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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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.
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