How Many Players Do You Prefer? (1x1 vs Group)

Howdy-hey, guys & gals. Your friendly neighborhood Sato here with yet another discussion question for the RPG Design forum.

Do you like private or small group roleplays? Or do you operate on the standard of "the more, the merrier?" What are some of the pros and cons of each?

One thing to consider is approaching this from the perspective of a player, and as a GM.

As a GM, the idea of a huge-scale RP with a dozen players may seem like as much of a nightmare as a challenge. Keeping everyone in line, fielding requests while maintaining energy and shepherding a plot along can be like herding cats. However, as a player, the idea of having more kids in the sandbox is intensely appealing. There are a lot more character dynamics to explore. You make new friends, there's generally more content to come back to each day, it's more of a party.

As a GM, the idea of a small-scale RP with one or two people is less of a nightmare. There's more room for organizing ahead of time, and you oftentimes know the person you're writing with personally. As a player, this can seem less daunting, but perhaps an iota more boring.

What are your thoughts?

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The majority of my seven roleplays are co-written with the same handful of people. We know each other well, we know the sort of stories we like to tell. It's easy to grab them and talk about something, anything. I haven't had an experience GMing or joining a large (I consider large to be more than four?) roleplay with a more open casting call of sorts in a long time. I just don't have the time for it anymore.

Anyone who's been in the Interest Check forum lately might have seen my thread in there tentatively asking for small groups of people to discuss a roleplay. At this point in my life, working full time plus other part-time work and volunteer jobs, maintaining or being a part of something as fast-paced and hectic and complicated as some large-scale RPs can be is just terrifying.

I'd rather stick to something simple in play-by-post with one or two people who I can whisper to later on.

However, I know well the feeling of being a part of a project with a tangled mess of excited humans. There's a tangible sort of awesome when you and a half-dozen other people are all parts in a larger story, trying to keep it together. You get a small sense of that in the Multiverse.

Maybe one day I'll launch back into something a bit more flashy, but for right now, I'm content with posting only a few times a month (or once a week, if I'm feeling particularly on fire) with the same people who understand how slow I can be!

-VV

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