How many xp-awarding challenges do you have in your game sessions?

[Lanefan]

In any edition, the answer can only be "highly variable". Sometimes there are no ExP-worthy encounters at all...treasury sessions, exposition/travel/mapping sessions, etc. Sometimes, there's a part of one...numerous times I've had one encounter or combat take more than one session to run; my record is 3, as in started halfway through session 1 and finished late in session 3. Most times, there's a couple. Sometimes, if they're efficient and the encounters are minor, there can be 5 or 6.

A more interesting question - at least to me - to ask would be whether there's a difference in number of encounters per 4 hours of gaming between 0-1-2e play and 3e play. I'm not sure there is, but if there is I'd guess 0-1-2e had more.

Lanefan

 

[ThirdWizard]

I had 13 encounters in my last 8 hour session.

4 terrain encounters.
4 creature encounters.
3 trap encounters.
2 roleplay encounters.

The session before that, there were three paths, a 13 encounter path, an 11 encounter path, and a 10 encounter path, with the shorter paths being more dangerous to take and the longer paths taking more in game time to accomplish.

 

[Hussar]

In the World's Largest Dungeon campaign, we had about 5 per session, maybe 4. 80 sessions, 17 levels. Pretty much dead on what Quasqueton predicted.

 

[robberbaron]

Sometimes 1 (BIG fight), sometimes up to 6 or even 8 or more.
Depends on the situation.

I have never thought "I must give them X encounters this session". I feel that would be a futile attempt to impose order on an inherently disordered system. I mean, a fight could take 2 rounds (a few minutes of game time) when you thought it would take an hour. What are you going to do? Finish the game early or pop another encounter in?

 

[Hussar]

Robberbaron - that's not what's being said here at all. It's not that you must have x encounters/session, but that on average people tend to have 3 or 4 xp generating encounters per session. That number translates to a campaign from 1 to 20 in about 18 months to 2 years. Pretty much exactly what the designers of 3e predicted.

 

[robberbaron]

Fair comment - I digressed. It's a fair cop, guv.

I take it the assumption is 1 session per week?

How many groups play the same game once a week every week? I'd guess few, unless there are a lot of DMs who only DM.

My 3.5 campaign has been going for about 3 years and the average PC level is 13½, so I'm way off the 'average', but I've only run it 10-20 times a year.
Can my campaign be directly compared with others? I would say no because there are too many differences to get any meaningful correlation. And I'd think that would be the same for many campaigns out there.

 

[Hussar]

How many groups play the same game once a week every week? I'd guess few, unless there are a lot of DMs who only DM.

This is unusual? Every game I've ever been in has been 1/week every week.

As far as actual time passed, that's a fair point. If you're only running 1/month, then obviously it's going to take longer to level up. But, the assumption has always been that an average campaign lasts about 18 months (or so) and should go from 1 to 20. That's how most of the adventures are designed anyway.

Given that the vast majority of people I've polled here at Enworld have never been in campaigns longer than about 18 months, I'd say that you really are an outlier. I'll have to dig a bit to find the link to the poll. One sec.

 

[maddman75]

Like Mallus and a few others, the pll evidently doesn't apply to me. I just award a fixed amount of XP per session, irrespective of what the PCs do during it, to keep the PCs advancing at a speed I'm comfortable with.

Same here. I don't award XP per encounter at all, and have never found EL or CR to be even remotely useful.

 

[WayneLigon]

We usually play for about six hours. In a normal game session we'll have range from 4-8 encounters of around about their CR. Sometimes we've had only one or two combats, but your definition stretches things out a bit. If there is not a specific combat, there have been a number of roleplaying challenges. Last week was a heavy combat session; we did 5-6 combats and at least three roleplaying challenges. So far the heaviest combat session for the current campaign has been one with 12 combat encounters in a seven hour period.

 

[pogre]

Depends a lot, but I've said 7. Generally between 4-9.

Cheers!

Same here - I like to throw a lot of encounters at my PCs sometimes. If they're in a dungeon it's closer to a dozen, other adventures as little as a couple or three.