D&D 5E How fast do you play D&D?

[DMCF]

I saw the topic and thought:

"I roll my dice a quarter mile at a time."

I DM three groups:

1 Online game - Dragonlance since April. Lvl 4
1 Online game - Forgotten Realms since Feb. Level 4

Wed. Adventurer's guild: Lvl 2 currently. We start OotA tomorrow. We did some pre-adventures where I got them to level 2 first. I'm afraid they'd die if we started at level 1 and I wanted more time to read the adventure.

Last Season AG: We had people cycle in and out a lot. It was hard to get the group past level 3. I started awarding some heavy XP bonuses for awesome roleplay. We ended up around level 5. Didn't finish the adventure but everyone had fun. I did a pretty epic 4 hour endgame with the sphere's of destruction and drastically changed the landscape of the Dessarin Valley.

 

[jbear]

We play probably 3 times per month; sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the time of year. Each session probably lasts 3 to 4 hours. We began our current campaign (Hoard of the Dragon Queen) in January and the group is currently at level 4. They have been at level 4 for ages as they were hooked by the 'Murder in Baldur's Gate' sidetrek adventure I threw at them because I wanted to bring the city to life while they waited for the Cult's carvans to arrive. (So ... appx. 1 level per 2 months, maybe a tiny bit more).

I decided to not track xp during this time in Baldur's Gate, as it would have levelled them up way past where they needed to be level-wise for the rest of Hoard of the Dragon Queen to remain challenging without me having to do too much adjusting. That being said, I decided to make their adventures there be a way that they encountered certain magical items instead, and when they complete the adventure I will level them to 5th level, giving them 1 level advantage above the expected level of the stage where they are at for the rest of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, which I think should be fine.

They have reached a stage in Murder in Baldur's Gate where there remains but 2 climactic events and the grand bloodsoaked finale left to happen, which will coincide with the Cult carvan's arrival in the city. So 5th level is just around the corner (if they manage to survive...).

 

[Lanefan]

Looks like everyone so far in this thread is levelling pretty fast by my way of looking at it...so, a corollary question: how long (in years, or months for the extremely short-lived) do you want and-or expect your current campaign to last overall?

Me, every time I start a new campaign I go in with the (probably naive, but what the hell) intent that it'll last for the rest of my life or as long as people want to keep playing it, whichever comes first; so far I've had 'em last 10 years, 12 years, and 7+ years. And pretty much the only way to achieve this is to either somehow slow down the levelling rate to a relative crawl (recommended) or end up experimenting with 75th-level characters (have fun with that!).

I'm not the least bit interested in doing all the world-building work to then only use it for a year or maybe two.

Lan-"it also helps to have more than one active party running side by side"-efan

 

[Cristian Andreu]

Our main current campaign, set in Planescape, has seen a single level up for the PCs since it began two years ago. Then again, it began in 15th level.

Regular schedule is one game every 3-4 weeks, lasting 5 to 8 hours. Sometimes we can hit a dry spell and play barely once every 2 months, other times we get lucky and manage to fit one session every 2 weeks, but once every 3-4 weeks has been the average for the past 10 years or so (before that we managed a more consistent twice-a-month schedule). I have to say I find it a very comfortable rate, specially considering we're all in our thirties now, with works and families to take care of <knocks on wood>.

In campaigns starting at low levels, I'd say PCs level up every 5-6 sessions.

 

[Creamsteak]

My group probably levels every other session playing for 4 hours per session. We play once per month on average. I tend to cut down on non-story encounters. I realize this isn't ideal to create the challenge that the game should have, but my group is so incoherent that they are still challenged by even one or two encounters per adventuring day. We still find this fun, and that's what is important. Pacing and maintaining a sense of a story are incredibly interesting topics to me that I'd love to talk about in more detail. They vary so much from group to group. It's actually one of the things I think takes the most skill or experience to adapt to. It's like being an improvisational performer. I mess it up sometimes.

I'm also running for a much more mixed group in terms of what they want out of the game than what I ran for 5 years ago.

 

[Henry]

My 5e Group is on an intentionally accelerated pace, to see what each level is like and how it plays. So far, after about 40 hours, they are level 5, so about 8 hours of gaming per level. First level came after only one session, but most of the others have been two levels a session.

