So, I recall hearing 4 PCs was "normal" from somewhere, but I don't recall where.

Recently my Pathfinder group (we're going to alternate back and forth between it and Edge) has had a hard time meeting up due to some conflicting schedule changes and holidays and whatnot, so when we brought up the idea of Edge, we had two (actually 3, had to draw the line and say "no, we have enough") more people become interested in giving it a go. Unfortunately also at the same time, an ex-member of our group got back from being gone to another state for 3 months this week.

Aside from those 3, we've got our 5 PCs, the regular group, which we consistently get 3-4 showing, due to something bound to come up for at least 1 or 2 of them per week.

Now of course, now that I'm wanting to try Edge for the first time, with no prior experience, all five of the normal group is going to be able to make it of course, as well as the other 3... Meaning, ugh, 8 players.

I'm wanting to run the pre-mades to start with because I don't want to start tampering with encounters and building my own stuff and whatnot until I get a feel for how combat even plays out in this game and everything first.

So assuming 4 PCs is the norm, I basically have 2 groups lumped into one... I was really looking forward to trying Edge, but now it's just daunting and I'm dreading it because of too many players. How would you handle this? Just... double all the enemies in the encounters too? Really not liking the sound of this. Game's on Sunday, and I'll be busy all day tomorrow, so I don't really have any prep time before then, and I didn't realize that ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE PLAYER would be able to make it. Ugh.

I run 8 players, and it is a struggle. However so long as everyone are friends and understand that sometimes they have to take a back seat while someone else does something awesome, then it's fair game.

As for encounters, just double what the book recommends so if it says 3 minion groups of 3, have 6 minion groups of 3.

Also, be flexible, if it looks like its going too easy, use threat to bring in reinforcements, or adjust the wound threshold.

The beauty of Edge is how it is very easy to make adjustments and balance on the fly.

With 8 players and opponents to match, I think combat is going to be long, confusing and possibly even boring, if it's your first time trying the narrative system. My first couple of tries - with 4 players - certainly were that.

Personally I would minimize the combat action Sunday, and try that out in a more managable group size...

Which premade are you going to go with?

I would suggest not running for 8 players. Be straight-up and explain to your group that the game is going to suffer with that many players, and see if anyone else wants to GM for half the group. Making a hard call right from the start will benefit your game in the long run.

My group grew to 7 PC's, and it was too much. Any action scene took forever, and was boring for everyone as they had to wait forever for their turn. You also need an army of NPC's for each encounter to challenge the PC's, which makes scenarios unrealistic.

I won't run for a group larger than 4 PC's again.

5 players in my group and I am pretty sure I would have been more comfortable with 4...

I had five players in my first game. The second game has four players and it's going much more smoothly. In part, it's because of greater familiarity with the rules, but it's just much easier to work with fewer players.

I think 6 is pushing it 8 just too many but the suggestions about doubling minion parties sounds like your best bet. I have ran up to 12 players in other systems and that can get long and tiring for you. Less work split the group and run them in two different games with another gm.

Now my suggestion is get a secondary gm and have him not run a separate game but a concurrent one. Split the game in two with the culmination happening at the end where the secondary gm then becomes a regular party member who has been with the second party all along just not a contributor (unless absolutely necessary). Then you run the final encounter and then split again as you move on. After this first initial game I recommend that you get a rotating gm thing going and keep splitting the work up.

One of the great things I see is even if I put every adversary or minion in front of the group to look at stats it doesn't matter. The narrative style is the important part with the stats just the flavoring in dice rolls. What I am saying is that secondary gm can even jump in character and wouldn't meta game because the players see the rolls and can (and should IMO) make suggestions of what happens. I think there is even another thread on here about the gm playing in the game as a regular character. And that might help u keep sane and having a sounding board of all ur players and how they like the game or suggestions they may have.

My last EotE game had 6 players, and we managed ok, but as a group we are used to playing with that many players. Next one will have 5 players.

4 players is a kind of sweet spot for most games. Although have played all sorts of games with 1 to 8 players. Larger numbers do put a strain on the game (and GM).

I wouldn't want to run a game for 8 or more players and haven't really enjoyed being a player in games with lots of players.

Our table has 6 and it really is to much. When a player doesn't show, for whatever reason and are 'plotted out', things run so much better.

I agree with HD on this, ask somebody to run another group. A little grief upfront will make for a better time overall.

We had 3 last night and the GM broke up the minions into individuals, that combat took quite awhile. We would have been there till dawn with 8 players.

