D&D 5E Starting first 5e D&D game - need some help about amount of sessions for campaign

Hey guys,

I'm going to start my first DM'ing in 5e for 3 friends in a few weeks. I've seen a lot of youtubes about DMing and 5e D&D but I'm still confused how to go about the game session lengths and how many sessions will be needed to finish a custom campaign from Level 1 to 20.

So the plan is that the campaign will be at least to level 15, possibly to level 20, with 3 PC characters.

The first session will be a session 0, where I will interview the players if they like combat, roleplaying etc. Try to get a feel of the amount of combat, exploration and social stuff.

However this gaming group has a tendency to get burned out with a game (we played Magic The Gathering for a few years, but that has pretty much stopped). Furthermore we can only play 10 sessions a year maximum to do this. Each session can take 4 hours max.

So I'm concerned that doing this campaign in the recommended leveling pace (->Level 2: 1 session, ->Level 3: 1 session, ->Levels 3-20: 3 sessions) will take me between 3 and 4 years... This will almost guarantee that we won't make it till the end of the campaign before we quit.

However I find the idea of doing a lvl 1-5 campaign a bit disappointing in scope, especially for player progression and the stuff you don't get to do.

Any suggestions?

The scope of a campaign has little to do with the number of levels you get through, and more about what the arc of the characters are. My personal belief is to not worry about game mechanics (of which Levels are a main part) and instead worry about what your players do and accomplish. You can have a successful campaign where the PC never level up AT ALL, because it is what they do with what they have that will be memorable, not the acquiring of "new abilities" every couple of sessions.

So in that regard... especially if you are only having ten 4-hour sessions in a year... make the adventure of each session the focal point, not the leveling up. To best accomplish this, (and because you think levels 1 to 5 would be more limited in scope)... I'd say start the PCs at Level 5 (the level where the game considers PCs now experienced veterans of the adventuring game) and go from there. Make each adventure interesting and compelling, with the understanding that the PCs are now strong enough to take on a good number of the terrestrial monsters in the Monster Manual with little fear of getting one-shotted. Which means you can now challenge them, but not feel you need to worry about them. Plus, each PC will now have their signature abilities (martial characters have Extra Attack, casters have 3rd level spells) so they will have plenty of mechanical abilities to keep them interested and occupied.

At this point you can then just play the game, see how they take to their abilities at 5th level, and then decide whether or not speed-leveling once each session is necessary, or if you can slow down, not worry about it, and bump them to 6th level a couple sessions in. At the end of the day... getting from 5th to 10th level in a campaign is just as compelling as trying to get from 1-20. And for a campaign that WON'T have sessions every single week for a couple years... in many ways will be MORE compelling then trying to cram 20 levels in.

Of course, that's just my opinion... I could be wrong.

Try something like Princes of the Apocalypse that suggests an event based levelling system.
It goes up to about 12 level and there is tons to do, so I doubt your players will get bored with it.
I'm running it right now and the pacing feels good. I'm chucking out clues fairly liberally to keep the pace ticking over.

If this is your first DM experience use one of the published campaigns to help you. In fact, I would recommend Lost Mine of Phandelver as it eases you into it and gets the party to fifth level. Easy then to switch to something like PotA.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using EN World mobile app

Fellentos said:

Hey guys,

I'm going to start my first DM'ing in 5e for 3 friends in a few weeks. I've seen a lot of youtubes about DMing and 5e D&D but I'm still confused how to go about the game session lengths and how many sessions will be needed to finish a custom campaign from Level 1 to 20.

So the plan is that the campaign will be at least to level 15, possibly to level 20, with 3 PC characters.

The first session will be a session 0, where I will interview the players if they like combat, roleplaying etc. Try to get a feel of the amount of combat, exploration and social stuff.

However this gaming group has a tendency to get burned out with a game (we played Magic The Gathering for a few years, but that has pretty much stopped). Furthermore we can only play 10 sessions a year maximum to do this. Each session can take 4 hours max.

So I'm concerned that doing this campaign in the recommended leveling pace (->Level 2: 1 session, ->Level 3: 1 session, ->Levels 3-20: 3 sessions) will take me between 3 and 4 years... This will almost guarantee that we won't make it till the end of the campaign before we quit.

