haakon1 said:
There's an interesting phenomenon after the game too. Even if I'm too tired to play anymore, I still can't sleep. For hours. Until like 3 am. Too tired to game, to amped to sleep. This isn't just the caffeine (sometimes there is beer instead of Coke, after all), but it's psychology. Introverts get tired out by performances. Extroverts (me) get wired by them. For me, it's the same thing being a DM or being a musician -- anxious before, can't sleep afterwards. My guess is, this is why lots of rock musicians drink etc. after the show -- trying to turn off the hyped up mental state.
That would describe me as well (except for the beer). Back in high school I would run a game every Friday and Saturday night from 7pm until 2am but wouldn't fall asleep until close to 4am.
In the mid-to-late '80s and again in the early '90s I used to hold marathon games over the weekend, starting Saturday around 10am or so, taking a sleep break from 2am to 8am and gaming until late Sunday night and then driving home. I was a total wreck on Monday mornings.
In the mid-'90s I ran a game every alternate Saturday from 10:30am to Midnight and on the off-Sundays (when there was no game on Saturday) I would run a game from 1pm to 8pm or so. I did this for three years and it was a total blast.
Continuous game was probably 26-28 hours but frankly the quality of the game after 2am is pretty bad. I found that marathons work best when they start with breakfast.
I'd like to think that the real record my my bachelor party. In true D&D geekiness my "bachelor party" consisted of two oldtimers that had migrated to the SF Bay Area as well as myself, and flying in two other players from Denver. The 5 of us played from Saturday morning around 9am until Monday afternoon with sleep breaks of around 4-6 hours Saturday and Sunday nights. I used the opportunity to wrap up a number of loose ends in three different campaigns and pull them together into a final conclusion. It was very satisfying except that one player from Denver couldn't make it.
I really prefer the 7-hour game that starts in the early afternoon or the 12-hour game that starts in the morning. It take a while to socialize with each other, run town errands, and get in a good balance of roleplaying and combat. A typical 7-hour game will have two combats while a 12-hour game will have 3. I tried 4-hour games a few years ago because it was a weeknight but those games devolved into a single combat. Maybe it was 3rd edition or maybe it was because it was only a 4-hour session but I lost interest after a few months.
With a family now, my only hope is to start up a Friday 7pm-midnight game but haven't found the right group yet. So for the moment, playing Diablo II with one of my AD&D players will suffice. :\