. 1 Character
apiece. In the past I've Gmed groups of up to 10, and as
small as two. With large groups, I've never allowed more then
1 PC, it gets very confusing otherwise. With small groups
I've allowed up to 2 or 3 per person, just to up the odds of
survivability. The problem I've had, is unless the person is
an excellent roleplayer, the the roleplaying potential while
controlling 2 or 3 characters goes down hill quickly, which
takes some of the fun out of the game.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
---------
Lehlan Decker, Unix Admin (704)331-1149 =

deckerl@mvalaw.com Fax 378-1939
Moore & Van Allen, PLLC Pager 1-888-608-9633
Message no. 3
From: David Buehrer <dbuehrer@******.CARL.ORG>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 08:19:20 -0600
While doing the Fandango, Lehlan Decker wrote:
/
/ >I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience
/ do you have
/ >and what do you think of playing more than one character?
/
/ Bryan C, runs the current group, and there are what...roughly
/ five or six of us who seem to make it each time. 1 Character
/ apiece. In the past I've Gmed groups of up to 10, and as
/ small as two.

I've GMed from 1 to 10 people over the years. My favorite range is 4
to 6 players. My maximum is 8 (my prefered maximum is 7).

/ With large groups, I've never allowed more then
/ 1 PC, it gets very confusing otherwise. With small groups
/ I've allowed up to 2 or 3 per person, just to up the odds of
/ survivability.

Ditto that. When it get's down to 4 players, I'll allow up to two
characters per person. And it's always an *option*. I don't force
fairly inexperienced roleplayers to play more than one character.

/ The problem I've had, is unless the person is
/ an excellent roleplayer, the the roleplaying potential while
/ controlling 2 or 3 characters goes down hill quickly, which
/ takes some of the fun out of the game.

Ditto that too. Even with my 16 years of experience roleplaying two
characters at once well takes a lot of work and can be mentally
exausting.

It also depends on the style of the campaign.

If the focus of the game is on action and combat than playing two
characters isn't that hard. And if the GM advises a second character
for survivability, then you usually aren't expected to put a lot of
effort into roleplaying that second character (i.e., you basically have
control of an NPC).

If the focus is on roleplaying than I would think twice about expecting
a fairly new player to roleplay two or more characters. On the other
hand, it can be a good experience :)

-David
--
"Earn what you have been given."
--
email: dbuehrer@******.carl.org
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/1068/homepage.htm
Message no. 4
From: 00DNA <mcmanus@******.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:22:16 -0400
>I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience do
>you have
>Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

I've always had problems getting people together and I'm rather picky about
my players so I've always played with small groups of players. As a small
child playing AD&D...(please don't hurt me...haha)...it was me and two
other people. We added a third, but he sucked and left anyway. I ran a
theives campaign and that was pretty cool, then a ran a special campaign
where they were pretty powerful, but it was a lot of fun, and just having 2
pc's didn't hurt any. I ran into problems when I tried to run adventures
where there were a large amount of NPCs...being only 2 PCs...they had to
wait around a lot for action and that never worked out.
I then graduated to SR and actually didn't play it for the longest
time...my girlfriend (now my wife, poor girl) saw the books lieing around
all the time and heard me talking so much that I pulled her right into it.
Then a friend of mine wanted to play. We started off with 1 character each
and soon added two characters each. It just wasn't as cool. I found that
the role playing dimished a lot. What happens is that it's real hard to be
in character of two different characters at the same time...so it turned
into one players talking about two characters. And of course inner-party
roleplaying pretty much stopped...it would just be silly talking to
yourself like that. My wife did the smart thing and picked two greatly
different characters. An elf wanna-be street sam and a dwarf college
trained magician pacifist. My friend picked two very similar people...and
then decided they were even brothers...anyway, that was awful, and he was a
bad roleplayer anyway.
The current group I have is me and 4 others (all playing 1 character, I'll
never allow multiple characters again). That works out very well and I
wouldn't want to add any more than that. I'm of course biased a bit
because I'm used to small groups and have worked out many of the problems
in those cases.


--00DNA
<<Replication Terminated>>
Message no. 5
From: Heimhilcher Christof <96PSI020@******.FHWN.AC.AT>
Subject: Re: player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 16:17:06 +0200
We once had a session with 12(!!!) players and two GMs. It was a mercenary
run and we had two teams in different rooms, communicating via Toys R Us
Walkie Talkies, whereas our GMs even used IRC! Was really great!
Message no. 6
From: "Blair A. Monroe" <bmonroe@******.FSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:45:58 -0400
At 10:08 AM 9/28/98 -0400, Lehlan Decker wrote:
>>I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What >expirience
do you have
>>Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?
>
>Bryan C, runs the current group, and there are what...roughly
>five or six of us who seem to make it each time. 1 Character
>apiece. In the past I've Gmed groups of up to 10, and as
>small as two. With large groups, I've never allowed more then
>1 PC, it gets very confusing otherwise. With small groups
>I've allowed up to 2 or 3 per person, just to up the odds of
>survivability. The problem I've had, is unless the person is
>an excellent roleplayer, the the roleplaying potential while
>controlling 2 or 3 characters goes down hill quickly, which
>takes some of the fun out of the game.


