There seems to be a growing desire to have as many players at the table as possible, popularized by livestreams like Critical Role. But it’s important to remember that those sessions are performances as much as they are games.
Most home tables aren’t like that. From a player’s perspective, sitting through other players’ turns is not always entertaining — often it’s a lot of rules discussion. And with more people waiting, there’s more pressure to move quickly when your turn comes around.
When a turn goes badly, it feels worse. You might wait twenty minutes, roll to miss the monster, and then wait again before you get another chance to do something meaningful.
In a typical session, the GM might take up roughly half the time — describing scenes, playing NPCs, explaining rules, etc. With six players at the table, that leaves each player with about five minutes of “spotlight time” per hour.
In contrast, with only three or four players, each person has more time in the spotlight — more room to be creative and less pressure to hurry. With fewer turns and interruptions overall, the story moves forward at a steadier pace.
More importantly, there’s a qualitative shift: play feels more like a shared conversation rather than a series of one-on-one exchanges with the GM.
You can also push some traditionally “GM-only” actions to the players → naming a random NPC, adding a detail to the environment, filling in a rumor, etc.
So the chart looks more like this, where each player is a much bigger part of the game:
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