el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
I have been going through and re-reading my "Out of the Frying Pan" story hour from the 3E campaign I ran from 2001 to 2006 in order to compile and edit it and make it available for download for those who are interested, and in the midst of that it hit me that the very first session of that campaign had no combat whatsoever and the second one only had two small barehanded brawls. Recently, when I started up a second 5E campaign, the first two session featured no combat - and the one before that only had a combat in the first session b/c it was mostly a newbie group and I wanted a short easy combat to show them the ropes of initiative and the like.
Anyway, this got me thinking about how often I ran D&D sessions without any combat and wondering where I fit in with others. Obviously, I don't have any hard numbers because I haven't kept track. But in my current games (from what I can figure looking back), one campaign has had three combat-less sessions (out of 11) and the other has had two (out of 19 sessions).
So I did my best to create some poll choices which are meant to represent over the length of a full campaign. In my case, I'd vote "More than the choice above, but less than 25% of game sessions" considering the various campaigns I've run. I am also curious which edition you've mostly played and if you've noticed any difference in the frequency of combat over the years (either as a result of edition changes or just personal taste or some combo).
I do plan to start keeping track as I go through the story hour and for my forthcoming sessions.
Anyway, this got me thinking about how often I ran D&D sessions without any combat and wondering where I fit in with others. Obviously, I don't have any hard numbers because I haven't kept track. But in my current games (from what I can figure looking back), one campaign has had three combat-less sessions (out of 11) and the other has had two (out of 19 sessions).
So I did my best to create some poll choices which are meant to represent over the length of a full campaign. In my case, I'd vote "More than the choice above, but less than 25% of game sessions" considering the various campaigns I've run. I am also curious which edition you've mostly played and if you've noticed any difference in the frequency of combat over the years (either as a result of edition changes or just personal taste or some combo).
I do plan to start keeping track as I go through the story hour and for my forthcoming sessions.