I've seen the same thing. Roleplaying tends to go down hill becoming very
simplistic as the players have to be too many people at the same time. A
nasty side effect I have seen multiple characters that I have encountered
(both when you play multiples at the same time and when you don't) it is
very easy to end up treating them like one mega-character...munchkins just
love this. I was playing in/running a MechWarrior campaign once where we
were allowed multiple characters and our resident rules-lawyer/munchkin
built a mechwarrior and a logistics officer. The next thing we knew the
mechwarrior had completely revamped his mech with the most advanced
weaponry and always had whatever gear he wanted because he "knew which type
of booze the logistics guy liked."

My current regular group is four players. Each player only plays one
character at a time though several of the players have other characters in
the campaign (mostly "retired" characters). This has worked fairly well so
far. In our case, I have a group of pretty good players who generally
don't abuse things. They have also been discouraged from building
characters that had pre-built associations to their more powerful now
retired ex-characters. I have had to do some work to wean them off of
relying on one of the more powerful retired characters, but I can hardly
blame them for wanting Lena (our friendly neighborhood Fixer/Decker/Gang
Warlord-Puppetmaster/Land Baron/Mother...) as a major contact.

In college we actually had one Shadowrun campaign where we had about 16
players. Generally only about 6-9 of them showed up at any given session,
but that was still a handfull to handle and the one time EVERYONE showed up
was a real problem. Some players actually took naps while waiting for
their characters to have a chance to do anything just because there were so
many people for the GM to handle. This was also complicated because the GM
allowed multiple characters. He did NOT allow you to play more than one at
a single time, but we did have about five us us with two characters and
myself and one or two others had three. Each character tended to get very
little playtime, but it was kind of neat having that many different
characters to choose from when you were looking to hire some extra talent
for a run.

-- Blair
------
Blair A. Monroe Phone: (850) 644-8114
Web Systems Administrator / Sr. Web Developer Fax: (850) 644-6253
School of Information Studies E-mail:=
bmonroe@******.fsu.edu
Florida State University
101 Louis Shores Bldg.
Tallahassee, FL. 32306 http://www.fsu.edu/~lis
Message no. 7
From: Fixer <fixer@*******.TLH.FL.US>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:56:00 -0400
On Mon, 28 Sep 1998, Heimhilcher Christof wrote:

->I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience =
do
->you have
->Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

My group is 3 to 5 players, depending on how many show up. All of
us play one character (except me as GM, of course).

Fixer --------------} The easy I do before breakfast,
the difficult I do all day long,
the impossible only during the week,
and miracles performed on an as-needed basis....

Now tell me, what was your problem?
Message no. 8
From: TillK <kortuem@*******.DE>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 18:13:33 +0200
Heimhilcher Christof wrote:

I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience do
you have
Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

--------
I made the experience that, at least with the people I play RPGs with, there
have to be no less than 3 and no more than 6 players. 6 is the maximum because
players easily get bored when not having the GMīs attention and 3 is the minimum
because I donīt want my players to have multiple characters.

TillK ]B-]
------------------------------
-> Into the Darkness <-
http://members.xoom.com/yclept
------------------------------
Message no. 9
From: 00DNA <mcmanus@******.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 12:26:33 -0400
Just as an aside. In some book by Gary Gygax, he says that the "ideal"
number is 3-4 players for 1 GM.


--00DNA
<<Replication Terminated>>
Message no. 10
From: Joshua Mumme <Grimlakin@**********.COM>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 11:57:16 -0500
Heimhilcher Christof wrote:

> I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience do
> you have
> Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

Playing more than one character in my openion is going for power. My
personal vote is no.
Message no. 11
From: Gurth <gurth@******.NL>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 19:31:54 +0200
According to Heimhilcher Christof, at 15:34 on 28 Sep 98, the word on the =
street was...

> I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience=
do
> you have
> Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

I've played in a "group" that consisted of me and one other player for
years, and that worked nicely, as long as we had more than one character.
If you have a small group of only one or two players, plus GM, I'd say
having two characters per player is almost a must if you want to run
"normal" adventures.

