[Rockopolis]

What do you find to be a good number of players?  Both in meatspace and (more pressingly for me) online?  I'm currently thinking half a dozen, tops; am I overambitious, too shy?

[Loki]

In meatspace I hate going more than 5, 6 if they can stay focused. More and too much side talk goes on distracting those involved with the GM.
Just getting into PbP so no input in that theater.

[James McMurray]

4-5 is good. Our group gets the most done when only 2 or 3 players make it to the session.

[Dakka]

A Tacnet R4 takes 6 people.  Just Sayin'.  Our group has fluctuated between 4 and 7 and I just started a game with 3.  Really, the beauty of Shadowrun is it can be played with any size group, as there are always missions to go on that can fit small groups.  My preference is for 5 PCs tho, and a TacNet R3 purchased with the proceeds of the first run.

[Charybdis]

We're running with six, including 1 skyping in from interstate (that would be me).

It's a mixed group, including runners with 1st Ed history and a couple of complete newbs (Note: Not me )  and it's a bit messy.

I normally favour smaller groups and just outsourcing the non-specialty components. If you're missing a mage, hire one through a fixer to run overwatch (as a repeated NPC). Same for a Hacker/Rigger

My favourite sessions have been with 3-4 PC's with a focus on meatspace activity. The games have just run much smoother when we're not overlapping domains (Real World, VR, Astral) and the crossover of rules there-in.

[Fortinbras]

My group is between 6 and 10. It helps that we have established relationships outside of gaming so we can take social ques in-game right off the bat. For instance, the game includes one woman, her husband, her son and her granddaughter. With that dynamic already established, getting a bead on how to keep my players engaged and how they can keep me focused is determined before we sit down to the table.
It also helps that I am a madman about preparation. Shadowrun is a sandbox game is ever there was one, especially with creative players and so many avenues of man, magic and machine to travel down. Knowing your players and establishing a baseline of what will go down when given the many options available is a must for that many people.
A double-edged sword is that most of my players don't know and aren't too keen to learn the rules. Not just "Does threading take an action?" rules, but "What do I roll to shoot things?" rules. While this can be a thorn in my side on multiple occasions, it does help by establishing what kind of game we want to play. We never waste our time debating whether or not hardliner gloves add to unarmed adept powers or whether they can make unhackable commlinks, because these things aren't entirely academic to my players. This means I get to spend more time describing the world and the people who live in it and less time describing the specifics of range penalties.
Now, I don't recommend playing with people who don't want to read more than a few paragraphs of the book, but it is helpful to decide things like Explosions in Space and Mario v. Improv before the game begins.
Mostly I like running for such a large group because it is diverse. We have people from age 16 to 60+, three Census ethnicity form boxes and mostly girls. Not my normal gaming experience. This leads to a diverse exchange of different experiences, ideas and thought processes that reflect the kind of diversity that would come from a group of ork mercs, human mages and elven technomancers.

I might not play something like Paranoia or CoC with that many folks, but for Shadowrun I say the more the merrier.

[aimlessfreak]

My gaming group went from around 10 people about 5 years ago to 3 to 5 now, and as much fun as we had with those big games 3 to 5 is much easier to handle

[The Cat]

For Shadowrun, 4-6 is ideal for me as a GM (and to a large degree as a player).  It's a small enough group to be manageable, but large enough to get some good interpersonal activity.  In Online games (chatroom play) I find that anything above 4 PCs starts to lag the game, and over 6 is extremely slow going.

The largest group I've ever had was in another game system where we had 15 PCs, 2 Assistant GMs plus the GM.  That was a heck of a game, but it was rough to manage.

[Kot]

I've found out - the hard way - that four people are the optimal team. I know DnD established that, but i never follow any roleplaying dogmas i don't check out myself. GM'ing for more is a lot more stressing and needs more effort, but the main problem is time.
As a rule of thumb, a game that leaves all people at the table satisfied, and lets the GM complete both the story, and the player's personal stuff, along with the occasional combat takes as many hours as there are players, plus half an hour of character spotlight for each of them... That's six hours. And for Five people it would be 7,5 hours, and so on...

[raggedhalo]

As a GM, 5 players is my maximum, and 3 players is my minimum.  5 is the limit of what I can handle but it means that I probably don't need to provide NPCs for outsourced roles.  3 is the absolute floor - below that it starts to feel a bit weird, you know?  ;-)

[Walks Through Walls]

When I was running my weekly game it had 7-8 players, but usually I had 5 or 6 show up any particular week. This gave good interplay and rarely did the team have to outsource for skills. It allowed for interaction between characters and NPCs with each player getting some "shine" time almost every week. I typically like a bigger group because it gives me as a GM more flexibility about what I can through at them.

When I GM the missions at Gencon last year I had one group Sunday morning that I went up to 10 players for since it was the last chance for anyone to play. It was a nightmare to keep everything in line, and I was constantly battling side conversations. I had two very experienced players who help out (one kept track of damage to NPCs for me the other ran the initiative order.) and this helped in combat (actually the combat was the smoothest running part because everyone didn't want to miss anything.) I wouldn't want to do it on a regular basis unless I had a really established group. I have run 8 players several times at Gencon and found that not bad to manage personally.

In PbP it really depends on the players you get no matter what size the group. I started a game here last fall and all of the players weren't dedicated to the game and just stopped posting so everything lagged and eventually died. The more players the more chance of a lag and implosion, but more players also give more opportunity to do cool things.

[LonePaladin]

Here's a good mix:

• A cybered street-sam (melee, big guns, take a beating and dish it out)
• A sniper adept (stealth, long-range, scouting)
• A B&E hacker (Matrix security, infiltration)
• A rigger (wheelman, drones, ECM)
• A generalist mage (astral security, magical toolkit)
• A face (negotiation, info-gathering)

So, with a team of six, you can cover nearly every role mentioned in the Runners Companion. Some aspects won't get as much specialization as others, but the gaps will be pretty small. This also has the advantage of including every aspect of character-improvement (augmentation, gear, adept powers, spells/spirits, software).

[savaze]

I played SR with 15 people a few times and I was glad that I had such gaming-centric group, but I'll agree that it goes a lot smoother with 5-7 peoples.

[CanRay]

I just want one GM so I can play.   

[nakano]

5 seems to be an optimal number based on my experience.  It allows a couple of hitters, a hacker, a mage and something else(typically a face type.)  It is also an odd number for party decision making, which is infinitely better then an even one. 

I have run tables with as many as 12 players(seldom more then 8 at a time, until an end of storyline combat.  OMG that was brutal) and also with only one, and honestly 5 seems to work best.  Good PC interaction, no need for support NPCs, good range of skills etc.