Optimum Party Size for FG

[Procurator]

Hi all,
About to step back into the 5e D&D DM role after a few years. At the table I managed from 4 to 8 players oh so long ago.

Regarding FG, I was thinking 3-5. Anyone had any experience with larger (6-7) person groups (white marches style gameplay aside). Concerns and performance, communication, ect.

I am not anticipating a flood of requests. I am anticipating some turn over, just wanted to get a guage for what works best in this media from players or GMs.

I understand this can vary a bit, would enjoy hearing any experiences and opinions to date.

Thank for your time.

[vodokar]

I've DM'ed with as many as 9 players. It doesn't have any effect on FG performance that I have noticed, if that is what you are getting at. You should simply set your max number of players based on what you think you personally can handle. If you were used to handling 8 players at the table, it should be even easier using FG. At the same time though, people do tend to have shorter attention spans when playing online, so, if there is more downtime between turns, you might want to consider that.

[LordEntrails]

I've often run with 6 players for the cons with no problems. I just have to make sure that I don't share too much. And if I'm on wireless then not to have everyone connect at the same time.

[Ken L]

Depends on your players and the amount you can juggle. I've GMed with 6/5/4 but 6 would be my limit. Any more and stage time becomes a problem. 4-5 is the sweet spot both in person and online.

[Honken]

My personal preference are 4 players plus a GM, (this is with skype or any kind of voice communication, and we are a couple of old friends, and the need to catch up and rant) and even then 4 players might be a little much. Maybe my players have bad tableside manners.

/H

[Torgaard]

I've done 6 + GM, 5 + GM, 4 + GM, and we're currently on 3 + GM. We use Ventrilo and one of my players is in Singapore (the rest in the U.S.). This last 3 + GM roster has been ideal from the standpoint of all of us never really feeling like nobody really "steps on" anybody else over Ventrilo (ie you accidentally end up talking over someone else). I definitely notice the difference between the 3 + GM and the 4 + GM (and more) sessions in that regard. That extra 4th personal really does crowd the air waves, but just a bit. It's certainly not detrimental or anything - far from it - it's just that the chatter gets just a smidge busy at times with 4 players, and I also notice one or two of my players will start talking a little less. So - for me - 3 players is ideal from a VOIP standpoint, though I fall solidly in the group that says 4 players for a D&D campaign/group experience is the sweet spot. I'll take on more players if somebody is excited to bring a buddy or two into the campaign, but I definitely stop recruiting once I hit four.

Performance with Fantasy Grounds is very rarely an issue. If we have issues, it's typically the guy in Singapore, and it's internet related.

Some of the guys on the boards might wince when I tell people this, but I do not partition out my content into modules (that I create). I continue to add content to the core FG session I created for this campaign like, what - almost four years ago? I think my db.xml file for my campaign is like 14mb, something like that. I've got endless items, NPC's, maps, etc in there, and I just keep adding on. I do try to keep the number of tokens down to only the ones I need though. I also stop "sharing" some of the images after they're no longer applicable. I also also leave FG running (almost) 24 hours a day. That way my players can connect anytime they want, tweak their characters, look at notes, maps, whatever they want, whenever they want. It's pretty cool. Again, even with the guy on the other side of the planet, we have little if any performance issues. We've done it this way for years, with very few problems. If anybody does choose to do it this way - make SURE you regularly backup your campaign db regularly (I actually just backup the whole Fantasy Grounds folder).