How long is the typical tabletop session?

[Astos]

The high school sessions were 8-12 hours.

The grown-up sessions are 4-6, with at least an hour of non-focus.

 

[Rothe]

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...

...

Same here. Now days 4-5 hours (Sat. 7pm-11pm+). And it is major scheduling feet to get all our schedules to line up. I'd say we have 6 hours of fun in 4 hours of gaming, it's pretty efficient and non-stop.

Edit: I also prep and take care via e-mail as many tasks as possible before the next session. I used to do up a journal of the last session, but got too busy. Now it is more a bullet point summary.

Ahh but back in the day they were marathon session, staring whenever my friends would come over on Saturday and only ending for sleep or to go party. Many a 12 hour session followed by an 8 hour session. I swear we played/cleared G1 in one sitting and started on G2 to the next day.

 

[Arnwyn]

How long is your typical tabletop RPG session?

8 hours, once every 2 weeks.

 

[MacMathan]

About 4 hours is the most we can get in now days, twice a month on average.

Wish it could be longer and or more often.

 

[Wye]

We play for 7 hours every Sunday. And if life doesn't throw any curve ball my way, soon I'll be DM'ing another group for 6 or 7 hours, also weekly. Yay me!

Back in the day we would start around 1pm or so, and play for about 12 hours... it was awesome!

 

[Dragon Snack]

Back in HS and Jr High (1st edition) we would meet as soon as we were out of school and play until someone had to go home for dinner, usually from 2 to 6, so the 4 hours was spot on. A lot of times we would continue after dinner though, so they usually went longer. I also started a D&D Club, but we only got to meet for 45 minutes a week (and they played evil characters, so much of that time was inter-party squabbling)...

More recently (3.x era), I had a Wednesday D&D group for a while that would meet for about 4 hours, from 6 to 10. When I ran a Friday D&D game at the big LGS, we would meet from 6:30 to "close" - usually 10 to 10:30, so that usually clocked in at 3 to 4 hours (depending on set up).

As for my current game (and other RPGs):

Sunday D&D (every other weekend): 6-8 hours, starts at 4 and ends at 10. Which really means we start at 5 and end around midnight, sometimes later.

Sunday Serenity (alternate weekends): 3 hours, starts at 5 and ends around 10 or 11. It's not really what you would call "focused".

Friday Savage Worlds: 4+ hours, starts at 6:30 and ends around 11 or whenever the GM realizes how late it is. Technically, we had agreed to stop at 10, but we have never taken that seriously.

 

[Thomas Percy]

6 hours.
But I want more!

 

[Lanefan]

Scheduled? 7:30 to midnight or so for my own game (Sunday), about the same for the Friday game I'm in, and add an hour on the end for the Saturday game. Weekly in all cases.

Reality? Maybe 8:30 to midnight for the first two including lots of tangents and chat, and about 8 to 1:30 a.m. for the Saturday one (without so much chat; it's a new game and we're all still enthusiastic). Weeks get skipped on an irregular but too-frequent basis in all cases.

Preference? Much longer weekly sessions, or two evening sessions on back to back days; the second session in a back-to-back set is *always* excellent as everyone's more focused...they've got the chat out of their systems, and they remember what was going on in the previous night's session without a lot of reminders.

Lanefan

 

[JRR_Talking]

every wednesday from 7pm till just after eleven
different group on thursdays from 7.45 to 10.45


wld do mor eif others cld and the wife wld let me.

Im sure surfers and paragliders would like to surf and paraglide more, so its not geeky for me to wanna game more is it?

john