D&D 5E Starter Set - how many sessions did it took your group to finish the adventure?

[Wolfskin]

Just curious here: I'm interested to know, for those folks who already finished the adventure (or are about to), how many sessions did it took you?

Bonus XP if you also tell me how many sessions per Part.

 

[gweinel]

I have not finish it, but i estimate it would take 4 six-hour sessions. One session per part.

 

[Jake Johnson]

We've had two three-hour sessions. In the first session, we got through the goblin ambush and the first room of the Cragmaw Hideout. Our second session ended in Phandelin. The party returned the stolen goods from the hideout, and delivered the wagon. They are now at the inn, talking to the locals. We have our third session tomorrow. At the rate we're going, I anticipate five or six sessions. Timing will just about right. By the time we're done with the Starter Set, the PBH and Hoard of the Dragon Queen will be out.

As an aside, we're not pushing super hard to finish the Starter Set. We're chatting and role playing a lot. People are getting used to the the new rules and the game in general (for some). I think we're going faster as everyone gets into the story. Everyone wants to see what happens next.

 

[KarinsDad]

We actually are not going to finish the Starter Set. We played a 7 hour session (normally 8 hours, but the first hour was spent explaining the differences between 4E and 5E, and answering any questions about information found on the character sheets). The PCs got past the ambush, the goblin caves (where the party tricked some of the NPCs into coming to the cave mouth and then flooded them after the BBEG fight), had interactions with most of the NPCs in Phandelver (this probably took at least 3 or 4 hours of roleplaying), and three of the tougher rooms of the hideout (again, they avoided the front door in). They purposely avoided any quests that took them far from town. Given that they ended up going through about 17 pages of the adventure portion of the module out of 36, I would suspect that one more 8 hour session (or maybe a bit more) and they would have finished most of it.


Out of the 6 players, only one (my wife) did not want to play 5E after playing that one session of the Starter Set. She is not a big FRPG fan and does it for the social aspect (and to do things with the family). Even so, she ended up creating a halfling bard (before anyone else did, and she almost always plays a human paladin, so this is a big divergence for her). Another player wants some type of arcane caster (sorcerer, warlock, or wizard), another wants a cleric (having played the cleric in the starter set, she seems interested in them now), another a gnome ranger, and one wants a fighter/rogue. We have one player remaining who has not yet decided.

I find the fact that one player wants a halfling and another a gnome very interesting (and 4 players still have yet to pick race). I cannot remember the last player in one of our groups who took a halfling or a gnome in practically forever.


I think that the Starter Set was very influential in getting our group to transition over to 5E, and it also seems to be a bit influential in getting some of the players to play outside their normal comfort zone of PC type.

 

[Reynard]

We've had two three-hour sessions. In the first session, we got through the goblin ambush and the first room of the Cragmaw Hideout.

Interesting. Our session last night was about 3 hours and even with explaining rules and figuring out characters, we completed the goblin caves in that time. It probably helped a little that we did not role-play out party introductions -- instead everybody read off their bonds, ideals and flaws -- but I don't think we saved that much time. One of the things I liked most about the game was how breezy it was, not just fast but pretty effortless (we did have to look up a rule or spell now an again, though).