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Rules (wip):
Good read, it's interesting how this differs from DND. Crazy cool how they are juggling 17 people, and DND falls apart with ~5.
I don't get these low numbers. pathfinder's default assumes four but back in the day 6 was kinda the ideal party. If we did not have enough players sometimes someone would control two characters.
Have to agree about six. The classic D&D videogames didn't choose a party size of 6 by accident in their designs.
That being said, the push towards four instead definitely started in 3.0's playtesting, on the assumption that parties would have one of each basic archetype (warrior, rogue, arcane caster, divine caster) for some reason. It probably also had a lot to do with how scheduling a dedicated table becomes exponentially more difficult with each added player.
we often did not have six but it was not uncommon to have 3 players playing two characters and a gamemaster.
I just watched a SciShow episode about this. Good watch. https://youtu.be/0pc9Uf3vFDU
I like that channel so will give it a look when I get a chance.
I have read stories that D&D in the 70s it was normal to have groups of 10-20 people. There were player roles like "mappers" for drawing the map. There was a "caller" who summarized the player moves for the GM.
D&D in the '70s was more like a strategy wargame than a TTRPG as we know them now.