How long is the typical tabletop session?

[Mark Hope]

We play for three and a half hours, once per week. I am used to longer games and find it hard, but it does make for fast-paced, tightly-focussed sessions. My previous group averaged around eight hours per session, and the group before that averaged around twelve (although that was before any of us had kids!) The longest I ran was 24 hours, but that was something of an exception!

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Hmm, my group of four usually meets for an average of 5 hours, sometimes 6.

Of those 5 we get three and a half hours of gaming done, 30 minutes of eating/small talk, and 1 hour of goofing around with ribald jokes, or going off on tangents.

For the rest of the time we game pretty seriously, about 2 and a half hours of combat, and an hour of roleplay with various people.

And we don't really try to be serious

I find Dancey's comment to be a bit ludicrous. I think he needs to find a game that suits his style more, or a gaming group, I should say. D&D does not cause that kind of torture, the wrong playing group or playing style causes that kind of torture

I can make an example by a couple of PBEM games I ahve been in which were freeform in disguise, and I hated those games. They really were torture for me, so I quit them as soon as I got pastthe false advertising. If I were stuck in one of those face to face, it would be turtue as Dancey stated, but I would not stick around.

 

[Baby Samurai]

In my current group we usually go for about 5 to 8 hours every Sunday, fortnightly.

Back in the day (the 80's), we would go for days…

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Currently down to 6 games a month, 2 one-shots, 2 sessions of my homebrew and 2 sessions of whatever else. The one shots usually last 4-5 hours, the sessions of my hombrew can stretch from 6-8 hours and the other two games (which are currently one Dragonlance campaign and one Ptolus game) last 5-6 hours. That makes the average of all combined sessions 5 hours and 40 minutes long.

 

[S'mon]

About 4-5 hours; typically 4 hours' gaming with an hour of chat.

Edit: When we played in school it was a 45 minute lunch break, every day. 1e AD&D. In 3e I doubt you could get 1 combat done that way, though.

 

[Mighty Halfling]

4 hours. Game starts at 6 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m. Why so early? Three of us have to get up for work around 4:30 a.m.
And just in case you were wondering about the frequency: We play on the first and third Tuesday of the month.

 

[Henry]

One group's weeknight games go about 3 to 4 hours. My other gaming group's Sunday game goes 6 hours on the average.

Compare that to the 8 to 12 hour sessions we used to have back in college and in summer sessions.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

8 to 10.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

My group tries for once a month - 12pm to 5.

In reality it's more like 1-5, so 4 hours of play.

 

[Wombat]

I am in a group that games every other week for about 4-6 hours a session, plus some socializing time before and after.