Jabes.plays.RPG says:
On one hand, 8 sounds about right for a ship's crew / salvage crew. On the other hand, that number can be cumbersome in PbP if not everyone's a daily poster. But as others have said, that's really up to how comfortable you'd be managing that number, Verrain. And as others have also said, absolutely no hard feelings if I don't make the cut! 😄
I agree
When I started my Spelljammer Academy game I had 10 interested players. I made two games and ran them in parallel. It was only 120% effort compaired to just running one, as there was so much I could reuse. There is 4 chapters in the game, and at the end of each chapter I asked if people enjoyed themself and wanted to go on. By the end of chapter 2 a few players had to step out due to IRL stuff, and I merged two 5 people games into one 7 people game.
I feel that the game flow has been hampered a bit by so many players.
My suggestion to you @Verrain is don't go over 6 players pr game. Make 2 games of 4 players or one at 6, but don't go for 8