How many hours a day do you spend on RPGs?

[Aeolius]

Let's see.. My Sunday game is 3 hours in length. I spend an hour or so writing a recap of the prior week's session and looking for topical information to put in the weekly blog post. I may spend 30+ minutes prepping for the game, as I prefer to DM on-the-fly with a handful of notes and a cold beer. I browse a few game boards. I try to show up for #greytalk on Thursdays, when I remember. So what's that... 8-9 hours a week? So definitely less than two hours a day.

Did I fail to mention that I also have a wife, 7 kids, job, hobby farm, and a few hundred gallons in saltwater aquariums to fill up the rest of my time?

(edit: if you count the hours I lurk in game-related chat rooms, that'd add a few extra hours)

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Does multitasking count? I usually do several things at once, like my browser games at the same time than RPG stuff, or sometimes watching videos same time, or reading my RPG books in the bathroom

2-4 hours for me, non-contiguous. Painting miniatures is also counted in the total, so maybe 2-5 is closer.

The Auld Grump

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

I'd love to see actual breakdowns

I voted 4-6 hours, because being unemployed gives me a lot of free time.

Gaming - 7 hours every two weeks
Preparation - About an hour per week. I'm not the full-time DM and we're starting a different system, but I do a readthrough of the stuff I might run from Adventureaweek.com
Reading RPG books - This varies, but I'd probably say two hours a day. Usually because I'm designing something or working on an NPC or a build.
Online forums/news/etc - A lot. Between EN World, 3.5 Private Sanctuary, and Adventureaweek, this is where I spend most of my time. Probably 4-5 hours a day.
Shopping/browsing stores - I tend not to browse much. If I know of something I want, I'll go get it, but I don't tend to look around.

 

[El Mahdi]

Well, I sleep 6 to 8 hours a day, so...


(just kidding, selected 4-6)

 

[Rechan]

Does thinking about gaming count? Cuz I think about gaming way more than I think about sex.

...

Wow I just made myself feel bad there.

I'm unemployed with no group or girl so what else am I going to do? I clicked 4-6.

 

[Shemeska]

Depends on how many projects I have, and when the deadlines are.

 

[Gilladian]

Hmmm... I theoretically spend 6 hours a week actually gaming - 3 hours my game, and 3 hours online, but we miss about 1 session a month for each, so it is probably closer to 5 hours a week.

prep for my game is about 2 hours a week, and about an hour of post-game note-taking and such. I'm running a giant dungeon, so there's not a lot of prep each week except for covering the RP shenanigans. 3 hours a week, say.

reading and thinking about games - a lot. I'm on EnWorld every day for maybe as much as an hour, and on other sites a few hours a week. And then I do a lot of "research" reading and such. At least an hour a day. So call it 2 hours a day.

shopping and such - not a lot. Maybe an hour a month.

Total, probably 3 hours a day. But a lot of that is what most people would call "relaxation time" or "family time", since my husband is also a gamer.

 

[Piratecat]

Interesting topic.

I've got more gaming right now than I've had in years: in four weeks I run two 4e games twice each, play or GM in one Golden Age MnM game, play twice in a friend's game (rotating systems), and run two playtest games of a Game That Must Not Be Named. Figuring each game at four hours each, that averages out to nine hours a week.

Game prep is minimal, a half hour max per game. Figure two hours a week total.

Forums is trickier. It varies, but I'm online (mostly on ENW) thinking about gaming for roughly an hour or two a day.

Any other time is minimal, mostly plot pondering in the shower or while falling asleep. I'm looking at 3-4 hours a day.

 

[delericho]

On everything RPG related? I have no idea. Let me think...

On average, I probably spend about an hour a day on various forums. It's quite a bit higher than normal at the moment, due to the ongoing edition change, but that's not unexpected.

I generally read about an hour a day, but that's split between RPG books and novels, with the latter being much more common. So, perhaps 15 minutes per day on average?

Then there's the actual gaming. When I'm running a game, we have sessions every alternate week for 3 hours, and I try to do 1 hour of prep per hour of gaming. When I'm 'just' playing, then we'll tend to have the same session frequency/duration, but almost no prep. At the moment, I'm neither running nor playing any games, but that's unusual. So, perhaps a little less than half an hour per day, on average?

And then there's the other little tasks - the writing fragments of adventures, the idle musing about game design and adventures, and so on.

I guess 1-2 hours is probably about right. Although I suspect that if I actually clocked it, I might get quite a shock!

 

[edemaitre]

Game time!

I try to read EnWorld.org and a few other role-playing blogs every day. In addition to a full-time job and other hobbies, I run one face-to-face session and one teleconferencing game per week. The F2F game is actually two parties of about six gamers each that meet on alternating weeks.

If each of my sessions is typically four hours each, plus an hour or two of prep, that's 10 to 12 hours per week. In addition, I maintain message boards, my blog, and direct communications by phone and e-mail with my players and fellow Game Masters. I don't get to do things like worldbuilding, reading new games, and filing as often as I'd like, but since I'm about to move, I'll have to do more organizing.

Unlike many, but not all, of my peers in their 30s and 40s, I don't have young children or a gamer-intolerant significant other. I feel sorry for my friends who let their hobbies fall by the wayside in the name of "adulthood" or to pursue the stereotypical suburban lifestyle. If something is important to you, you should find the time for it, just as you should make time for career, family, and adult friends.