Length of Game Play?

[hazel monday]

Every week. face to face 12 hours.
Every couple of months we do a 20 hour marathon session.
We're all late 20's to early 30's.
We all have careers and most of us have kids.

It'd be easy not to play. But we all really want to so we make it a priority.
None of the milquetoast once a month for 4 hours on-line stuff for us. No sir.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

I recently contacted one individual that was getting a new group together, who was hoping to play every weekend for something like nine or ten hours altogether. To me, that sounds a little excessive (a long time to be sitting down, IMO).

Hmmm... We haven't run that kind of gaming schedule since college. Nowadays, I run two sessions a week (different campaigns), about four hours a session. It helps that my fiance and stepdaughter and our two roommates are all gamers. (Of course, that often means that household entertainments are just as likely to include D&D as any other pursuit... particularly since its cheaper than going to the movies.)

 

[el-remmen]

Six hours every other Saturday (or occasional Sunday) afternoon.

Late enough to allow people to get stuff done in the morning, and early enough to allow people go out Saturday night.

 

[Heselbine]

We play every week, Tuesday nights for only two and a half hours.

I'd rather play for a short time every week than less regularly for longer.

 

[Roger_the_jolly]

We play most weeks on the weekend night for about 3 hours - it is an agreement by compromise for all of the different constraints everyone has.

On the whole, I much rather play every week for a bit then play less frequently for more time each session. If we could do it, I would certainly like to play 4-5 hours each session ,but 6 hours or more seem to me to be too much.

Also, I think this issue is also tied up with the manner of game you are running - a heavy combat oriented game with material pre-made is easy to run long hours with, while a more role playing / problem solving oriented game with home-brewed material tends to be more short sessions (in order to make more material for next time and since some people tend to get tired faster if there is no adrenalin boost).

 

[Rel]

We play every Monday night for about 5 hours. Sometimes it goes a bit longer and we all feel tired the next morning. It's awesome.

 

[pogre]

During the summer I game a bit more. I run a D&D campaign on Sundays from 1:30 to around 6 PM. We average playing once every other week. I also run a WFRP campaign every Wednesday from 6:30 PM to about 10:30 PM or so.

Due to work obligations I complete suspend the campaigns during the fall.

10 hours a week would be too much for me to meaningfully prepare for these days.

 

[hectorse]

During School Time we played like every other Sunday about 3-4 hours

We did that for 3 consecutive semesters allowing the party to go up to level 9!

AWESOME!

We could never play in vacations due to people going out of the country

But this vacations seems everybody is staying and eager to play 4th edition so I think twice a week for 4 hours is not a stretch (Wednesday and Sunday)

 

[Henry]

Our group gets together on sundays for about six hours; we usually game for five of them, and shoot bull for the other hour.

 

[taliesin15]

Ten hours is certainly a long time for most people, but I have been in a few games/campaigns that regularly did that (usually an all-day Saturday affair, with pizza delivery halfway through)--I think there was a poll on this a couple years back...I've heard of some really insane gaming sessions, like one here that started Saturday afternoon and typically lasting all the way til dawn Sunday!!! Needless to say, these were all young guys, 18-24.

Most games I've been involved with tend to last 4-6 hours. Less than 3 seems not worth doing, unless like someone said, its on a weeknight. Part of the issue is how much time does the DM have to prep? My view is that those longer games tend to either be hack and slash varieties, or run by DMs that are *very* well organized. Sometimes also players are not used to the style of the DM, and if they have to role play more than usual, that can take the game longer, and if there's lots of riddles and tricks in a campaign, that also can take some time. Also, sometimes games geared to wilderness exploration can get involved, though tedious for some.