Shane Liebling this is one of the games I think is exceptionally difficult to make work for that. Everyone is tied in so tight.
I’ve got this on my mind as well, given I have a possible occasional fifth player who might drop in. So I give him, say, The Mogul, right? If I don’t tie him into one of the fronts, he’s kind of on his back foot narratively. And it’s fun! I dig the process. Then there are all those bonds that he won’t have aimed his way.
In a perfect world, I’d run the damned thing with 6 players, take allll the playbooks. Heck, at that point I’d even open up the space-fantasized versions of the DW books.