D&D General How long has your Current Group gamed together?

[Remathilis]

I would also like to say goddamn but you guys game a LOT. Three, four, five groups? Holy crap. I'm playing in two, for the first time in a VERY long time. 99% of the time I gamed, it was only one game a week.

But, yeah, I do think that this is something that needs to be put on the table up front when people start talking about "the game". I mean, if you've got a stable group that you've played with for a decade, then, sure, it's probably guaranteed that you all share (mostly) playstyles and approaches to the game.

Can I also say how incredibly jealous I am?

I miss the days of weekly or even multiple daily games. These days, my group runs biweekly, with one week I'm the DM and other session another player (Mi) runs... Effectively, each game runs once per month.

It's a long cry from those college years with three DMs running weekly...

 

[Maxperson]

I would also like to say goddamn but you guys game a LOT. Three, four, five groups? Holy crap. I'm playing in two, for the first time in a VERY long time. 99% of the time I gamed, it was only one game a week.

But, yeah, I do think that this is something that needs to be put on the table up front when people start talking about "the game". I mean, if you've got a stable group that you've played with for a decade, then, sure, it's probably guaranteed that you all share (mostly) playstyles and approaches to the game.

Can I also say how incredibly jealous I am?

I've only had one for many years. Same group, but only one.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I would also like to say goddamn but you guys game a LOT. Three, four, five groups? Holy crap. I'm playing in two, for the first time in a VERY long time. 99% of the time I gamed, it was only one game a week.

But, yeah, I do think that this is something that needs to be put on the table up front when people start talking about "the game". I mean, if you've got a stable group that you've played with for a decade, then, sure, it's probably guaranteed that you all share (mostly) playstyles and approaches to the game.

Can I also say how incredibly jealous I am?

The secret is online gaming. (I had two groups dissolve this year - heck, I'm considering forming another PF2 group if I work up the energy to gm)

 

[Umbran]

I would also like to say goddamn but you guys game a LOT. Three, four, five groups? Holy crap. I'm playing in two, for the first time in a VERY long time. 99% of the time I gamed, it was only one game a week.

Number of groups doesn't directly correlate with frequency of play.

I actually have a third group I play with (I left it out above, because the group doesn't play D&D, and this thread is in the D&D forum, after all). Each group theoretically plays twice a month. I should have about 1.5 sessions a week, on long average.

The summer, however has been pretty slim for me for actual sessions of play.

 

[Zardnaar]

A few months. More like that to 22 years.

 

[Hussar]

Number of groups doesn't directly correlate with frequency of play.

I actually have a third group I play with (I left it out above, because the group doesn't play D&D, and this thread is in the D&D forum, after all). Each group theoretically plays twice a month. I should have about 1.5 sessions a week, on long average.

The summer, however has been pretty slim for me for actual sessions of play.

See, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

When we talk about "the game", whatever "the game" happens to be, there are so many external variables that it makes the likelihood of people talking past each other so much higher. The requirements/needs/wants of a group that games weekly for 3 hours (like mine) but sees a very high turnover of players are very, very different from a group that games monthly, but, for longer sessions, and has done so for the past decade.

And I think it helps for people to keep that in mind when they start talking about how changes to "the game" are positive or negative. Because, honestly, it's rarely all one or the other.

What's a good phrase for all those external variables? Because, honestly? I think those probably have more impact on how we view the game than anything else.

 

[SableWyvern]

I think those probably have more impact on how we view the game than anything else.

I've probably already made this point multiple times, but just chiming in again to say I agree this is absolutely the case.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Glad you qualified that because I was potentially going to otherwise have a Ship of Theseus problem here, as two of the people in my 13th Age group have been gaming with me for onto 50 years now, and one of them (though I've known him for several years) only started playing when the campaign started two and half months ago. Others have came and went from the group across those decades.

If I was also still playing with the other group, I'd have answered at the upper end of the question.

Edit: Just realized I perhaps shouldn't have even asked it since the last time I played in a game of D&D proper, though it was with the same basic group, was a number of years ago and did not include two of the current players. As usual, I hadn't even noticed which subforum this was in.

 

[Lazybones]

I have three 5e groups running at the moment, all of which are set in my own homebrew setting. The oldest is about 180 sessions in, mostly weekly games played online using Fantasy Grounds. This is a group that I put together using the Looking for Group forum at the FG site. It took a few months of turnover to find the five players that have been with me for the last three years of play. We're approaching the end of our second campaign, both of which went into the higher end of tier 3.

The second game is also weekly, also online. It's 154 sessions in, but it's a group that I had been playing weekly games of Neverwinter Nights with for about 10 years prior to the mutual decision to transfer over to regular D&D. There has been no turnover at all, it's a tight-knit group. The characters just hit tier 4, but we're already planning the next campaign when this one wraps up.

The third game is in-person, and plays every other week. I started it about two months ago, and populated it with folks I found by posting in r/lfg and the subreddit for my city. Going well so far, the group just hit second level.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Depends on which group. I voted the actual D&D group, which is over 6 months but only just. My Dungeon World group has not had any single player for its whole 6-year run, but one player has been around almost that long, probably 4ish years now. The rest joined up earlier this year, so technically that group with its specific member list IS only <6 months old. It'll probably be 6+ months by October or November.