In the grim future of the 40th millenium there are no GM's

I have no clue if this is an approprieate place to post this but does it not seem like there are more players who want to play Dark Heresy than GM's who want to set it up? The GM's are outnumberd by extrodinary numbers for every one GM there are fifteen players that seem to pile onto them, I sorta would expect there would be more people hosting than joining and on top of that each game is only taking on five players. Hmm maybe this is more of a rant about the lack of games than the observation of the low chances of being drafted into said game... Still I find it rather amusing. I remember this one time afew friends and I gatherd to play every weekend that GM(i think his name was Ricky) was a cool guy we had a twelve player campaign and we were mixed units the norms(guardsman, psykers and tech preists) and the space marines, I myself was a Grey Knight TechMarine which was hilarious. This one guy who joined us was my friends bf at that time was a jerkoff by the name Carl was playing a ratling assassin or something basicly was our thief and kept trying to steal my purity seals, I had enough of that after six games and killed him in the worst of ways I could(of course I cleared it with Ricky first) and the next time he tried I severd his head from his body by using my servo arm to squeeze his neck til his head popped off LOL good times.

ManpontheMedic said: I have no clue if this is an approprieate place to post this but does it not seem like there are more players who want to play Dark Heresy than GM's who want to set it up? The GM's are outnumberd by extrodinary numbers for every one GM there are fifteen players that seem to pile onto them, I sorta would expect there would be more people hosting than joining and on top of that each game is only taking on five players. Hmm maybe this is more of a rant about the lack of games than the observation of the low chances of being drafted into said game... Still I find it rather amusing. This has been something that is universal in all game genres. The number of players will always outnumber the GMs but in some cases this is worst than normal due to the low number of people playing the system. The only known remedy to fix the problem is for more of the players to start running the system. That is the only way that I know of that will resolve the issue of GMs being overwhelmed by to many players.

Can't find a game you want to play? Solution: Run one yourself! This problem is far from limited to tabletop games. I remember playing City of Heroes, there was always a bunch of broadcast chat with people LFG; I'd often see 7 or more people all looking to join a group (max team size was 8), but rather than creating a team and running together, they keep asking for a group. ~_~; In CoH I would sometimes invite 7 people, promote one to team leader, and quit the team. In many cases, the group would go on and have fun (or at least those players stopped spamming broadcast chat). That approach obviously doesn't work for a tabletop game, but the more friendly solution of starting up a group and leading it yourself certainly does. I realize being a GM is more work than being a player, but it can be just as rewarding, if not more so.

The others have basically already summed things up nicely, but I would like to add something anyway. I GM my own campaign, and I would just not be able to gm another one. However, playing in a campaign still allows you to easily play in another. See the problem here? Not only do most people not want to GM, but usually they hog more than one GM in the first place. This is not to say people should never play in more than one campaign, of course, just another factor that exacerbates the problem. And really, I myself don't understand how GMs manage to even function with a group of players larger than 5... unless half of them are really quiet or something. *shrugs*

Indeed.  I'm trying an experiment right now: mandatory rotating GMing.  Hopefully this will both allow everybody to play most of the time, and also train up some new people who might be afraid to GM, in order that they can run their own games. But finding a GM is simultaneously a very hard task, and a very easy one to solve - start GMing.  But most people don't want to do that, for any number of reasons, so we're left, as the others say, with a massive player to GM inbalance. Finally, don't complain too much about those 'only 5 players' games.  Most systems (I'm not familiar with the one you cite in particular) are balanced for a team of 3 to 5 people.  Similarly, any table of over 6 people (for me, mileage may vary) rapidly becomes unwieldy, as you need to keep every PC the star of the show, make sure all are getting time to show off, etc.  A game with 'only 5 players' will almost certainly be more enjoyable for all involved than one with 8, or 10.

Bill K. said: Finally, don't complain too much about those 'only 5 players' games.  Most systems (I'm not familiar with the one you cite in particular) are balanced for a team of 3 to 5 people.  Similarly, any table of over 6 people (for me, mileage may vary) rapidly becomes unwieldy, as you need to keep every PC the star of the show, make sure all are getting time to show off, etc.  A game with 'only 5 players' will almost certainly be more enjoyable for all involved than one with 8, or 10. Indeed, although some games make it more obvious than others. D&D 4e's DMG outright says the game's balanced for 5 players in the rewards chapter, and has rules for adjusting the rewards if you have more or less than 5. Exalted always talks about playing with "Perfect Circles" -- one exalt of each caste/aspect -- which is 5 characters. (Well, Alchemicals have 6, but the 6th caste is best reserved for NPCs, and Lunars have 3 castes plus casteless, although they had 5 castes in the setting's history.) Unknown Armies doesn't really give any hints at party size, but IIRC all of the games in their "One Shots" book have 5 pre-gen player characters. I'm currently a player in a 7-player D&D game, and another 6-person game. I've run similarly-sized games before in various systems, and I'll admit, it's rough. Five is a more manageable number, though even that can get complicated depending on the system and the story.