"An hour of fun packed into four hours"

[Greenfield]

The title line came from the wife of a gamer, having seen how an afternoon's session went.

Does that describe your games?

How would you change that?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't know if you are aware of the origin of that phrase, but it has illustrious backstory:

One of the wives of a member of my brand team at Wizards famously remarked, on watching her husband’s weekly D&D game, that it was “20 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours”.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/columns/299860-4-hours-w-rsd-who-am-i.html

Cheers!

 

[Plane Sailing]

And on topic? My games have never been like that. It has typically been 6hrs of fun packed into 4 hours!

 

[Jimlock]

I'd say it depends on how many minutes (hours?) you actually stop playing the game, and become a rules-Lawyer instead.

 

[Greenfield]

Please define "rules lawyer".

 

[Dandu]

Yes?

 

[Jimlock]

In respect to your OP and my answer, I'd say that the rules-lawyer is the guy who's gonna cut right into the drama/action of the game, will "force" a pause so as to open all books available and make sure that everything is done by the book. One or more guys like that can easily double (at the VERY least) game-time.

 

[kitcik]

We have fun for the entire 4 hours. Some of it is in-game fun and some of it is out-of-game fun, but it is all fun. Even rules-lawyers can be fun if you respond with the appropriate barbs and sarcasm.

 

[Croesus]

The title line came from the wife of a gamer, having seen how an afternoon's session went.

Does that describe your games?

How would you change that?

Sometimes.

The most common reason I found for this was distraction, most often caused by kids. It finally reached the point that I told the other players that if they had to bring the kids, I'd happily play a board or card game, but not an RPG. We literally had games with four or five players where, for the entire session, no more than two would be at the table at the same time because some were always off taking care of the kids' needs. Not fair to the kids, the other players, or the GM.

Of course, now that some of the kids are just about old enough to begin roleplaying themselves, this is a problem that should become a boon.

 

[Greenfield]

Well, the only "rules lawyer" type activity we indulge in is to laugh at some of the odd rules. And we usually do that at the start of the session, while waiting for stragglers to arrive. (We have one player, a nice lady, who is consistently an hour late. She just is, and we've come to expect it.)

My group got a good chuckle out of the idea of dunking a character's head in water when they're out (i.e. below 0). The drowning rules say they should fail the Drowning save and come to zero hit points immediately. Thank you, whoever it was that pointed that out.

We also agreed what should be done to anyone who tried the trick of summoning a Wight to drop us a level, crafting a bunch of stuff, then using Greater Restoration to undo the Exp expenditure. Their character vanishes in a puff of illogic!

While ours could never be described as an "organized gaming group", I have to admit that I'm one of the biggest offenders. Still, I think I'd like it if we managed to get more game action in amidst the meta-game conversations.