Does size matter?

What is the ideal gaming group size for your group and for what system?

I find that White Wolf Storyteller Gamer work better with smaller groups than say D&D.

Regards

For 3.5/Pathfinder
I'll go with the standard four players. They tend to work in pairs, then (or more often 3 work together and you have a loner), but in any case you can usually resolve events with two subgroups...

I feel that any larger a group -- people tend to become more individualistic to get the spotlight on their characters or to get role-playing opportunities.

3 and under is grand, but you do lose a certain group dynamic then.

I run Savage Worlds games. I've found that 4-6 players runs fairly smoothly.

For me, 4 to 6 players plus a GM is perfect, for most systems. When I'm running Paranoia, I like at least 6 players. I've been in games with more, as I am currently, and combat can get bogged down. Also, with a larger group, if the GM is focusing on just a few characters, there's potential for the others to wander away from the game. With a LARP, the more, the merrier as long as you have enough GM's and judges for it.

4 to 6. Less becomes unbalanced and you can kiss your planned session goodbye if someone cannot attend while more players will make it too chaotic, unbalanced and every player individually suffers from a lack of "screen time" for his or her character.

Generally speaking, 6-8 is my comfort zone and applies to pretty much every system I've run thus far.

I run D&D primarily, and I prefer to not go above 4-5. While I've ran games with 6-7, in my experience those games became less character driven and more plot driven, due to the struggle of keeping up with that many different characters.

Great feedback

3-
4-6
4-6
4-6
6-8
4-5

Seems the 4-6 range is what everyone is most comfortable with.

I would say this has been a problem with a recent game that I ran. I let the group grow too large.

Thanks for the feedback

The last time I was part of a group that got too large, we split into two separate groups still playing the same campaign. The GMs coordinated the story while the two groups of PCs when off in search of different sets of macguffins. When all the macguffins were recovered, we had one big final session with all the players back together to fight a BBEG in order to save the world. With two GMs, it wasn't too bad to run that last session with 10 PCs, but I don't think it's something you'd want to do on a regular basis.

Interesting fact: That campaign was the inspiration for creating Epic Words. The two groups communicated with a handwritten journal. Each group had a blank journal book that a different player was responsible for writing in after each session. The GMs would scan the journal and email it to all the players in the other group. In game, it represented a pair of magic books. Anything written in one book would appear instantly in the other. I always thought that there should be an online tool that could accomplish the same thing.

I've found the dynamic and raw capability of a party increases dramatically at the break point between 3 and 4 players. Any time I've played with 3 (or fewer) players, the party has had a MUCH harder time with "normal" encounters (partly because it's harder to cover for a downed comrade). By contrast, taking a group from 3 to 4 causes a lot of "normal" encounters to run radically smoother (in the party's favor).