However, over the past year or so our group's consisted of a core of about=

5 players, with others coming and going (giving RPing a try, etc.) and in
this group, I'm against having more than one character per player,
especially if they're supposed to be played at the same time. Multiple
characters is sort of okay, as long as they don't end up all in the same
group in the game world. Still, I discourage the players from making new
characters, because they tend to focus their efforts toward the new char
without paying much attention to the old one anymore.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"Nobody's going to murder anyone here even if it means I have to
kill someone!" --Kane, detective/rigger
-> NERPS Project Leader * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/plastic.html <-
-> The New Character Mortuary: http://www.electricferret.com/mortuary/ <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+(++)@ U P L E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X++ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 12
From: Drea O'Dare <dreaodare@*******.COM>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:40:37 PDT
>I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What =
>expirience do
>you have
>Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

I've played groups as small as 2 and as large as 20. I prefer a group
of about 4-5 people, no double characters. Playing two characters at
once is a b*tch. Very annoying. The larger the group, the bigger the
headache, for both GM and players. When you're trying to remember what
the heck so and so was doing, while trying to keep 10+ people interested
in your game, you get frustrated. And the players get upset too, cause
you can't really pay that much personal attention to anyone. That's
just my opinion, though.

Pink`

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
Message no. 13
From: Patrick Goodman <remo@***.NET>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 13:12:09 -0500
From: 00DNA <mcmanus@******.ALBANY.EDU>
Date: Monday, September 28, 1998 11:24 AM

>Just as an aside. In some book by Gary Gygax, he says that the
>"ideal" number is 3-4 players for 1 GM.

My personal experience bears this out, mostly, though my groups have
averaged 4 or 5 at any one time.

--
(>) Texas 2-Step
El Paso: Never surrender. Never forget. Never forgive.
Message no. 14
From: Iridios <iridios@*********.COM>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 20:28:16 -0400
Heimhilcher Christof wrote:
>
> I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience do
> you have
> Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

My groups have varied quite a bit since I started running SR. The
smallest was 2 players (twice, once about 6 years ago for about 2
months, and my current campaign just had a third player added [so
far]) and the largest group I ran was 8 or 9 players, 4 of whom I
allowed to have 2 characters (after making sure they were good
RPers). That campaign was the most difficult and I won't do something
like that again. My preferred group size is about 4 - 6 players, each
with one character.

I have found that it is easier for me to run small groups because I
tend to write my scenarios almost as it's happening as that is the
best way to ensure that the players don't screw up the plotline.

--
Iridios
iridios@*********.com
ICQ UIN:6629224
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/9489

[found on an unknown shadow bbs]
<...>runner group looking for new members, one magician
and possibly one rigger preferred. Serious inquiries only.
If interested, login at
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/9489/newplayer.html
<...>

-------Begin Geek Code Block------
GS d-(++) s+: a- C++ U?@>++ P L E?
W++ N o-- K- w(---) O? M-- V? PS+@
PE Y+ !PGP>++ t++@ 5+ X++@ R++@ tv
b+ DI++ !D G e+@>++++ h--- r+++ y+++
-------End Geek Code Block--------
Message no. 15
From: Tarek Okail <Tarek_Okail@**********.COM>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 20:47:07 -0400
00DNA--

>Just as an aside. In some book by Gary Gygax, he says that
>the "ideal" number is 3-4 players for 1 GM.

While I don't take Gygax to be the "Be all and End All"
authority on gaming, I agree with this statement. I've run games
at conventions and at home, and with a varying number of players.
Practically, six people is the maximum a GM can really handle and
still get some good roleplaying in. A much more comfortable size
is three or four players, because everyone is involved, and it's
easy to bounce ideas off of each other. With one or two players,
you run into the problem of "Well, what do I/we do now?" when the
players run into a mental wall.

Shadowmage
Message no. 16
From: "M. Sean Martinez" <ElBandit@***.COM>
Subject: Re: Player numbers
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 11:33:45 EDT
In a message dated 9/28/98 9:49:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
96PSI020@******.FHWN.AC.AT writes:

> I just wanted to know: how big or small are your groups? What expirience=
do
> you have
> Ànd what do you think of playing more than one character?

Greetings!!

When I first starting GMing shadowrun I had only two players. I augmented =
the
team with a GM PC who was a dwarf sam with boosted reflexes (rating 3) Lat=
er
on we had a change in players (one left and we got a replacement) and now =
the
team is still going with usually 4 players and somtimes 5 plus the NPC.

My 2nd group that just started has 6 players in it.

Generally I perfer to have 4 players, but I can run with 6 if need be. I h=
ave
been GMing for far too many years.

I do not allow players to play more than one character. Hard to role play =
like
that :)

-Bandit

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