How many members?

I've always said I wanted to keep things small and intimate, that I only want so many players as can stay happy on the site. With three admins and about 20 players who play between 1-5 characters each, we're in a good spot. The game world continues to grow, however, and I'm not necessarily afraid of reaching larger populations so long as we have the staff to keep everyone attended to. We're such a character-driven RP that many of our players move their own plots along while under the inspirational umbrella of our main arcs.

Right now, I think we're about midway there in terms of ideal population. Somewhere between 40-50 players and a few more staff and I think I'd be really comfortable. It's been great to find our feet with our current core group of dedicated folks, and I love them.

 

16 currently - good amount between 25-35 - perfect amount 40 - 50+ our RPG might need to adapt and change!

 

For my forum, I got 14 members and 3 staff... but aim for 50 members...maybe 100. owo

 

Right now I've got 20 members on my site (we're about a month old), a couple dozen more and I'll be content.

I find the most sustainable number of members for a smaller games is in the 40-50 range, like others have said. In the past I managed a forum with 200+ members and it was a lot of fun, but it was also basically a part time job! I would have to think really hard about ever running a site with more than 200 members. It's definitely possible, but you have to scale up the whole operation and have really good organization. And a reliable staff team.

 

I don't write on forums, so it's all coming from a background where we used to do this over email lists. I've found that anything over 10 is getting very difficult to manage. But I think the first reply in this thread said it the best, it really depends on your game, how it's run, and what the premise is. When you're a small ship with a few crewmembers, all confined to the same spaces, then ten people is more then enough to keep that fire going.

 

I don't think I've ever aimed for a particular number.
Having 3-5 active members who don't need their hands held to get started, and who genuinely want to write, are always better than 30-50 wallflowers who do little to nothing at all.

 

I have 39 on mine. Only like a few are role players though. I'd like to get some more active role players besides those.

 

I have five, though I do hope for a larger number as time goes on. We are brand new so....Generally a good group of an active 20 members would be good.

 

I've felt pretty comfortable with about 70 members in the past, but ideally I would love many more!

 

The game I run at present has 2 staff (myself and one other) and 14 members, all of whom are active and wonderful. We'll take as many as we can get, though!

 

I'm not sure that it matters, but I think I have a preference for smaller/more intimate sites than big sprawling ones. More than 30 people seems like a lot to me... Assuming they're all actually around/posting, of course. That's always the trick, haha. But I've been happily testing the site for a few months with only 5 people (including myself) so... I'm not that concerned with size.

 

Right now we have probably a solid 13ish members who reliably post. I want more members so that there's more diversity on the site and so that I don't constantly feel like I'm driving the plots as an admin, but I also recognize that it will mean more work for me in the long run.

 

For me I think the perfect balance is 10-20 active members. Though inevitably, people come and go, so our best times were probably having about 40 people who post, with maybe 15 of them being very active! More than that would be very chaotic I think, and honestly it's chill right now just having 5-10 active members... less member conflict, for sure!

 

It depends on the platform. On a forum, you can have massive communities because the platform allows for moderators and admins to structure things so that even a large amount of players can contribute and feel like they’re getting fun or at least interesting stuff done.

On Discord servers, I think the sweet spot is 30-50 members or so who are all moderately active. Everyone feels a bit close together where Discord is concerned, since it’s an instant messaging format, so people don’t need to be posting every single day… but new players will definitely lose interest if they don’t see any play or discussion happening in a server. You’ve got to be able to show that your playerbase is invested.

Also, I’ve been in a group on Tumblr before that had upwards of 800 members at a time at points… it was barely moderated at all and was essentially complete chaos 100% of the time. There’s definitely such a thing as too many members…

 

I believe we’re hovering around 8 active members right now? Considering our site is kinda “between” genres, only a couple months old, and still in beta-testing I think that’s pretty good so far! Definitely looking forward to more joining us.

 

I think it really depends on the setting or plot! Some really work with a smaller member base like a space-adventure type thing. You can have some great stories with only a few people due to a vast world to explore and really only specific roles that need to be filled.

The site I'm currently running is more of a 'the more the merrier' type thing so I'm aiming for a bigger member base with that one. Its a big world with plenty to do and the setting offers for everyone to interact with each other.

Just depends on the game and what you want to accomplish with it.

 

Currently, we have a nice smattering of members and don't really need more, but I'm always of the mind that more people means more threads, and more threads means more fun! I like somewhere between 5 and 20, and anything beyond that I don't feel like would be beneficial to a game depending on the genre.

 

I'm in exactly the same place. I've got 6 total players (including myself) and it feels a little thin sometimes, like things get slow when one person is busy, but I know I don't want one of those games with dozens of people. So, ten does sound like a good number. It's interesting seeing what other people think.

 

On my site, we've hovered around 8/9 long term players who contribute with the site. However, since they have been on the site for at least 5+ years, it's sometimes hard for new members to join since we've all had the time to get to know each other etc and I can understand that newbies may find it intimidating (even though my bunch are amazing!).

I'm always looking for & welcoming new members who can contribute to the game, plots, ideas etc and spark some muse into us 'old dogs'. It doesn't seem as easy as it used to be (when RP was on fire in the early 2000's) to find these new members who are willing to stay on, and my long-term members have found the site organically.

I do prefer quality over quantity, seeing as my members are able to create as many characters as they please.