How long, in real time, would you expect a campaign from 1-30 to take?

[The Human Target]

Well its taken us one and a half years to hit 11.

So we should hit 30 in... never.

I'll be happy if we hit 15 and move on to something else.

5E- 10 levels or less!

 

[the Jester]

At my preferred rate of play- roughly weekly- I'd say two to three years.

Sadly, at my current rate of play, I'd say more like five years.

 

[Netherstorm]

It took 114 sessions for my group to get through Scales of War, and we played 3 hours a week. So for us, 2 years and a couple months. My other group was much faster, as we played weekly and were driven to do 5 encounters per session.

If you do 3 combats, one skill challenge, and one "roleplay" encounter or hand out quest XP, you can really get a steady pace going.

It's hard to tell what the players feel most satisfied with. Leveling every 2 sessions feels fast to me, but 3 sessions is a bit of a drag and obviously stretches out your time more.

It's interesting that the Neverwinter book is entirely heroic tier. If you prefer a slower, more detailed approach to your game, you could run a heck of a 1-10 game there.

 

[S'mon]

I'm currently running 2 campaigns, both fortnightly, with about 3 hours of actual play time per session. My 'Southlands' game has been levelling every 2.5 sessions, has gone from 3rd to 7th in 9 sessions, and looks to me to have a real prospect of going the distance, certainly into Epic and possibly all the way to 30th.

Currently we recently had session 10, it should be 1.5 sessions to reach 8th, 4 sessions to reach 9th, in January 2012, then 25 sessions to reach 19th ca February 2013, 29th in March 2014 - so 30th ca May 2014. Started in June 2011, so that would be 3 years for the full campaign.

 

[jcayer]

We wrapped up our 4E campaign two days ago. Level 1 through 30, but I won't lie, epic didn't agree with us a whole lot, so I leveled them up at an accelerated rate. It took us 3.5 years of playing every other week for 5 hours. I suspect if we had played epic out entirely, another 6-12 months.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

We started out in Marh 09, and play once a month, though we have dry spells that last quite a while. We're close to level 7 now, about 17 sessions in.

I'd say we'll never reach level 30 before 5E