How many sessions does it take for your group to complete an "adventure"?

[Nifft]

What I voted for is what I consider "story arcs" rather than adventures proper.

Four sessions usually, but up to six.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Serendipity]

I went four - five; that's with five players and sessions running to about 8 hours long. This is based on a fairly standard length series of published adventures.

 

[maggot]

To play through War of the Burning Sky at lower levels, it took 5-6 per adventure. I'm sure it would be much longer at higher levels, but the campaign never made it that far.

5-6 is about how long it takes to run an amount of material that feels equivalent to a module.

 

[Lanefan]

Depending on the specific adventure, the fastest we'd get through one would be maybe 3-4 sessions and the slowest can take up to 25 sessions or more i.e. well over half a year. So I voted 10+ as I think that's the average.

That said, I don't usually time it by sessions but by real-world months - a good big adventure takes 6 months or more, a normal one takes 3 or so. We try to run every week but that's not always possible...an average year in a typical game would have maybe 43-49 sessions.

Right now, my new campaign is still on its first adventure...still trying to get nicely stuck into it, in fact...and has played 7 sessions including one for roll-up in mid-adventure when they lost half the party and had to reload. My rough guess it they'll be at it for another 10+ sessions...

Lanefan

 

[Gilladian]

We play very short sessions - on average about 3 hours - because my concentration goes after that. I could play longer, but I'd need a long break in there. We can play through a mid-sized dungeon adventure or a short module in about 3 sessions, on average, though they'll sometimes run to 4 if we get really wrapped up in a session of roleplaying.

When I write my own adventures, it's harder to tell when they start and stop, so I'd have to say it's probably on average about 4-5 sessions of something "I wrote" and then 1-2 modules and then another 3-5 of my sessions. Those are the ones that actually advance the overall campaign arc, but they take a lot of time to prepare, so I spread them out.

 

[Woas]

In that case, I voted 3, but thats not really the majority of the time. the 3 party would need a coalition majority to win. It's more like 3-7 an a strong "we don't do "adventures"" party.

...that is, if the votes were make-pretend political parties.

Don't worry about it. I just included that as a very rough guideline. However long "adventures" tend to be for your group is what matters.

 

[Sparafucile]

well they just completed session 51 and still haven't completed any of the adventures they started. although, they certainly have finished a few of the encounters.

Hey, at least you're keeping track of the number of sessions. . .

I voted for 4-5. I do use story arcs, though often it is the PCs who come up with their own. I'd call an "adventure" anything with a beginning, middle, and end:

Beginning: "That theif just took my coin purse. Get 'em!" *Draw Swords* *Chase*

Middle: "He went down the alley. Oh look, he's got friends. Cut 'em down boys!" *Parry* *Stab*

End: "Oh look, they all had coin purses of their own. Neat!" *Loot* *Loot*

Now, if the thief gets away at the Beginning, then the Middle can take several sessions before they can track him down to get to the End. If, on the other hand, the PCs proceed directly to the End, then they might still find an entrance to a sewer hideout in the alley. In this case, everything they did in the inital arc was actually just disguised as the Beginning of a longer arc. And so on . . .

 

[Fenes]

It varies greatly, and also depends on the definition of what is an adventure. One session may be just a trip from A t B, another may have a complete "hear about problem, solve it" adventure.

 

[kensanata]

I've run Paizo GameMastery modules as sidequests in my campaign and found that I needed five sessions, each about 3.5h long.

I've run Paizo GameMastery modules as one-shots on holidays and found that I needed one to two sessions, each between 8h and 10h.

My own "adventures" as part of my campaign usually take around three encounters and are finished in one or two sessions, each about 3.5h long.

As the first data point seemed like the most relevant, I answered 4-5.

 

[DragonLancer]

About 3 sessions of 3-4 hours on average.