How long, in real time, would you expect a campaign from 1-30 to take?

[S'mon]

Prompted by the Epic discussions - how long in real time would you expect a campaign that ran from 1-30 to take?

Eg doing a bit of number crunching, I expect to run my campaigns fortnightly, but with breaks for holidays etc that's about 20 sessions/year not 26. In my faster campaign I expect PCs to level up about every 2.5 sessions, every 3 sessions in my slower campaign.

At 2.5 sessions/level over 30 levels (allowing time for play at 30th) that's 75 sessions. At 20/year that's close on 4 years to reach 30th. At 3 sessions/level that's 90 to reach 30th, 4.5 years.

 

[Pentius]

We've been getting about 1 level per 4 sessions, so assuming we play 40/52 weeks of the year(because we do miss some and that number is simple for the math), it'd be about 3 years. I suspect it will take a bit longer than that, though, maybe 3 and half.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We've been playing every 2 weeks (with breaks) for about 18 months, and just hit 5th level. That translates into 9 years, 1-30.

 

[delericho]

In reality, the answer is "never". Even if we levelled up after every session, I still wouldn't expect to ever reach level 30. We have some issues with sustaining a campaign for long enough to do it.

However, in theory...

It takes about 10 encounters to level up, and we get through about 1 encounter per hour of play. With 3.5 hour sessions, that means we would need roughly 82 sessions to hit level 30, and since we play roughly fortnightly that would, in theory, mean we'd take a little longer than 3 years.

 

[Tony Vargas]

By the numbers, gaming every week, averaging 3 enounters per session, it'd take less than 3 years. If you could manage 4 encounters every session you might get it done in 2, assuming you rarely ever missed sessions.

IMX, though, it'll be longer, if you can get to Epic, at all. Campaigns often stall out by the time they reach Paragon. Even getting to Paragon is rather a lot of gaming, and there are all kinds of RL pressures on a group, not to mention desire to try other characters, campaigns, or systems...

 

[S'mon]

3+ to 4 years looks popular so far. So the typical campaign that started in June 2008 should be reaching 30th around June next year.

I think this may explain the relative dearth of Epic gaming - not enough time to get there yet! And slower campaigns may not even reach 30th within the 8 years that was the whole life cycle of 3e.

By contrast 3e was designed as 1st-20th in a year of weekly sessions, 2 years fortnightly, and actually the early levels tended to go by a lot quicker than that - you'd go up pretty fast by RAW, then hit the balance problems with high level 3e. I find 4e RAW has a slower initial advancement rate, though it's possible to increase it later by use of minions and lower level monsters, which are generously XPV'd.

 

[S'mon]

It takes about 10 encounters to level up, and we get through about 1 encounter per hour of play. With 3.5 hour sessions, that means we would need roughly 82 sessions to hit level 30, and since we play roughly fortnightly that would, in theory, mean we'd take a little longer than 3 years.

I find in practice it takes far fewer than 10 encounters to level up; however you very rarely get 4 encounters in a 4 hour play session. The one time it happened to me recently, there were only 3 players, so it ran nearly twice as fast as a 6 player game, I halve monster hp, and the 3 PCs earned an entire level's worth of XP in one 4-encounter delve. More typically, with 5-6 players I see 2 encounters in about 3.5 hours of actual playing time, average maybe 80 minutes per encounter, less XP per encounter as more PCs, ends up as about 6 encounters over 3 sessions to level. At full monster hp the fights would last about 50% longer - 2 hours - and I would need 5 hours or so per session.

 

[Dice4Hire]

My group would probably take 3 years, if we did everything by the book. In actualilty there is no way we would play from 1st to 30th.

 

[Matt James]

I didn't play throughout the entire series, but SlyFlourish's campaign took roughly 2.5 years as I recall. It was a blast.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Our campaign started in autumn '08 the characters are just shy of level 7. Six levels in three years means 30 levels in 15 years. i.e. never.