1 GM and 4 Players, sometimes 3.

Works out really well actually. I wouldn't want any more than that. I've been in a 8 Player Pathfinder group.

Never again.

I run two Edge groups, one with 4 players, one with 5. 4-5 is the sweet spot for me as you have enough players they can bounce ideas off each other and also get good group interaction and still lets people have their niche.

Six and more just gets to be too big. I ran an Exalted game with 9 players at its height. It allowed for some epic stuff, but...yeah, never doing that again.

Three can work if they are reliable. Four allows for 1 player being gone to not be a major deal. Two players I find awkward to run with.

But I would argue it's less about group size and more player makeup. A group of 6 players, only one an 'alpha' player and the other 5 rather passive who go with the flow and are patient to wait and really get into their 'moment to shine' can be a smoother ride than 3 Alpha players who get wound up in 'what their characters would do' and come to near IC blows whenever a decision fork get thrown their way.

In larger groups you just need to keep the players going in some direction and not getting mired down. Don't let the more dominate (louder?) players drown out the quieter ones and just keep things flowing.

Actually 3 or 4 Players seems to be the best number of Players in my experience. Two players works fine but reduces the interaction between players and the intra-party dynamics. Sarting with 5 Players the experience gets gradually worse. 6 Players is only barely manageable and 7 or more players really changes what you can expect to achieve as a GM.

The main problem is simply the time every player has to wait to interact with the GM. In Combat this gets even worse, as every player has to wait as many rounds as there are players (minus one) plus the NPCs actions (This gets even worse with an uneven initiative system like in shadowrun).

There are some tricks to improve the experience with large numbers of players, however, BUT I think it takes an experienced GM to pull this off effectively.

1. It's all about timing.

Keep your interactions as short an precise with every player as possible. Aim for no more than one minute for every player. If you have 8 players and take 2 minutes for every interaction with a player, at minimum one player will wait for at least 14 minutes before he can talk with you. This includes urging your players to respond quickly and not to think while interacting with you.

GM: "The Imps are charging down the hallway. What do you do?"

Player: "Hm. Is there maybe a chandelier hanging from the roof or something?"

GM (pushes a white dot his way): "Is there?"

Player: "Hm. Is it worth it?"

GM "OK, think about it. Player 2, what do you do?"

2. Build sub-groups and teams.

This only works if the players know each other well or are really quick t get along with one another. Team the players up in small groups of characters that are likely to talk a lot with each other. This allows them to interact with each other while not being able to actually do anything becaus of a inavailable GM. Let them bicker, make smart-ass remarks, bet and course in character while another player interacts with the GM.

For this to work you have to seat your players accordingly, so the chatter won't interfere with someone hearing what the GM says.

3. Assymetrical Combat

This chages the way initiative works. If you let your NPCs have initiative slots, it will add additiional waiting time for the players. Instead use one initiative slot to make short desciptions of what the opposition is trying to do. Use this to give the PCs an overall impression of the bigger picture and what the characters have achieved in the last round (i.e. the enemy is falling back, splits up, is trying to flank).

Further combine the round of a character with actions of relevant opponents, i.e. you tell him one enemy is going to open fire on him and another one is moving around his flank. An then ask him what he wants to do. Let the player describe an roll his actions and then work out the result of the opponents actions.

And don't count wounds. Let your enemies drop fast. If you want special enemies as threat to the whole group, define goals that mus be reached by the group to bring them down (and communicate them to the players), i.e. get the big game hunter to a certain position to shoot at the rancors brain, etc. That way they may use teamwork to succeed and you avoid the first four characters dropping your monster because of their sheer firepower.

4. Split the party (and use a deputy-GM).

This one is very elaborate and takes considerable preaparation time. It is only really viable for on-shots or very short campigns.

Let one of your player be a deputy-GM. He takes over one half of the players and runs half of the adventure. The sperate groups may interact from time to time, but get separated and expereince the same story from different angles.

The two GMs have to define possible goals for every scene and need to communicate effectively between scenes on the progress of the story. To minimize distraction, let one GM be the lead. He decides the story finale, the other GM only informshim of the progress of the second group. For the final scene the heroes join forces.

A short outline how this could be done for Escape from Mos Shuuta:

Group one consists of smuggler types and tries to escape the Hutt. They start out running from Teemo.

Group two are Bounty Hunters on their trail. they start out investigating, where Group one went. Group one starts ahead in time, so the events in their scenes may impact the following scene of the Bounty Hunters. The main GM should run the Bounty Hunters, as he will have to combine all threads. While the Bounty Hunters follow the trail of the smugglers, they stumble on a dark secret of Teemo, that convinces them to join forces with the Smugglers.

