Marathon Sessions

[Jeff Wilder]

Nowadays I'm pretty wiped out after about five hours, but we used to do marathon sessions as kids. (In college we did the occasional marathon D&D&D session (Dungeons & Dragons & Drinking -- "natural 20! Take a shot!"), but I'm old now and such behavior would -- probably literally -- kill me.)

 

[Oryan77]

I'm surprised how some people define "marathon". When I was in school sometimes we'd start Friday night and finish Sunday night, that's a marathon session. 6-10 hours is just a normal session as far as I'm concerned. My current group plays for about 4 hours and I leave thirsty.

Yeah, our games are at least 7 hour sessions. I just don't see how anyone gets anything done in 3 hours. We'd probably have 1 encounter and 1 roleplaying scenario in a 3 hour period.

 

[MACLARREN]

Back from the long weekend of Midnight House ruled 3.5/Conan/PF/4e game and it was a total blast. To much to discuss but we were on the run all weekend and totally did what the DM did not expect. Thanks for all the replies. We hope to continue these marathons for a long time to come. It is a lot of commitment to pull of but somehow, we have managed to keep everyone and the wives understanding. My situation may change with a 2 year old boy and twin girls due in less then a month but I hope it doesn't. I guess we are spoiled by these and it seems to go by so fast. I agree with a lot of you on the 3 hour thing. I run a local campaign with a lot of the guys in this group that are local and some others and even then, we start at noon and go to 2 am. I cannot see how you get much done in a 3 hour period with the design of the game but maybe it is just us being slow. Thanks everyone and I hope everyone just continues to play as much as possible and that the game lives on. Later.

 

[Fifth Element]

I only recall one session in my life that I would truly call a marathon. It was when Dark Sun was brand-spanking new, so I would have been 15 I think. We started on a Friday afternoon at a friend's house, and we played literally all night into Saturday morning. So probably 15-16 hours or so. I was the DM and basically improvised the whole thing. I seem to recall the players fighting off an invasion by some creatures I borrowed from a Fighting Fantasy book that I thought fit into the setting nicely.

These days I play 4- to 6-hour sessions as a rule. All the players (including me) are too old for longer ones (both in terms of stamina and having the free time.)

 

[karlindel]

I regularly run 8 hour sessions, and 10 hour sessions aren't rare, so I don't really consider those to be marathon sessions.

I don't do much marathon gaming these days. Back in college, I went to Cons and would game for 12-16 hours Friday and Saturday and 8 hours on Sunday.

We had a few weekend long home games that ran from Friday night until Sunday early afternoon or evening (some of which included staying up all night on Friday and Saturday nights).

 

[darjr]

The Cavaliers group here are doing their 72 hours of gaming at a LFGS. I'll miss most of it but I might game some of it. I think some of those guys game the whole freaking time.

Mostly RPGA, but a good amount of other things get played and are possible.

 

[Henry]

The spirit is willing, but these days the flesh is FAR too weak. Usually, a 4 to 6 hour session is all we can manage.

On the other hand, I DID stick it out for a local gameday/con that ran from 9pm to 7am in the morning, and had a blast - but haven't done it since, because I slept all day afterwards.

 

[coyote6]

Back in the day, we did the all-nighters fairly frequently -- Saturday morning or just afternoon until the sun came up (and, in high school, one guy would realize he was going to have a long day, as his parents would be by in a few hours to take him to church).

 

[Lord Ipplepop]

It has been too many years since I hve done so; however, when I was in Memphis going to school for the Marine Corps, we would finish our assignments by 8:00 Friday night, start playing (usually dnd, sometimes top secret or others) and stop at 6:00 the next morning, go to breakfast, sleep until 12 go to lunch, and start the entire process over again... and that was every weekend. If a player had extra studying to do, or was involved in something else, they just didn't play- no hassle, their characters just jumped in when they returned.
As everyone had different schools of varying lengthsm it was a revolving cast; however, it was like that for the 9 months I was there... now adays, we <i>might</i> get in one marathon session ever great while, as we only play on Saturdays and I work Sundays.