I'm finding that for future reference, I'm happy with sticking around levels 2 to 4 for a while, because it gives the PCs enough prowess without giving them the really physics breaking stuff. They just made level 5 so part of my challenge is going to be incorporating more of those physics-defying spells into solutions for things.

 

[Arcshot]

My 5e Group is on an intentionally accelerated pace, to see what each level is like and how it plays. So far, after about 40 hours, they are level 5, so about 8 hours of gaming per level. First level came after only one session, but most of the others have been two levels a session.

I'm finding that for future reference, I'm happy with sticking around levels 2 to 4 for a while, because it gives the PCs enough prowess without giving them the really physics breaking stuff. They just made level 5 so part of my challenge is going to be incorporating more of those physics-defying spells into solutions for things.

Same for my group where I try to level up the PCs in each session since we only get together for a game every few months, to experience what each level has to offer. I would reduce the pace if we can meet up more frequently.

My group's PCs just attained level 5 too. As you have mentioned, it is from this point onwards things can start to get kind of "gravity defying" but as a DM I am also looking forward for more creative situations arise from it.

 

[S'mon]

Looks like everyone so far in this thread is levelling pretty fast by my way of looking at it...so, a corollary question: how long (in years, or months for the extremely short-lived) do you want and-or expect your current campaign to last overall?

Me, every time I start a new campaign I go in with the (probably naive, but what the hell) intent that it'll last for the rest of my life or as long as people want to keep playing it, whichever comes first; so far I've had 'em last 10 years, 12 years, and 7+ years. And pretty much the only way to achieve this is to either somehow slow down the levelling rate to a relative crawl (recommended) or end up experimenting with 75th-level characters (have fun with that!).

I'm not the least bit interested in doing all the world-building work to then only use it for a year or maybe two.

Lan-"it also helps to have more than one active party running side by side"-efan

My 4e D&D campaign is designed to last the 5.5 years (early 2011 to late 2016) it takes to get from level 1 to level 30 at around 4 sessions to level and playing 3 hours fortnightly, currently at
level 25 after 92 sessions and would expect something like 110-115 sessions total.

I've run a bunch of ca 30 session, ca 2-year campaigns in the 2000s. My current Pathfinder
campaign is most like that, next Sunday should be the last session, session 34, having
run January 2014 to end September 2015, 1 3/4 years.

My Classic D&D Karameikos campaign is a weekly sandbox running since start of April 2015, PCs currently around 5th level mostly, not sure when it will end, basically should run indefinitely while I have
players, the way BECM is I could run it to 36th level no problem.

My 5e D&D online Wilderlands sandbox started in March 2015, building on prior campaigns (1e, LL, 4e etc) back to ca
2009, currently weekly. 35 sessions and PCs ca level 7-8 currently. Judging by past experience this will run until there's a TPK; if no TPK I'm happy to run it indefinitely and it looks to have a lot of legs. In the 5e rules PCs cap at 20th
level and get GM-mandated Boons after that, which looks very manageable - I'd probably
say "you can have this Boon or can choose a Feat in lieu", per the sidebar in the 5e DMG.

Is speed of levelling an issue in 5e sandbox? Not really - it seems slow enough in my two sandbox games (5e is super-fast at low level, slows down a lot from 5th/6th, should speed up from 11th. The Pathfinder group have often levelled up in 1-2 sessions though, that felt too fast to me. I guess my
5e group should reach 20th long before the Classic group reach 36th, but in both cases
it's going to take a long time, maybe some time in 2017 for the 5e group. If the 5e player characters avoid TPK, reach max level, and
want to retire, that would be fine - but I want to give them a chance to shape the world
for future campaigns.

 

[aramis erak]

Let's see... my home campaign has about 6 months of play, at about 4 hours per session, and they're somewhat into 6th, but they play slow.

 

[Li Shenron]

My D&D friends and I are working adults with many life commitments, such that we can only meet up for rpg on an average of once per 2.5-3 months. Each session is about 8-12 hours. From the last few sessions, we see PCs levelling up one level per session. With 4 sessions already into our current campaign, PC is now 5th level each.Just wondering, how fast do you play D&D, based on level gain over time?

Hard to say yet, because in 5e we are at our first campaign (before, it was really just playtesting one-shots), but currently we also meet once about 1-2 months, and level up once per 2-3 sessions.