Size of the game
The size of the game helps to determine the style of the game, and is a consideration which will affect a number of aspects around your game.
If you have 200 players it’s impossible to give each and everyone you undivided attention. Likewise large scale political manoeuvrings fail miserably with a group of 6 players.
There's a few elements to consider when deciding how large you want your game to be
The genre of the game
If you're looking for epic battles then you're going to need epic numbers of players and/or crew. Certainly if you're only just starting out with organising LARP events then having such ambitious goals may not the best starting plan. The largest LARP events in the UK are organised y large teams of people who have developed their game over many years. Events which will attract several hundred people will also have a "legacy", and the organisers will most likely have an established reputation and credentials. People will attend a brand new event if they know that the organisers have a reputation for running great games
Likewise there are some genres that lend themselves to smaller events. If you're looking at creating a tense survival horror then having a team of 40 people all trying to survive is considerably less tense than 4 people trapped in a cabin in the woods.
Accessing plot
Its important to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to do something at your event. If they choose that they don't want to do anything then that's their choice but there needs to be enough opportunity. LARPers are a very mixed bunch with diverse personalities and levels of confidence and there will almost certainly be some people attending who are confident and will actively see out and engage in plot. If you only have limited amounts of plot prepared then you could find that its quickly devoured by a limited number of people. If your event has 100 people attending then you will need to have enough plot and NPC's to keep everyone entertained
This doesn't mean to say that players won't find their own ways to make trouble and entertain themselves, believe me they will, but players want to engage with the game world and will often need something to kick start their own schemes. If you only have 3 people who are able to NPC and have only written enough plot to engage half a dozen people then you may lose the interest of some players.
In short the more players you are looking to have, the more plot you'll most likely need to write and the more NPC's you'll need to deliver it. There are various ways to reduce the need on plot to support larger games, and indeed in the larger fest events players machinations against other players takes the lead
Personal Plot
Personal Plot is some part of the game that is written specifically for an individual player or small group of players. Often that will involve having to write some storyline for a specific individual and have an NPC or group of NPCs interact with that character one a one to one basis for part of all of the event. Players love being on the receiving end of personal plot as it demonstrates that the organisers are showing them some individual attention. However, all in all its quite labour intensive for the organisers and crew so if having that close personal interaction with players is important then you need to consider the additional time needed
Administration
The bigger the game the more administration you'll need to do. Responding to emails, chasing payment for bookings, asking players to send you a character sheet, emailing players to tell them their character sheet is wrong, putting together character packs, printing off characters, laminating cards, finding crew, organising crew etc all takes time and depending on how you've set up your game this can take up a good chunk of your spare time in the weeks/days leading up to the event
Whilst you can reduce down the administration by adopting simple systems you'll never escape it completely, so you need to consider how much time it will take
Downtime
Downtime is that period in between games and generally starts from about an hour after the last game has finished. Players will want to start telling you what their character is doing after the event (and will start asking you when the next one is) and will most likely want responses. Depending upon the system rules you have written downtime might not exist. Or it might exist and be a horrifically complex manually processed system/ If its the latter you have to include this in your considerations. If you're having to respond to forty downtime submissions then this will take a lot longer than if you only had to do 4 so it's an additional consideration
The "Type" of game
Certain styles of game lend themselves to small groups not only with their genre but also with the type of game. In my opinion "Linear" adventures get difficult to run when party numbers get about about a dozen or so people. It gets more difficult to manage combat encounters, especially with lone monsters, and with the "talking" encounters only a certain number of people will be able to get involved in discussions. Inevitably there will be "party leaders" so with larger groups a linear can turn into a linear adventure for a dozen people and a nice walk in the woods for the rest of the player
Crew availability
The type of the game is also a influence on the size of the monster team you're going to need. "Linears" generally have less player vs player interaction/machination than more freeform gams so they'll be looking to interact with NPC's more. Unless you want to use the same few people for every encounter, then you'll be needing more people on your NPC team. Some genres of game benefit from a higher player/crew ratio too. So one thing to bear in mind when setting the scale of the game is how many people are you going to be able to get to crew for you.
Cost
Cost is undeniably one of the main considerations which you're going to have an an organiser. Too few paying players and you're going to make a loss, so there's a temptation to get in as many people as possible. I would urge caution on over-subscribing your event in order to get that additional cash for the reasons noted above. Whilst you're getting more money coming in there's the expectation that you are able to provide the same quality of service. If you've pitched the size of the event wrong then the quality of the game will suffer. Furthermore, players know what they've paid for a ticket, and simple maths will tell them how much money you've had coming in for the event. If they can't see where that money's gone (other than into someone's pocket) they will resent it
If the game you want to run is a game that will only work well with a smaller number of people then only run it with a smaller number of people. There are ways and means to reduce costs without impacting the quality of the game, and if players need to pay a little more to get the higher quality game in many cases they will do just that
If you have 200 players it’s impossible to give each and everyone you undivided attention. Likewise large scale political manoeuvrings fail miserably with a group of 6 players.