However I find the idea of doing a lvl 1-5 campaign a bit disappointing in scope, especially for player progression and the stuff you don't get to do.

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Well, you have a few more problems you haven't realized yet.

Firstly, the time between sessions. Given your statements about game burnout, I'm gathering your players aren't the 'take notes and discuss game events between sessions' type. This means you'll have problems running longer plots because the players will forget about them. The solution to this is a very episodic game where each session is essentially self contained. Small dungeons are great for this, google the 5 room dungeon design concepts. Also, you may was to lay in some rails for the sessions. While railroading is frowned on, your 4 hour, once a month (or longer) sessions mean you should approach this game more like a con game than a more traditional campaign. Use clear, obvious plots to drive the story. To make the game worthwhile though, you're going to have to work on being very flexible in how each challenge is resolved. You can also allow a good bit of leeway on how the plot wraps up to accommodate unexpected play. But you're going to have to set a plot for each session and manage pacing very well. This isn't easy, I'd suggest starting by modifying some prewritten short modules (some of the AL modules may be perfect for this) and working off of those until you're comfortable managing the play.

Secondly, time between sessions. Yeah, same topic, different problem. How are you going to manage players not being able to make scheduled sessions? It will happen, and with your limited play schedule, this is more likely to end your game than any other factor. Establish in your session zero if you'll play with 2 or 1 player present and what you'll do with absent players. Also establish if it's okay to add new players if someone wishes to join.

Secondly b) -- as a corollary, is meeting-up the main driver for the slow schedule? If so, I highly recommend looking into Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds for a digital meeting space. This will allow far more flexibility in timing and schedule so that you can meet more regularly. Roll20 offers free subscriptions that still are pretty good at letting your run a game. If you're willing to spend a little bit of money on a subscription, take a look at both platforms and see what you like -- they both do a good job at running online games.

Thirdly, are your player's as new to the game as you are to being a DM? I ask because the questions you're presenting as session zero questions are... well, not questions I'd ask. instead, I'd focus on establishing the themes of play: is this a heroic game or are you more a collection of antiheroes and scoundrels in a morally grey world? How are you going to handle PvP? Is it not allowed at all, are you going to use one of the targeted player narrates methods, or is it a free for all? What are the major themes of your game? Exploration of new frontiers, courtly intrigue, skullduggery in the undercity, murderhoboing? These are the questions (and statements) you need to establish in session zero. Get everyone on the same page, don't necessarily ask for preferences. Personally, I do the polling for what players are looking for much earlier in the campaign process than session zero. Session zero is for setting clear expectations and assumptions for the game so that everyone can make characters that work with each other and the setting.

Finally, I'll echo what others have said -- don't plan out your game in detail at the start because you will be disappointed. This is one of the big mistakes beginning DMs make -- biting off more than their skillset can handle. We all started somewhere, and most of us will admit that somewhere wasn't great. Take small bites. My advice is to work on your actual running skills and less on the story part at first. Don't wed yourself to a plot, instead borrow predone material and use it in your game. That will help you get accustomed to adventure design while you're ironing out the management of the game itself. Trying to balance your story and your world while learning these things (and they take practice; I'm still learning after 20 years) is a recipe for disaster (one many of us DMs have stories to back up, sheesh, my first game is still an embarrassing trainwreck).

So, in conclusion, I'd recommend revising your approach and just run short dungeon scenarios to start so that you get better at running and you aren't constantly having to remind your players of the plot -- it's new and fresh every game! You can level after every session, if you like, so that next sessions's game is with new abilities and powers. Again, for the schedule you're saying you're tied to, that may be the absolute best thing you can do to keep your players involved and coming back for more. Even in a short, well paced session, you can hit the roleplaying hammer quite well. Maybe have your players build the fantasy version of the A-Team?

Fellentos said:

Hey guys,

I'm going to start my first DM'ing in 5e for 3 friends in a few weeks. I've seen a lot of youtubes about DMing and 5e D&D but I'm still confused how to go about the game session lengths and how many sessions will be needed to finish a custom campaign from Level 1 to 20.

So the plan is that the campaign will be at least to level 15, possibly to level 20, with 3 PC characters.

