Current world record

[NoOneofConsequence]

Can anyone tell me if there is a standing world record for continuous D&D playing and what it is?

 

[Morrus]

Eeek. Anyone got a Guinness Book of Records handy? Would this even be in it?

I know that the longest game I ever played was for about 26 hours, back when I was about 17 or so. It was a sponsored game-a-thon for charity, but was really just an excuse for my friends and I to play D&D all night. We did make some money, though, although I can't remember which charity it was for!

Sadly, I can't seem to do that sort of thing any more. After the 5 hour mark, I start to flag...

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

I've checked Guiness - no mention of D&D that I can find.

I vaguely remember a reference to a record attempt from the early eighties - I think it was in a Dragon around issue #60, but I've got no solid leads. I just thought if someone knew, or knew where to look.

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

Yeah, in Dragon issue # 80, pg 54 it states that four members of the Broward Game Players Club in Hollywood FL played D&D for 100 hours straight.

Of course this was back in 1983, so that record could have been broke...

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

... also in Dragon issue #175 (which was dated 1991), someone wrote a letter to the editor stating that their cousin broke the record in 1984 with 110 hours. The editor's comment was:

"We've stopped keeping records on who's played the longest role-playing game and how long the session lasted. We are also not sure we want to recommend that anyone stay awake for any period over 24 hours doing anything, even playing a D&D game. It isn't particularly good for your health."

Aside from this, I think it would be fun to hear other's tales about "endurance" D&D. Yeah I remember back in the day (about 15 years ago), we played for about 20 hours straight. Of course we drank about a case of Jolt cola.

Nowadays, I'm with Morrus and I crap out after about 5 hours.

(As I sit here reminiscing, I start to salivate) Jolt cola...

 

[Agback]

Aside from this, I think it would be fun to hear other's tales about "endurance" D&D.

Not D&D, but back in second semester 1987 I ran a very strictly time-limited miniseries campaign, which was under a positive deadline that it had to finish in the weekend after the last week of lectures (so that the players could start studying for their exams). There were seven weekends to play, so I constructed a seven-part 'collect the set to save the world' campaign, with one of the pieces of the set located on each of the seven continents, and an in-game deadline of one year and one day.

I screwed the pressure pretty high on that one, with the world gradually going to Hell as the year counted down, and the characters presented with gradually worse and worse things they had to do collect the set. They triggered a stockmarket collapse and world recession. They provoked a limited nuclear exchange. Nuclear Winter had started. And the players were determined that it was all going to work out okay, if they had to hold me down in my GMing chair until it did. Sessions began to run later and later. Players started wanting to start early and earlier. The fifth session ran from 7 pm until after dawn. The sixth session they wanted to start at 3 pm. By 5 am things were getting pretty freaky. Reason? The GM was tripping on fatigue poisons and caffeine.

Out of the seven PCs that started that campaign, only two stuck through to the end. One was dead (having walked up to a major villain and romantic rival with a homemade bomb and let it off). Four the other four were just not morally prepared to do anything more, even if it would save the world. Of the two characters still plugging away at the end, one had taken to sacrificing human hearts to the rising Sun (on the theory that this couldn't hurt), and one said that if only one breeding pair of humans survived what she had to do, then that was victory, by damn!

Those two players haven't been the same since.

"We've stopped keeping records on who's played the longest role-playing game and how long the session lasted. We are also not sure we want to recommend that anyone stay awake for any period over 24 hours doing anything, even playing a D&D game. It isn't particularly good for your health."

I endorse this policy. Back in High School, when I had nothing better to do, I tried to see down long I could function without sleep. About the 85-hour mark I started hallucinating.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Fenes 2]

I regularily pull 9 to 11 hour game sessions on a weekend, and I am 28. I almost never have problems staying awake through them, since I usually DM and therfore concentrate failry well on the game, which keeps me alert.

Still, back in the days a 12 to 20 hour special session was a regular once a year event during christmas season.