Be it TTRPGs, board games or video games, a group of four players is the standard size.
DnD and adjacent systems balance their challenges around a party of four. Most boardgames come with four colours for players to choose from. Most video game consoles only can connect four controllers and most video games like Smash Bros and Mario Kart only have four slots? Why is that?
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Bro straight up chose to ignored that LoL, Overwatch, Dota, CS:GO, rainbow siege are all 5 player based games. Just the most played games on this planet at the moment.
As for board games I assume it simply had to do with tables being rectangular, so since table has 4 sides, it made sense to make **table**top games for 4 players.
Consoles started with 2 controller slots. When somebody decided to add more it didn’t make sense to make it 3 or 5, since how the hell will you position those slots symmetrically onto the console. Adding 2 more just makes sense. Also its easy to split screen into 4 equal parts when playing hotseats, 5 would be a nightmare.
Honestly, it’s probably a bit innate to how humans work, much like the Dunbar number (~150 people you can maintain social relationships with). These kinds of things tend to show up in a lot of organizational capacities later on, because they’re just how humans work. 4-5 people is about how many you have over for a small dinner party, or for a board game night. It’s the max number of people to have a brainstorming session or do a group project with in school. It’s how many chairs you usually have at your table.
It’s just how many people you can have around where you can give them all attention.
There probably isn’t a single reason that covers every type of game but for video games split screen almost certainly dictated a lot of it in the early days. Unless the game is turn based, in which case the max players is usually more variable, the maximum number of players needs to be neatly divisible by 2 or you have to split the screen in weird ways. Going to 6 is going to give you very little screen space for each player whilst 2 probably isn’t enough for a large number of families.
For RPGs and the like the systems also get more complicated as you chuck in more characters. You end up with more side conversations, interactions, time between turns (if applicable) and so on.
The [average persons per household](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/) has also never exceeded 4 in the US, or most other developed nations, so a maximum of 4 with support for 2-3 players is probably generally just accepted as the sweet spot both from a demand and practicality perspective.
If I had to take a stab at it, four makes sense for many board games because four people can each sit at one side of a square or rectangular board. For video games my hunch is that it has to do with how much you can split the screen for multiplayer. Splitting it in half makes sense, but what about more? Thirds aren’t as intuitive to split a screen into when you could just halve the screen and then halve it again to get four spots. You can even play with three and have the unoccupied section be filled with data like a racing game’s map. Naturally, if you have more than four then the screen splitting just gets worse and impossible to see anything. While Smash Bros itself wasn’t split screen, it shared a console with many that were so the convention already xisted. I could guess ttrpgs follow similar logic to the board games but not sure.
Honestly I’m partially commenting just to come back and see if other people have more compelling answers.
4 was the most you could do with split screen before it was impossible to see anything useful. CRT TVs were very small compared to even entry level flat screens today and the resolution was very poor by today’s standards. Couldn’t say about other games but for console gaming it was the best option, at least until online gaming rolled around.
The “roll up” board game TL;DR: **the game manufacturers did their research and determined that four players (with downsized play options for two or three) was the best demographic choice**, and this number extended into the evolution of other forms of gameplay.
Here are some of the reasons for four being the number.
* It’s the right “family” number. The standard customer’s family back in the last century when board games were originally popular was two parents and two or more kids, so parents could play with their children, or kids could play with their friends. Two adult couples also made for four players when company was over.
* Board games copied the card game model. Bridge, cribbage, pinochle, and many other card games that involve a scoring or a multi-hand element supported four players as the default, but not six because the cards would run out unless you shuffled 2 decks together.
* There is more depth of strategy with four players than two. Temporary allegiances that gang up on the player with the best position are not possible in a 2-player game. Conversely, things can take too long and get too complex with six. Too many players means more it takes more time to get to your round, and in games where you can do a fair bit during your moves, you could be waiting forever for your turn.
It’s not always been that way for video games, by the way. The majority of PvP or co-op older video games were at most two-player. Reasons for this are that screen real estate was precious and most gaming consoles of the time came boxed with two joysticks and you had to buy more if you wanted to play a 4-player game. Even now a six-player split screen would be cramped, and six active players running about on a single screen could get confusing. Yes, there’s tons of exceptions to this.
For video games: TVs have gotten a lot larger and higher resolution now, but it can still be challenging to get more than 4 players in the same sitting area with enough screen / pixel density to clearly show each player’s gameplay.
For board games: the more players there are, the harder it is to gather around the table, and for most games this means waiting longer for your turn.
Board game developers also have to include extra components for more players, raising costs, which may not be worth it depending on how fun the game is at high player counts.
In general: 4 players is also just a nice number because it can also divide the players into interesting teams such as 2v2 or 1v3.
In TTRPGs, the simple answer is that every player adds more overhead, more time that the other players are potentially waiting for the GM to get around to them during a particular scene or combat round. In roleplay-heavy games, it means there are more character backstories to consider and accommodate, which is more work for the GM.
Geometry. The reason is geometry.
Want to divide a TV so multiple people can play? Half or quarters was the most practical at the time before wide spread online gaming was an option. So 1-4 players made the most sense for video games that supported simultaneous multiplayer.
Want to play a board game? With a square table and one person per side you can hold your cards parallel to the edge of the table and your opponents can’t see anything. Early card and board games were therefore generally 2-4 player affairs. 4 also works well for paired games like Spades or Pinochle, where you can sit opposite your partner.
But outside games where hiding information or displaying it on a square screen was necessary you see many games without these limits, especially sports. Basketball has 5 per side, football (both American and soccer) has 11, hockey has 6.
For turn taking board games, 4 people feels like the upper limit before you start spending ages waiting for turns as others go. Some games solve this – I like 7 wonders (which plays up to 7 people) as you are all taking your turns in parallel, so there’s less downtime.
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