All-night gaming?

[Moe Ronalds]

My gaming group is planning to pull our first all-night game. Since I have no experience with this, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for staying awake, keeping provisions stocked, and keeping everyone focussed on the game. Also, do you typically play the same campaign/adventure all night, or do you play several games? (Our adventures are usually fairly short, only taking about 3 and a half hours to run, and my Co-GM who I alternate usually just has one big battle as the entire adventure). Also, is it best to play an already running campaign or to do a one-off so that the storyline isn't tainted by sleep depravation-induced insanity? Thanks all!

 

[Sixchan]

You'll need a 2 litre bottle of High caffine coke for EACH player, and and extra bottle for everyone is useful. If you live in the UK, this should be Spar's own brand of diet cola, which has allowed me to do all nighters on Civ 2.

Eat only crisps/potato chips. Too much chocolate will make you feel sick, but crisps fill you up, so you know when to stop eating (unless they're Pringles).

If you can, take a medium length break (30 to 60 minutes) to simply read. This allows you to relax without sleeping.

And most importantly, play in a well-lit room to stop you falling asleep.

 

[Shapermc]

Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee.

I use to do this all the time when I was in High School. Boy I havent done that in a while.

 

[Airwolf]

My group has done this on two occasions, in the last 4 years. We have marathong sessions usually lasting 24-30 hours.

My suggestion, at least during the wee hours of the morning is to take a break for about 10 minutes every 60-70 minutes. Make everyone get up and walk around. If you are someplace where the winter is not nasty then go outside for a few minutes.

Of course, coke and coffee are always useful.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

i've played in a couple of all-nighters before, and they've been action-oriented one-shot adventures (and particularly combat heavy into the wee hours of the morning when everyone's about to pass out from lack of sleep )

one time, everyone was asked to bring something to eat with them (like a pot luck) so we wouldn't have to break for dinner. that, with plenty of beverages, kept the game going fairly smoothly

 

[Wolfspirit]

We've done that twice over the span of two years, both times the action was really intense and everyone was like "I don't have to do something tommorow, how about you? Ok, let's keep going until we finish this." 4 hours later "I think we should have stopped earlier"

Soda, adrenaline, and loosing track of time are what have done it for us.

 

[Greatwyrm]

We haven't done this since high school. The biggest thing we found is to be sure you can't measure the passage of time. Ban all clocks and watches. Absolutely no TV. Draw the shades on the windows. If you know what time it is, you're more likely to give in to sleep.

 

[King_Stannis]

the most we've done since having children is to go from 7:00pm to about 4:00 am. That was brutal and, most likely, won't be done again for a long time.

 

[Leopold]

get 1 cup of cofee and a gallon of water. Caffinee will tire you out, but water will keep you alive and going. Drink the coffee but CONSUME the water...you may have to pee every 1hr or so but you'll be wide awake while all the others are crashing....

hydration is the godsend to keeping a man awake..trust me...worked on a network for 3 days straight and drank nothing but water and some coffee...got the job done and then crashed but was awake the whole time...

 

[fett527]

Wow, all-night gaming, that brings back memories. When we did it we seem to have taken a little different approach. We would start around 5 or 6 pm with stocked provisions (caffeine, chips) and order pizza. Around 11-midnight we would make a Meijer run. This helped us get the blood flowing again and reprovision. Those Meijer runs were a lot of fun and a source of great memories. We did get kicked out once or twice. I would suggest a break like that to stay sane and keep the gaming fun. We have always enjoyed sticking with our main games no matter what instead of one-shots.