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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 6743012" data-attributes="member: 6701872">I can't speak for Zardnaar's group, but I can speak for my own, and I'd be glad to answer your curiosities.All of my long-running sessions of the past involved stimulant use (caffeine and nicotine) and incorporated substantive nutrition at regular intervals as well as snacks in between (not the best of food, mind you, but still something more than a bag of chips or some candy - like pizza, or sub sandwiches). That deals with most physical fatigue symptoms.The loss of focus, often the result of becoming less active in the game, is the one thing that you really can't avoid - but you can recover. My groups typically found that the natural breaks of bathroom trips, getting food, and taking a moment to have some side conversation or a good laugh kept the symptoms of mental fatigue from setting in.There is a strangeness, in my opinion, to the quality of the mental focus that it takes to DM a campaign; if you are the type that worries about staying focused because you fear what will happen to the quality of the game if you don't, you both find that focus to take noticeable effort and can measure the slipping quality of your DMing as your focus wanes - but if you set aside the idea that you need to focus and believe in your ability to do what you need to do, DMing a game requires no more focus than carrying on a conversation and the quality of your DMing stays consistently good until such a point as you are so unfocused/tired/vacant that it isn't just that you can't DM right now, but you can't even be functional right now and need to go to bed immediately because you are basically asleep in your chair as is.At least, that's been my experience. Years ago I gave up on all kinds of things that many DMs think of as mandatory (like planning a campaign beyond the rough premise, or even worrying at all about where the game is going beyond where it is right now as it is being played), and I have only seen my game improve because of it.No matter the length of a session, balance is important - but by "balance" I mean a balance between all of the things that the players involved find enjoyable. A long combat can be engaging and entertaining, but it has to be long for the right reasons at the right time to be so, which can be a tricky thing to actually achieve.</blockquote>

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