How Many Actual Sessions Do Your Campaigns Last?

Retreater · Jun 25, 2019

I had a conversation with one of my friends lately about how long campaigns actually last in reality (as opposed to the lofty goals of Game Masters, the ideals of players, and the intent of designers). While both of us have had outlier experiences of year-long (or two years long) campaigns, we found that in practice, it's been much shorter for an average campaign.

Despite the actual player composition, most of our games meet biweekly (with the occasional skipped session due to real world situations). We've found that most games last between 8-12 sessions (or in real-world time, between 4-6 months.)

Dannyalcatraz · Jun 25, 2019

Depends on whether the players like the campaign, whether there’s a TPK- or, in Paranoia, how many TPKs- and other factors. Some have lasted only a few sessions, others have gone years or even decades.

TwoSix · Jun 25, 2019

Averages about 20-25 sessions, which we occasionally mix up with shorter arcs to try out different games.

Hussar · Jun 25, 2019

We’re a bit longer. 3 hour sessions and generally about 50-80 sessions per campaign.

Nagol · Jun 25, 2019

If my campaign isn't working, 1-5 sessions. If I plan a specific limited run, (single adventure, until 5th level, whatever), typically 5 - 12 sessions. If it is open-ended, 12 to... hundreds. My current (non-D&D) campaign has been running semi-monthly since 2012. My last D&D campaign ran semi-monthly for 6 years. My highest session-count campaign was probably a CHAMPIONs campaign run twice a week for 4 years.

Tony Vargas · Jun 25, 2019

Let's see, my old AD&D campaign was weekly from '85 through '90 ...more sporadic after that... until wrapping in '95 I'd have to guess like 400 sessions. The amazing thing about that was that in 84-86, about the same group was also playing a couple of Champions games every week, and Traveler, and GURPS - we spent like 30hrs a week gaming: Thurs & Fri night, all day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon.

From 93 to 2002 I ran Mage/Werewolf, at first it was rotating with other GMs & my old AD&D, so every-other week or 1/month, then it was every week for a while, then rotating with a Champions! campaign, then sporadic, then weekly for the last year or so as we did the apocalypse and wrapped it. Maybe 200 sessions in all, including a short denouement mini-campaign set in the far-flung future of 2020... yeah.

From 2000 through 2010 I was in a regular group, we ran 3.0 and 3.5 for their full runs, then 4e, meeting almost every week for over 10 years, that's 500+ sessions, but we traded off DMing. Still, the primary DM probably ran half those sessions, easy.

It started as a lark, but "Pixies & Pirates" went from a 4th level continuation of The Crystal Cave in early 2012, to 25th level in summer 2018, and was weekly almost without exception - major holidays and the like - so over 300 sessions. (And we've just re-started it, so it may yet go all the way to 30).

ccs · Jun 25, 2019

To date all of the 5e games I've run, save one, have lasted 12-15 months (we play weekly, 4/4.5 hr sessions, occasionally missing a week.)
So about 60 sessions or so.
The short one only lasted 6 sessions before RL scheduling problems tore it apart.

Every 5e game I've played in , save one, has lasted 4-6 months. Again, generally weekly sessions, occasionally missing a week.
The long game was a CoS campaign that lasted almost a year, ending in (effectively) a TPK.

Umbran · Jun 25, 2019

Retreater said:
Despite the actual player composition, most of our games meet biweekly (with the occasional skipped session due to real world situations). We've found that most games last between 8-12 sessions (or in real-world time, between 4-6 months.)

My group uses a similar biweekly format (twice a month).

My first campaign with them was Deadlands, and ran... 5 years and one month.

We took a bit of a palate cleanser with (what for us is) a short arc that lasted 6 months with Atomic Robo.

The following campaign has been Ashen Stars, and has been running for... just about 3.5 years now? It is heading into some plotlines that the group may consider to be a good close to the character's stories.

practicalm · Jun 26, 2019

I like to build my games with some story arc and then the game ends when the arc is complete (or whatever the players ending up doing to resolve or ignore the situation).

Games can run from 25-40 sessions for me.

This way it's easier to switch to a new GM who now can do his story arc.

You could even have GMs list their game ideas and then players can select which games they are interested in playing and the GM is interested because they put the idea together.