Marathon Sessions

[Jhaelen]

We begin play at around 6 pm eastern and play until anywhere from 2-4 am.

Well, our standard session go longer than that!
We start at about 4pm and play until about 2-6 am. We don't continue playing the next morning, though.

Back in the days we'd tried to play a marathon session, starting at 8am but it unfortunately ended with a tpk before noon.

Last year most of my regular D&D group spent a week in a Center Park, giving 4e a test run. Since everyone enjoyed it, we're repeating it this year, continuing the adventure. The individual sessions weren't as long as our regular ones, though.

 

[Tallifer]

I was only ever able once to play in a marathon 18 hour session. Three players crashed on the table with just myself and the dungeon master left for the last hour or so. Great fun.

 

[bouncyhead]

Our group instituted our 'D&D Weekend' back in the late 90's and we just had our latest a couple of weeks ago. We hire a place out in the country and the old gang get back together for a dunge-athon. We do two a year, playing from breakfast through to the early hours, three-four days straight before spooning the tattered remnants of ourselves into the car for the trip back to London (or further afield).

It's an institution now and our respective partners all knew about it when they tied the knot and kind of approve in a weird way.

We don't get to play a regular weekly game - we have a sporadic online thing going on - so it gets the itch well and truly scratched. Already looking forward to October and the next one.

 

[Dog Moon]

Well, the most my group has done for a LONG time would be dnd starting around 11am-12pm through generally around 2am-6am depending on how we feel and where we are in the dungeon. Then we all go home or stay, sleep, and then return for about 8 hours of Shadowrun on Saturdays. So... not quite the sessions as some have described above, but we do Shadowrun every other Sunday, so this is basically our set schedule.

We go through Pathfinder Adventure Paths in about 5-6 weeks, WAY faster than they come out...

 

[Sammael]

I don't do marathons any more. My average session nowadays is about 5 hours, and the longest one I've run in a long time was last Monday, when we met at noon, started playing around 3 pm, and finished at 11 pm. That's about 8 hours, and I was absolutely drained.

 

[Phaezen]

My old group from university have a weeklong gaming splurge every two years, lots of fun.

MInd you when we were studying we often had weekend-long sessions.

 

[Mallus]

Sounds like fun. For my group, a 'marathon session' is any that lasts more than 3 hours of playing time. This occurs rarely. Spouses, families, and the pressure to spend vacation days on non-elven-realm-based vacations.

I think the last real marathon (session) I ran was whatever year the Philadelphia Eagles were in the Superbowl (2004?). Played from noon to just past the end of the game.

 

[slwoyach]

I'm surprised how some people define "marathon". When I was in school sometimes we'd start Friday night and finish Sunday night, that's a marathon session. 6-10 hours is just a normal session as far as I'm concerned. My current group plays for about 4 hours and I leave thirsty.

 

[Woas]

Wow


I think like 3 hours is my max.

 

[Gilladian]

Our regular sessions run about 3 hrs, sometimes 3.5 if we're really involved and nobody has anywhere they need to be. But it's rare!

Once in a while on a holiday weekend I'll initiate a longer session that's a one-off, but not often!