Game size poll

[llamabeast]

Recently I've been running quite a few games that I've not been in myself. When choosing parameters, I'm sort of flailing around, guessing what I'd like to play myself. The one I'm really unsure of is how big the game should be.

Now, I think huge games are really exciting. Having 22 players or so is really cool. But after a while in such games, I sort of begin to suffer a sense of hopelessness. There's no way I can ever conquer a map that big, and obviously the game will go all weird and late-gamey a good while before it finishes.

Small games lack the big game excitement, but can still pack some really interesting gameplay, and are feasible to finish. They are also missing some of the more interesting diplomacy of the bigger games though.

At the moment I'm leaning towards running games with 8-10 players I think, as a compromise. But really I may as well run whatever people are most keen to play in. So please let me know your thoughts.

Also I've been running quite a lot of games for newish players recently, so the same questions apply there. Should I throw them in at the deep end with a huge exciting map full of different nations? Or just go for smaller games? I would like to know what people think.