What is the ratio of players to GMs?

On roll20.net how many players are there to each GM?

Anyone can be a GM. You just have to step up and take charge. Create your campaign and recruit some players.

It's going to be tough to nail down a true ratio.  Some GMs run multiple campaigns simultaneously - I run two, and some people more.  On top of this, some players run their own campaigns on the side; are they players or GMs for counting purposes?

I run a few campaigns as a DM and out of my total 13 players I am sure that 11 of them have never DMed and I'm sure that one of them is a DM from time to time, during my 10 years of RPGs I've met four DMs and a lot of players

I make attempts to be a GM, but really as I have never succeeded ( being running a story until it's conclusion), I'm still just a player.

Well, anyone listed in their public profile as "GM of 0 campaigns" is a player for purposes of this count.

Before going online. I DMed 8 yrs of  face to face games then moved online due to moving to a area with no local gamers. Been running games online for about the last 6 yrs and right now I have 2 play by post games, 1 roll20 live game and play in another play by post game.

Ah, but my games have never been started. I'm just planning them. So that's a misnomer.

John, "GM of X campaigns" isn't a good indicator of GM status. Those games could be wargames where there is no GM. A number of my open 'campaigns' are games with no GM and no 'campaign'.  - Gauss

What you all seem to be trying to say is that "Truth resists Simplicity" which I'll credit to the Vlogbrothers, I think John Green.  About an hour ago I accepted that this topic was not going to yield what I had hoped: a number.  As of now I'm just trying to find the easiest way for someone to calculate an answer and provide me with a number.  This topic is about the ratio.  An integer divided by another integer.  A number.   One significant digit of precision is all I need: there are x*10^n total users, of which y*10^m are "GM of 0 Campaigns".  x, n, y, and m are integers between 0 and 9.  What is the answer? On a related topic in the same vein does anyone have an estimate in number form of the true ratio of Players to GMs given various definitions of where to draw the dividing line?

If you want to check this yourself you can do so. Go user by user and count the number of users that are listed as GMing campaigns. Here is your starting point:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/users/1" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/users/1</a> However, you may be doing it for a very long time. We currently have&nbsp;182657 user accounts.&nbsp; Additionally, how many are active vs inactive probably a factor as well. I do not have that information. :) - Gauss

There will never be a true ratio for unless you are willing to do the research, no one else will probably put an effort into it. If it is a number you want then "42" is a number. It is a good number. Best rule of thumb I have discovered is that for every 6 to 8 players there is 1 gm. Now how do you figure out the percentage for this site when you have members that are players that gm, gm's that player, players only, gm only. members that have campaigns and listed as gm's but are not active, ect.... There is no real way to&nbsp;quantify&nbsp;it more than the fact that there are more players then there are gm's. A safe low number would be 6 to 1 ratio or you can go 100 to 1 if you want to go extreme. Me I would go with the 6 to 1 or 8 to 1 ratio since that is about the size of an average group. Now you can get the percentage and apply it to the user &nbsp;base and that will give you a ballpark average unless you are seeking a very specific number then good luck and have fun counting.

42 is the best number. It is the answer after all.&nbsp; - Gauss

Out of 14 participants I have in my two campaigns (including myself), 4 are "players" using your methodology. &nbsp;Looks like there's 3.5 GMs per player, so why is everybody complaining about a lack of GMs? &nbsp;Small sample sizes be damned! I'll take a jinnantonix to go please.

Dave D. said: Out of 14 participants I have in my two campaigns (including myself), 4 are "players" using your methodology. &nbsp;Looks like there's 3.5 GMs per player, so why is everybody complaining about a lack of GMs? &nbsp;Small sample sizes be damned! I'll take a jinnantonix to go please. I was just pulling numbers out of the air since I don't have the time or the interest in doing a&nbsp;statistical&nbsp;count of who is who and who does what. I was just saying in my opinion a general rule of thumb is that there are 6 to 8 players to 1 gm. I stand by my statement of there are more players than gm's. I'm a gm but I'm also a player so each gm / player neutralizes their count to leave the ones that only play and the ones that only run games. I'm ignoring the ones that have campaigns but are not running a game in them and also the fact that 1 gm could actually host multiple games so no matter how you look, it boils down to one group of players to one gm which if you take a search through the LFG listings the eyeball average is around 6 to 8 people per game. There are some that are higher but there are some that are lower so you seek the average. One Djinnatonic to go as you asked.

Oh, I'm quite comfortable with the assumption that there's more players than GMs, tongue-in-cheek hyperbole aside. &nbsp;6 to 8 active players to each active GM seems perfectly reasonable, although I'm not sure that accounts for unattached players or people who would prefer to be in a group, but aren't currently. &nbsp; I'd be really curious about a breakdown between active users and total accounts, but I doubt it would be in the best interests of the devs to release the figures.

They might not even be able to give that type of numbers if they were willing to. I run 3 active games but my profile says I have 6. Well 3 of my campaigns are as the following : 1 is a western that might never go anywhere but I'm in that board pretty regularly, another one is the base for the two copies I have running now, the 3 campaign is just a board that I created so that various friends and people that are curious about what a paid subscriber gets can play with it. I promote everyone to GM so they can play with all the goodies that a mentor GM can use on the main server. My personal view about the dev server is that if you want access to it then cough up the money. I have no problem letting people play in one board to try out the dynamic lighting and such and other things that supporters or mentors on the public server gets to play with. When they make their own boards on their accounts they get to see the difference, sometimes they purchase a membership because they fall in love with some feature they feel they have to have for their games.

There's also probably the thousands of people that never check out the forums and don't look for people because they have all the people they need from having met in person and having just moved online or using roll20 as a tabletop tool. The worst thing about polls and surveys is that answers are weighted in favor of people that WANT to do the survey . I call people for surveys for a living so I know what I'm talking about. If we could actually get everyone's opinions and all that would be great, but it's impossible. Heck on doing customer satisfaction surveys we can't even hope to get more than 20% a lot of the time (depending on the product) And in open text with no quantitative numbers in the questions and not even having a selection of questions, you're not going to get the response you want. Now I could maybe come up with an appropriate survey, but then we would need an appropriate means of delivery the survey.

I suppose I can rephrase John "No Skype" T. 's question: are the devs able and/or willing to give the number of accounts that have at some point held primary GM status for a game in which at least one other person joined versus the number of accounts that have been a player in a game where there was at least one GM?&nbsp; That should mostly narrow it down to games where GM's are applicable to give us a good ballpark number. It doesn't really get us anywhere to be picky with the wording of the question as the only thing preventing an answer is whether the devs tracked relevant statistics, such as # of players that have been in a game with another person, # of players that have been a GM in a game where there was at least one other person, and et cetera.&nbsp; Those are the sorts of things you'd expect any business to track.&nbsp; Whether they'd be willing to actually release those numbers to feed our curiosity, I don't know.

Thank you.