There's a few elements to consider when deciding how large you want your game to be
The genre of the game
If you're looking for epic battles then you're going to need epic numbers of players and/or crew. Certainly if you're only just starting out with organising LARP events then having such ambitious goals may not the best starting plan. The largest LARP events in the UK are organised y large teams of people who have developed their game over many years. Events which will attract several hundred people will also have a "legacy", and the organisers will most likely have an established reputation and credentials. People will attend a brand new event if they know that the organisers have a reputation for running great games
Likewise there are some genres that lend themselves to smaller events. If you're looking at creating a tense survival horror then having a team of 40 people all trying to survive is considerably less tense than 4 people trapped in a cabin in the woods.
Accessing plot
Its important to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to do something at your event. If they choose that they don't want to do anything then that's their choice but there needs to be enough opportunity. LARPers are a very mixed bunch with diverse personalities and levels of confidence and there will almost certainly be some people attending who are confident and will actively see out and engage in plot. If you only have limited amounts of plot prepared then you could find that its quickly devoured by a limited number of people. If your event has 100 people attending then you will need to have enough plot and NPC's to keep everyone entertained
This doesn't mean to say that players won't find their own ways to make trouble and entertain themselves, believe me they will, but players want to engage with the game world and will often need something to kick start their own schemes. If you only have 3 people who are able to NPC and have only written enough plot to engage half a dozen people then you may lose the interest of some players.
In short the more players you are looking to have, the more plot you'll most likely need to write and the more NPC's you'll need to deliver it. There are various ways to reduce the need on plot to support larger games, and indeed in the larger fest events players machinations against other players takes the lead
Personal Plot
Personal Plot is some part of the game that is written specifically for an individual player or small group of players. Often that will involve having to write some storyline for a specific individual and have an NPC or group of NPCs interact with that character one a one to one basis for part of all of the event. Players love being on the receiving end of personal plot as it demonstrates that the organisers are showing them some individual attention. However, all in all its quite labour intensive for the organisers and crew so if having that close personal interaction with players is important then you need to consider the additional time needed
Administration
The bigger the game the more administration you'll need to do. Responding to emails, chasing payment for bookings, asking players to send you a character sheet, emailing players to tell them their character sheet is wrong, putting together character packs, printing off characters, laminating cards, finding crew, organising crew etc all takes time and depending on how you've set up your game this can take up a good chunk of your spare time in the weeks/days leading up to the event
Whilst you can reduce down the administration by adopting simple systems you'll never escape it completely, so you need to consider how much time it will take
Downtime
Downtime is that period in between games and generally starts from about an hour after the last game has finished. Players will want to start telling you what their character is doing after the event (and will start asking you when the next one is) and will most likely want responses. Depending upon the system rules you have written downtime might not exist. Or it might exist and be a horrifically complex manually processed system/ If its the latter you have to include this in your considerations. If you're having to respond to forty downtime submissions then this will take a lot longer than if you only had to do 4 so it's an additional consideration
The "Type" of game
Certain styles of game lend themselves to small groups not only with their genre but also with the type of game. In my opinion "Linear" adventures get difficult to run when party numbers get about about a dozen or so people. It gets more difficult to manage combat encounters, especially with lone monsters, and with the "talking" encounters only a certain number of people will be able to get involved in discussions. Inevitably there will be "party leaders" so with larger groups a linear can turn into a linear adventure for a dozen people and a nice walk in the woods for the rest of the player
Crew availability
The type of the game is also a influence on the size of the monster team you're going to need. "Linears" generally have less player vs player interaction/machination than more freeform gams so they'll be looking to interact with NPC's more. Unless you want to use the same few people for every encounter, then you'll be needing more people on your NPC team. Some genres of game benefit from a higher player/crew ratio too. So one thing to bear in mind when setting the scale of the game is how many people are you going to be able to get to crew for you.
Cost
Cost is undeniably one of the main considerations which you're going to have an an organiser. Too few paying players and you're going to make a loss, so there's a temptation to get in as many people as possible. I would urge caution on over-subscribing your event in order to get that additional cash for the reasons noted above. Whilst you're getting more money coming in there's the expectation that you are able to provide the same quality of service. If you've pitched the size of the event wrong then the quality of the game will suffer. Furthermore, players know what they've paid for a ticket, and simple maths will tell them how much money you've had coming in for the event. If they can't see where that money's gone (other than into someone's pocket) they will resent it
If the game you want to run is a game that will only work well with a smaller number of people then only run it with a smaller number of people. There are ways and means to reduce costs without impacting the quality of the game, and if players need to pay a little more to get the higher quality game in many cases they will do just that
External Articles
There's an article around the size of an event on the Mandala's Minion website
