US 5th ID(M) Largest Unit

[schnickelfritz]

All-
Out of curiousity, what's the largest unit/group of survivors that you've used from the US 5th ID in a cmpaign? A squad? A platoon or two? This could be a squad or two pulled from a larger unit, i.e. from one company of 3-10 Infantry. So you would still be gaming with a manageable size group of PC's, but you may have a different squad to use from time to time.

Thanks-
Dave

[pmulcahy11b]

I've always found, both as a GM and a player, that games work best when each player has one character. Sometimes, when you don't have many players, one or more of the players has to play more than one PC; inevitably, the player concentrates on one character and the rest become "throwaways," the ones who do the really dangerous and deadly things and enable the player to protect his favorite PC. So size of a character group really depends on how many player you have on hand, perhaps rounded out by some GM-controlled NPCs, to give the group additional firepower or with the skills the group needs but no player had the foresight to choose.

But...it can go too far the other way too. Have you ever played at a general, open game at something like a convention? This is composed of 1-3 (usually harried) GMs and, in one game I played in at Texacon, 32 players with one player each. It's wild, it's crazy, jokes fly fast and thick, and everyone is having fun (except possibly the GMs). But it can take 10 minutes of real time to open a door that in real life would take a 2-second kick. One 10-minute firefight took 3 hours. It's like playing the old SPI game Airwar; fun every so often, but it would get old fast if you played once or twice every week. Fun to play in every so often, ultimately, a group that large is unmanageable and unsustainable in the long term.

[Legbreaker]

Largest I've ever seen was about 100 men in one unit. The core group of PC's only numbered about a dozen, but they kept picking up stragglers and rescuing POWs. The majority were wounded and it kept the PCs very busy providing for them all.
The Pact units they'd been liberated from were probably happy to see such a huge drain on their resources gone and moving into areas technically controlled by other units.

As a GM, the largest group of players I've had at one time was 16 - it was a nightmare with many not bothering to pay attention and talking amongst themselves when their character wasn't specifically involved in that moment of action. A fair balance I would think is around 5-6 to a maximum of 8 players.

[atiff]

For me, depends on the game - face-to-face or online.

Face-to-face, I have done a game with 12 players (D&D), but prefer 4-6. For online I can handle more, as the pace is slower allowing me more time to focus on each character. I'd say 10 would be about my max for online.

[dragoon500ly]

The ideal play group seems to run from 3 to 8 people.

[Raellus]

A now-defunct T2K PbP on RPGnet, Stalemate War, started off with an understrength company of survivors from the 5th ID. There were only ever about 10 players at any given time (max) and the rest of the company consisted of NPCs. Surprisingly, the GM made it work and it was a kick-ass game while it lasted.

[Adm.Lee]

First, to the original OP: I think I once had 8 or 9 players & characters in T2k, but that was only for one session. I never thought of adding a bunch more characters for people to run. I was recently thinking, that given the slow healing time for wounds, second and third characters might not be a bad idea.

I've always found, both as a GM and a player, that games work best when each player has one character. Sometimes, when you don't have many players, one or more of the players has to play more than one PC; inevitably, the player concentrates on one character and the rest become "throwaways," the ones who do the really dangerous and deadly things and enable the player to protect his favorite PC. So size of a character group really depends on how many player you have on hand, perhaps rounded out by some GM-controlled NPCs, to give the group additional firepower or with the skills the group needs but no player had the foresight to choose.

I read a while ago about the game Ars Magica, in which a player is supposed to have 1 wizard-like character, 1 or 2 non-wizard adventurers, and any number of "grogs." Generally, in a given adventure session, 1 player would be the wizard and leader, some might be playing their secondary characters, and some might be playing their grogs as spear-carriers or medics or whatever. I thought that would be very applicable to, for instance, Star Trek. The captain and senior officers all are played by players, but each player also has a junior officer and some specialist crewmen. The captain orders one of the senior officers to form a landing party, with 1-2 juniors and the rest crewmen. The Captain's PC will have someone on the ground, so he's not sitting around bored, and the other players might have something to do when the action's not planetside.

So, if one wanted to do the same with a reduced company team from Kalisz, each player has someone among the vehicle crews, someone on the recon squad, and maybe even someone in the main body of the unit. Heck, if you wanted to run bigger events, set up most of the unit as NPCs (name and sketchy stats), and the PCs are just the leaders.

[natehale1971]

On the ship we had a game set up around a severely understrength battalion, with the guys we had playing that came in and out of the game when they could join us. The core group of nine was always there with thsoe who couldn't stay fo rthe whole game would be 'guest stars' and the like. All total there was between 26 to 32 people playing.

its where we came up with the wartime platoon organzation.. we had come with the the organization for the combat elements of the battalion that was moving and incorporating stragglers from 5ID as they moved behind Soviet lines sabotaging and causing as much hell as possible to buy other elements of the division to get back to NATO lines.