How long is the typical tabletop session?

[wingsandsword]

The discussion of the Ryan Dancey (mis?) quote about D&D being 20 minutes of fun spread across 4 hours got me thinking.

How long is the typical D&D session, or for purposes of a poll: How long is your typical rpg session?

I've played in short 2 & 1/2 hour sessions after gaming club meetings because of limits of how long we had the room and when we were meeting, but we still managed to run a short but complete adventure into 2 & 1/2 hours (although it did involve an experienced DM and at least moderately experienced players).

When I've run games of my own from home, it's been closer to 4 hours, as the games began at around 6 PM and end around 10 PM. I've seen a lot of games start at around 5 or 6 and run until around 10 or so.

I've played in games that ran longer. The first D&D game I ever played in typically ran around 8 or 9 hours on Saturday afternoon and night, as people would gather in the early afternoon, begin playing at around 4 PM, and it would last until around maybe midnight or 1 AM. Then again, most of the last hour was XP calculations and levelling characters, and there was easily an hour or more of breaks in there as there was often a break to watch South Park, and a break to eat dinner (typically Pizza or Chinese food) at around 6 PM.

I was recently in a campaign where sessions recently ran from 8 to 10 hours, as the GM liked to begin games at 2 PM, and supposedly run until 10 PM but more likely until 11 or midnight not finishing until the GM thinks it's at a dramatically appropriate moment, with maybe a half hour or an hour somewhere around 6 PM for dinner.

These last two stood out because they were so long though, and I recall the very short ones because they seemed out of place as well, so I ask everyone: How long is your typical tabletop RPG session?

 

[Agamon]

My games go 4-6 hours. I'd guess the typical game is 4 to 5 hours long.

 

[kenobi65]

For my home campaigns, a typical session these days does clock in at around 4-5 hours (and that includes socializing time at the front and back).

Back in the day, one of my home groups routinely played from noon until 9 or 10 pm every Saturday. Ah, those were the days...

I play a lot of RPGA games, and those are intentionally written to fit into a 4-hour timeslot for conventions.

 

[Doug McCrae]

8 hours

 

[Doctor DM]

We used to do 4-6 almost every week, now we do 6-8 about every other week.

 

[Thurbane]

Our games generally run from 3 to 5 hours, depending what time all the players can arrive (2 of the guys in our group have young children, and find it hard to get to a game early).

 

[Jeysie]

My group typically games in 4-hour sessions once a week. Although right now we're stuck with 3-hour sessions for a few months due to the summer work schedule of one of our players.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[questing gm]

My sessions normally start at around 2pm and we wrap up around 8pm.....6 hours.
But we include the sidetracking and the warm up minutes...i say we actually start playing at 3 or 4.

We always go out for dinner after each game though, so no long term breaks in between the session.

It's interesting to see that most of you are running at 4 to 5 hours only..that way i can plan to run my sessions on a 'typical' period and avoid getting brain numb after each session.

 

[the Jester]

Hmm, we generally average around 7 hours, with a short session being around 4, and a long one being 10-12. It's pretty rare that we go outside of the 5-9 mark, though.

 

[Gilladian]

I must have a short attention span! We play for about 3 hours - and really do PLAY the entire time. We start at 3 and end at around 6. Sometimes we'll go longer to finish a combat, but not often. Last week, we quit after just over two hours as we had reached a natural stopping point and I wasn't quite ready with the rest of the session's material.

So I'd say 2.5-3.5 is typical for us. We used to play for longer; 4-5 hours was typical when I was a teenager or college student.