You might notice that this will require some serious manipulation skills on part of the main GM, as he will have to trick his Bounty HUnters into doing, what he wants them to do and prevent a shoot out between over eagerplayers.

I currently run a group of 7 players, and it's working out fine. It's a lot of work at times, sure, but there have been no problems so far. My advice to anyone with a large group is do get as many rolls as possible done beforehand. For example, when I know there will be combat I roll NPC initiative at home and jot down the results in the margin. Same thing with checks I know NPCs will be making, like Stealth vs. Perception. Make the check beforehand and narrate the result to the players at the table when the time comes.

One thing I will point out: it really depends on your players. The characters played will also determine how well this will go.

For example, my Edge of the Empire group consists of 5 players. When combat breaks out (very rarely and we're a little light on combatants), it moves along rather smoothly as we have two people really geared to fight, two that are moderately geared to fight, and one with ZERO combat capabilities (the mechanic).

The rest of the game becomes a hilarious batch of ideas.

I've realized that having 3 players has become a minimum for me, but I seldom go above 8 since my college days (I ran a World of Darkness Crossover game with 12 players; NEVER AGAIN). I'm not saying it can't work with the right players, but it is a rare occurrence to have the right players.

DaFloh has some really good pointers here. To help expand on that if you are planning on keeping this large group:

1) Be up front with the players. Not everyone gets the spotlight all the time, and everyone's gonna have to share.

2) Obligation's going to hurt. With 8 players, you are already starting at 40 Obligation, and if everyone takes the +5 they can, it becomes a quick 80. My current group of 5 is in the 80s, and they haven't had a game off from Obligation since the start.

3) Try to promote "party balance." Make sure everyone has a place to shine or support that person that shines. A party of all combatants will make the game drag as all you will do is fight through everything, and that can DRAG with this many players. Additionally, without throwing other careers in, the party won't be able to succeed at all of the other niceties of living on the fringe.

That said, with a part of 8, I'd personally try to get AT LEAST the following:

1 Face, 1 Techie, 1 Pilot, 2 Combatants (I'd cap around 3, personally).

This way, no matter WHAT the party does, they can have their bases covered. If a character can fulfill one role well and dabble in the other, then you can have some support both mechanically and roleplaying-wise. The "non-combatants" can still play a decent role in combat (medics, cover fire, fire control, etc), and sometimes it just helps when you're making a deal to have that large, hulking brute of a Wookie standing behind you.

I've only ever run games for three at the most, but I can say that, as a player, I wouldn't want to play in a group larger than, say, five max. It's kind of hard for a character to have any sort of identity in a group larger than that. Function, yes. Identity? No. So at that point, you're not even 'playing a role' anymore.

Just my opinion, of course.

I think 4 is a pretty good sweet spot. Enough so the players have a good role in the action economy but not so many it becomes very bogged down and spot line time is too split up.

We had 3 last night and the GM broke up the minions into individuals, that combat took quite awhile.

More of a GM problem than a number of players problem. Seriously what GM wants to create MORE work for themselves like this?

Mine. He didn't want to push too many Rivals on us, but he didn't want us just walking over everything either. He also didn't want to throw absurd numbers of minions grouped at us. So he opted to split them up.

I've done 2-8 before but I personally prefer 4 or 5 at the most. Everyone gets a turn and has a skill that is likely not shared with all the others. When I did an 8 player game it was hard to keep everyone on the same page, there was a lot of table talk and it just didn't work out for me.

Our group has the GM and 3 players. One more player would work fine, but I don't think I'd want to go more then that. We fell victim to player bloat back in the day and it didn't end well.

Mine. He didn't want to push too many Rivals on us, but he didn't want us just walking over everything either. He also didn't want to throw absurd numbers of minions grouped at us. So he opted to split them up.

Speaking from experience with plenty of game systems... that's a poor strategy on your GM's part. It makes the combat take forever for no real gain in narrative. He's just throwing a time-consuming speed bump at your group that way. He needs to either throw real opposition at the group or just let you steamroll the inconsequential opposition really. Otherwise you're all just burning precious time.

Back to the OP, I agree with the others that have stated 4-5 is the optimal size. 6 seems to be the top end of reasonable with this system. Anything bigger (such as your 8 player situation) and you're best having a co-GM take half the group off your hands and just run concurrent tables with occasional convergence for big encounters. Narrative dice can make it take a little longer to create satisfying results with each check (because the interpretation of results takes extra time) than your typical d20 mechanic. So higher player counts start to drag the system fairly quickly.