Marathon Sessions

[MACLARREN]

Tomorrow evening we begin one of our 2 annual marathon sessions. We begin play at around 6 pm eastern and play until anywhere from 2-4 am. We then sleep, wake up, have breakfast and start all over again at around 10 am and go until 2-4 am the next morning and then the same thing all over again on Saturday. We are trying to get 3 of these this year but we always have at least 2. It is tough for our group to get together as we have one player who lives in Tampa and he treks to Central PA via a plane for these sessions. The rest of us are spread from State College, to Pittsburgh and the DC area. We have been doing this since around 2000 when we all got back in to playing 3rd edition D&D that was modified.

We have tried 4e and it is just not the game for us but we have taken elements of 4e, Trailblazer, PF, Conan RPG, and 3rd edition and have a complete home brewed rule system which is perfect for the game we all enjoy. We just recently ended a straight Conan campaign and we will be venturing our system into the Midnight World that is slightly altered to meet our DM's design. Very dark and gritty as we are all 30-40's playing. Great DM and just 3 solid days of goodness that never seems to last long enough.

With all of that being said, does anyone else ever hold sessions like this in length and if so, how are they? I have never had a bad one and we drink a lot of beer and this is one of the 2 best weekends of the year for me. Back to work and just wanted to see.

 

[Marx420]

Best I ever got for RPG action was 18 hours strait, started with 9 players and ended with 3 by the end of the dungeon and the dragon (attrition by death or work, let 2 dead players help me run monsters). Sleep deprivation and alignment are more interrelated than I think the rules support, all of us were chaotic evil by the end of that delve.

 

[Oryan77]

We did marathon sessions similar to that back when me & my friends were 18 y/o. But these days, my players barely manage to hang in for our 7 hour sessions.

I could definitely DM for a marathon session like that. And maybe 1 of my players could play it. But I don't think anyone else I know would do it.

 

[redboxrazor]

Up until I moved to Maryland a year ago, my group and I typically had regular "day-and-a-half" sessions back to back every weekend.

As a DM, it was certainly exhausting, but I look back at it fondly now. I'd love to have a group like that again who could afford such a time commitment.

 

[redboxrazor]

duplicate post

 

[weem]

We did marathon sessions similar to that back when me & my friends were 18 y/o. But these days, my players barely manage to hang in for our 7 hour sessions.

I could definitely DM for a marathon session like that. And maybe 1 of my players could play it. But I don't think anyone else I know would do it.

Word for word, pretty much covers my situation precisely.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Having a weekend away with a good group, lots of food, and some homebrew a couple times a year is little more than a fantasy, the stuff that dreams are made of.

Don't see that happening anytime soon, so I'll djinn up a Modern campaign based on the premise, instead. Meantime, I'll keep my fingers crossed and look forward to such after retirement.

 

[Jdvn1]

We did marathon sessions similar to that back when me & my friends were 18 y/o. But these days, my players barely manage to hang in for our 7 hour sessions.

I could definitely DM for a marathon session like that. And maybe 1 of my players could play it. But I don't think anyone else I know would do it.

I ran a 7 hour session not long ago, and I thought that was very long! We all had a blast, but were exhausted.

 

[wedgeski]

Yeah we did mega-sessions back when I was a teenager. The most memorable was a 24-hour marathon, 90 minutes of which I missed by falling asleep on the toilet. (And I've now been humiliated by the story enough times to give up on the idea of it quietly disappearing into history.)

It was those sessions that epitomised both our love of the game, and the freedom to play it which sadly gets eroded as you move into adulthood.

These days we have social weekends, in which the very same group of players still gets together to play D&D and hang out. Those sessions run for about 10 or 11 hours depending on how tired and/or drunk we get. I suppose technically we could try for the 24-hour thing again, but I seriously doubt any of us would even come close to making it.

 

[Mark Hope]

Yeah, marathon sessions were the norm for my groups right into our 20s. We'd kick off around noon and play until 2 or 3 am the next morning. That was our weekly game, with the occasional two or three day extravaganza at the finale of a campaign. Longest ran for 24 hours (Vecna Lives from start to finish). These days, though, now that we all have families, our games are far shorter - more like 8pm to 1am. Makes for a different style of gameplay and has taught me a lot about timing, pacing, and cramming as much awesome into a limited timeframe as possible, which is good. But I would like to have the odd weekender sometime.