How much time do you spend actually playing?

[Thornir Alekeg]

How do you accomplish that?
-blarg

I heard it was by adminstering electric shocks to players who questioned rules during the session.

 

[pogre]

We spend time catching up at the start of the session. Fortunately, we do not argue rules - I make a ruling and we hash it out by e-mail later if necessary. I would say we're around 80% roleplaying during a session.

 

[blargney the second]

I heard it was by adminstering electric shocks to players who questioned rules during the session.

*dictates some notes to his Quick Quotes Quill*

 

[Kurashu]

We usually all gather at about 5. Depending on circumstances, I might have to get my brother at 5:30 from guitar practice. The guys usually go to get food then. We start actually playing at about 6. And unless the game comes to a grinding halt for some reason (three characters dying, spouses, someone choking on pizza, stuff like that), we usually plow on to about 9 or 10 depending on how long the DM feels like sleeping before work. Three to four hours on average.

 

[Mystaros]

Wow. One thing that has struck me with this thread is the number of respondents who mention spouse/kids/job as the factor holding back gaming time. It's an older group here than I thought...

No wonder my memories of my golden days of gaming outnumber my good memories of gaming today. Back in middle and high school we'd have days-long marathon sessions, running from 4:00 Friday to ~3:00 am Saturday, then from noonish Saturday to ~2:00 am Sunday, then from whenever we woke up Sunday to whenever we had to go home (none of our families were church-going types)... Even short weekend sessions lasted at least eight hours.

And that's not counting afternoon/evening games, or the lunch hour sessions in classrooms or the library during the week!

I'll bet I gamed more during the seven years before high school graduation than I have in the near 20 years since...

 

[HellHound]

Under 5% of time is spent discussing rules.

However, depending on the game, we can spend as much as 20% of the game full-on side-tracked with other things.

But my CyberPunk games lately have been 8 hour games, with roughly 6 hours of game play (we break for dinner, and take a while to launch).

 

[Chaldfont]

We usually get together from 7pm to 11pm on Thursday evenings. We get at least three hours of actual gaming in those four hours, sometimes even the whole period.

This is exactly what we do, but lately its been closer to 50/50. This summer we've canceled a lot with vacations and family stuff going on so we tend to bs around just catching up with each other.

This doesn't bother me though. The game is basically an excuse to hang out.

 

[Piratecat]

How do you accomplish that?
-blarg

We only have combat every other game session or so. We have slow advancement, so everyone knows their character's capabilities extremely well. I have modified cattle prods attached to the chairs. And when we can't find the rule in about two minutes, I make a judgment and we move on (we generally discuss it in more detail after the game.)

I can remember one rules argument in five years, and it was because I was being unreasonable. I love my players.

 

[KB9JMQ]

We game weekly from 2-5 p.m. on Sunday and normally get in two hours of actual gaming.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I'd say the biggest drain on our time is waiting for everyone to arrive and get ready to play. We game on a weeknight at my house so sometimes traffic or work can hold one or more people up. Overall I would say that the gaming percentage is about 75%.

Olaf the Stout