The first session will be a session 0, where I will interview the players if they like combat, roleplaying etc. Try to get a feel of the amount of combat, exploration and social stuff.

However this gaming group has a tendency to get burned out with a game (we played Magic The Gathering for a few years, but that has pretty much stopped). Furthermore we can only play 10 sessions a year maximum to do this. Each session can take 4 hours max.

So I'm concerned that doing this campaign in the recommended leveling pace (->Level 2: 1 session, ->Level 3: 1 session, ->Levels 3-20: 3 sessions) will take me between 3 and 4 years... This will almost guarantee that we won't make it till the end of the campaign before we quit.

However I find the idea of doing a lvl 1-5 campaign a bit disappointing in scope, especially for player progression and the stuff you don't get to do.

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Are you running one of the published adventures or making your own material? That’d affect how I’d approach things.

Without knowing that, I’d say to have the PCs level up each session. Start at level 3 and then have them gain a new level every time you play.

Have a rough plan for each session that corresponds to the level te PCs will be. I would not commit a lot of work to future sessions since it seems possible that the game could end at anytime. So do an outline with a sentence for each session, kind of showing the progression of the story and the threats the PCs will face as the campaign moves along.

Then work on the actual session that is next. Design the first actual adventure for session 1 and play that out. Once you’re done, you can then start wirking on part 2 in detail. This will allow you to tailor things to what the players seemed to enjoy. Maybe they didn’t take an interest in the group of bandits you hinted at and planned to be the villains in the next part, but they really lit up at the idea of exploring the old ruins that you mentioned casually. Don’t ignore that. Take your plan and adjust it to what they like. Plan session 2 to be about the ruins, and adjust your overall outline accordingly.

If you’re planning on using published material, then your outline will be easier. You can jettison anything in the adventure that doesn’t seem like it will interest your players, and pick the 10 areas you’d like to play. Don’t feel you must adhere to what’s written in the books....you can change the way you get from Session 1 to Session 2 and so on. Again, if the players show interest in areas you had not expected, then you can adjust future sessions as needed.

All in all, given the situation you’ve described, I would keep things fairly simple and straightforward. With lots of time in between sessions and a group that may lose interest at any point, you want to engage them but not overwhelm them. Political intrigue and lore heavy story are probably not the best idea. Keep it more “The Hobbit” than “Game of Thrones”. I’d limit long term planning to a rough outline only, and focus work on the next session only.

If you have a specific adventure, published or otherwise, in mind then it may be easier to give more specific advice.

In addition to what others have said, my two cents.

First, a big part of session 0 with brand new people can be as simple as "let's write up some characters and do a simple combat or two walking through how the rules work". Then go over some basic aspects of RP ... maybe ask them to watch a stream before the game.

Beyond that? I just give people a general idea of what their characters know about the world around them and a general idea of campaign ideas and themes I'm thinking of doing. I think you'll find that simply discussing your ideas will work better than doing "interviews" (or maybe that just sounds more clinical than it's meant).

As far as leveling, I think you're over-thinking it a bit. If you're enjoying the game at lower levels you can follow the XP guidelines or just have people level up when it makes sense. Want to skip odd levels to get to 20th? Or even just have an "intro" campaign and then skip several levels? Go for it.

When I've done the "we're going to skip ahead" I just let people know ahead of time the general theme of what's going on and we work out what they've been doing. Some people will give me details and a list of battles, others will simply shrug and not care. I've had people get married, start families or businesses all off-line during their downtime. Others are just "yeah, I hunt stuff". Different people will game for different reasons.

As far as the burn-out factor and how often you get together, this can be a factor. People are busy, D&D is just a hobby. I like to shoot for at least once or twice a month, but we don't always make that. Different schedules will work for different groups but if you do have long breaks between games be ready to do a quick recap and "Previously on..." intro. It will only take a few minutes to remind people where they left off.

Best of luck, and feel free to ask for help here! Most of the people are pretty nice, except for Bob. You know why I say that, Bob.

If you've only got 10 sessions per year, I suggest picking a starting point at either 1st, 3rd, or 5th level and planning tight episodic scenarios that begin and end in the same session. At the end of the session when the scenario is resolved, the party levels up. Or maybe goes up 2 levels, if you want to play up to 20th level. First level to 11th level would be my preference.

