Your Typical Game Session

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Saturdays at 2 p.m. on Discord (not weekly). Two to five players show. We play for about three hours, not counting the inevitable technical issues one or more players will have. I run theater of the mind, plus Google Slides slideshows and/or handouts pasted into the text channel. The slideshows include embedded sound effects and music files.

In person, it's much the same, minus the technical issues, but with me doing handouts of simple print-outs on "parchment" paper I purchased from Amazon, which always gets a way bigger reaction from the players than I'd expect, so I keep doing it. I have a curated playlist of sound effects from Michael Ghelfi I play with a Bluetooth speaker off my phone or iPad.

 

[Reynard]

Saturdays at 2 p.m. on Discord (not weekly). Two to five players show. We play for about three hours, not counting the inevitable technical issues one or more players will have. I run theater of the mind, plus Google Slides slideshows and/or handouts pasted into the text channel. The slideshows include embedded sound effects and music files.

In person, it's much the same, minus the technical issues, but with me doing handouts of simple print-outs on "parchment" paper I purchased from Amazon, which always gets a way bigger reaction from the players than I'd expect, so I keep doing it. I have a curated playlist of sound effects from Michael Ghelfi I play with a Bluetooth speaker off my phone or iPad.

You didn't say: what are you running?

 

[Umbran]

What does a game session look like for you?

I'm currently running in-person games at my home, with a long-standing group, First and Third Tuesdays of the month. Folks start showing up around 6 PM. Dinner is served at about 7 PM. Until folks are done eating, it is free-for-all chitchat. At about 7:30 the table is cleared, and play commences, and we play until about 10 PM - a little earlier, or a little later, depending on where the good pausing point winds up. There's often a break in there for dessert, as my wife likes to bake.

The online games I play in use Roll20 and Discord - no video, audio only. One of them runs irregularly, as some of the players have kids/family and summer gets weird. The other generally starts at 6 PM, runs until 9PM. My wife and I tend to target dinner to be at the start of game, because my wife is rarely done with work prior to that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You didn't say: what are you running?

Various games. I've recently been running Shadowdark, but I've also run 5E in the last two weeks. It really depends on who's playing and what the adventure consists of. My Shadowdark stuff leans toward nasty, brutish and short, so it's what I do for grimy dungeon crawls. Heroic stuff is 5E or something else.

By request, I'll be trying out Cypher this fall with a Tarantino/Coen Brothers plot I've worked out with some friends featuring the Samoan mob and UFO nuts.

 

[Golden Bee]

My spirit of 77 games were weekly, so I would be puttering around. I used Discord to share footage of 1970s commercials, to get people in the mood. Players really liked this.

My weekly Discord Sunday game starts officially at 2, with some players consistently early, and one or two almost always needing a call to get to the table. It’s set in the 1930s, Pulp Fate, and I run alternating weeks.
That means 50% of the time checking a module to make sure I understand everything, or checking player aspects to see if I can come up with fun compels.
Last week we did a horror-themed game (hooray for hellwood from pulse pounding pulp!), I put up the preview of 1930s horror movies… and everyone showed up 10 minutes early! So I think I’m gonna go back to that, to get the extra gaming in.

Typically most players will do video, and we take a few five-minute breaks. But it’s a “come having had” situation for meals. Generally, if people are eating they’ll just turn off their cameras.

 

[bloodtide]

For a game of good players I am all friends with on a weekend.

We start with a pre game, roughly two hours before the game will "officially" start. So 4 PM for a typical game starting at 6 PM. Most players show up right about at four, and everyone is here by 4:30. This gives us roughly an hour and a half to joke around, tell stories or whatever. Quite often we will have dinner in here too. Either something ordered....or for the spring/summer/fall we will cook out. Roughly 5:30 we will start the game set up and do any 'back ground' stuff needed for the game. Players might have questions, do 'downtime' type things and so on.

At exactly 6 PM the game will start. Everyone will be at the table, seated and ready to start. From that second, it's pure game play for the next several hours. A typical game will be till midnight, with two breaks, often 7:30 and 10:30.

 

[Gilladian]

We play in person, at my home, on Sunday afternoons. 2:00 - 5:00 is the usual, tho we often wrap 5-15 minutes early. Players arrive just before 2, we chat for 5 mins or so, then plunge in. We play pretty steadily with a few minor pauses. I am the forever GM.

 

[jdrakeh]

It often depends on what and how we're playing.

Last year, when playing a weekly Monster of the Week campaign via Discord, we didn't really have much pre-game discussion. As soon as everybody logged on, our GM summed up the previous session, then we directly jumped into play. Likewise, we didn't have much discussion after the game. When we wrapped up for the night, most of us logged off within a matter of minutes.

In the two D&D 5e games I'm currently playing, we meet up at the FLGS (on Tuesdays and Thursdays), and usually shoot the breeze for a half hour or so before we begin playing. When playing, everybody is engaged and our heads are in the game. When actual play wraps up, some of us usually hang out for another 30 minutes or so and, again, shoot the breeze.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My spirit of 77 games were weekly, so I would be puttering around. I used Discord to share footage of 1970s commercials, to get people in the mood. Players really liked this.

Where do I send the bribes to get invited to this game?

 

[Richards]

I have two campaigns going on right now, which is the norm for us. Both are in person, at my house (my bedroom is also my library and my gaming room), because that's where all the gaming gear is stored and it's too much to bring with us. Our gaming group is made up of members of my family (myself, my grown son, and my 16-year-old nephew who lives with us) and that of my co-worker (there's him, his wife, and his youngest son plays with us on Saturdays when he's not away at college). We each also have an older son that makes an occasional one-shot appearance, usually running a one-session-only PC when they're in town, and my granddaughter has a similar deal when she's in town on her vacation.

Our Saturday campaign ("Dreams of Erthe") is a 3.5 homebrew game where I DM. We try to play every other Saturday, starting around noon and ending up somewhere between 3:30 PM and 6:00 PM, depending on the length of the adventure for that session. No meals are involved but we do heavy snacking, generally a cheese/cracker/meat tray, cookies (we usually alternate between Chips Ahoy and Oreos), Cheez-Its and/or pretzels for the salty snack lovers, and usually some sort of candy (M&Ms, Swedish Fish, Twizzlers), plus I have our downstairs fridge stocked with sodas. The wife of my co-worker, our only female gamer, often makes and brings brownies, and on occasion BBQ cocktail weenies.

Our Wednesday campaign used to be run by my grown son, but after finishing up two full 3.5 campaigns we decided to let my coworker try his hand at DMing, so for the first time my son and I are on the same side of the DM screen. (We don't actually use a DM screen - all rolls are in the open for everyone to see.) That campaign is "Ghourmand Vale," set in a modified Greyhawk campaign world that was the setting for two of my previous 3.5 campaigns ("Wing Three" and "The Kordovian Adventurers Guild") and the sessions are nominally weekly (we cancel only when someone can't make it, usually because of vacations or a business trip), and they run from 6:30 PM to 9:00 or 10:00 PM at the very latest - my nephew has school the next day. Generally no eating during those sessions, just plenty of drinking (soft drinks only - we're teetotalers*).

I do up a Story Hour for each campaign in between sessions - it's nice to be able to go back and see what all we did in the past when seeing what campaign plot threads still haven't been resolved, as both campaigns involve homemade adventures.

Johnathan

*Specifically, non-judgmental teetotalers: we personally choose not to drink alcohol but think no less of those who choose to do so.