I've done this before with an Eberron pulp action campaign I called "Serial Hero." Each session's adventure was like a one-shot. They all started in a compelling action scene in a different location in the world. I'd play up the pulpy tropes and drench the adventure in the theme and flavor relevant to the location. There wasn't much of a continuous storyline except for the party's own character development, but there were recurring NPCs and villains from time to time. Everything was over-the-top with campy names and ludicrous schemes. It was awesome.

The hardest part of this setup is designing scenarios that are certain to be finished in the allotted time. To do this, I think the best method is to plan the beginning and end scenes well - those are the big budget set pieces that take a little while to resolve at the table. Then the scenes in the middle have to be something you can cut out depending on how much time you have left. You will also want to get the players' buy-in on the setup so they know that they're expected to follow the plot to its completion - this ain't a sandbox type game where they can just wander off and so something that isn't the planned scenario. They should also have a sense that time is precious and they need to be ready to act when prompted so that no time is wasted because you've only got 40 hours per year to play!

If you want to workshop this a bit, let me know. Good luck!

Just play. Forget about how many session you need to get to level 20 - most of us never get there anyway. Players want to try new characters, campaigns fizzle out, etc.

Just play and have fun. Some session you might cover more material than others - your players are human (I hope), sometimes they'll be distracted, sometimes they may have time constraints (arrive late or leave early). I agree with [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] that you might want to think about short, self contained adventures.

akr71 said:

Just play. Forget about how many session you need to get to level 20 - most of us never get there anyway. Players want to try new characters, campaigns fizzle out, etc.

Click to expand...

My players have just made 5th level, and are loving how much more powerful they feel with multi-attacks. Don't need to get to 20th level to enjoy the improvement in your character.

@DEFCON 1: I'm getting your point that I shouldn't worry to much about the leveling up. I'm a bit hesistant to start at level 5 though. Everyone is doing this for the first time and I'd like to ease them in more without having to think about all the abilities they already have at level 5.

@Nailen: I have the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure. I was planning to change it a little bit to fit in the general backstory of the campaign and then use it for the levels 1 to 5. Perhaps the adventure you mentioned would help making it easier to connect the dots and use it for the levels thereafter. Thanks for the tip!

@Ovinomancer: This could be quite the challenge, and I fear your are right about the problems that may occur. The players are not that invested in the games, but that may change. Two of them have played computer RPGs like me (and they like the story elements, but pretty combat focused), but they are unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons rule editions. My only experience is due to Baldurs Gate 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 2. Of the group I'm the most experienced but that isn't saying much. I have the PHB, DMG and MM but we have never done table-top like this.

I'm not too worried about people not showing up. We were always 100% attended with every game, but that's only due to having only 10 sessions a year. With more sessions that would no longer be the case.

I will have to change this session 0 approach like you mentioned. I was a bit short and clinical in my description of how I would go at it, I would just talk about it at the table giving more info about the game and how we would be doing this with the limited play options we have.

I'm not sure that using an online tabletop tool would help in ensuring we can have more sessions. It would definately make it easier to meet up but we live pretty close to eachother and the problem is more that each session would probably take 4 hours. Perhaps we can try have smaller sessions more often, but that wouldn't really help a lot I fear. I will discuss it with the group and see what they think.

@Oofta: I think I have started overplanning and overthinking this already (they advised against it in the youtube DM movies for crying out loud!).

I like the "intro" / "recap" idea at the start of the next session

@iserith: I would like to exchange ideas (I guess in PM) how to finish these self-contained 'episodes' in the time we have each session. I have a hard time framing that with XP gains so that each level feels earned.

---
Thanks everybody for replies. This really helps me in feeling more confident for starting this game.

All in all I have changed my way going into this:
- Go for more episodic / self-contained adventures
- Perhaps level each odd level so we get to see all the abilities, although I won't try that the first time.
- Have a session -1 before 0 before going further
- Don't plan everything at once, just plan one session at a time, get feedback and act on it
- Don't be too worried about leveling. Although personally I'd think getting a sense of improvement really helps getting hooked?

Anything I miss or more ideas?