Poll: How much time do you devot to a gaming session ?

[hunter2112]

Our weekly sessions are about 3-4 hours long. PCs still level up about one every month, month and a half, I just give out a little more story based XP and try to make the fewer combats a little more intense.

 

[Nifft]

6-12 hours, depending on if it's a weekday (shorter) or a weekend (longer).

Schedules are a little funky in the summer time.

-- Nifft

 

[Gnarlo]

3-4 hours a session, usually once a week, sometimes a little less. We all have jobs and families, so the weekend long marathons are a thing of my college past

/gnarlo!

 

[megamania]

My at home group meets 3 times a month on average for 3-4 hours.

My more serious group meet once a month for 7 hours.

In the past we would play for about 5 hours as a limit or we would be playing our characters at work the next day-

Instead of "Yes sir, I'll get those papers done by noon-"
it would be-

"Rarrgh! I kill you a thousand times you son of an inbred orc!"
(just played a barbatrian for 12 hours....

 

[the Jester]

I don't think you should increase the xp you award the party just because they do less.

I also think the default advancement speed you get in 3e is fast. Speaking as someone who's played for over twenty years, I remember the 12-or-more-games-to-level average at highish levels in earlier editions... that was maybe too slow, but 3 sessions per level tends to lead to 16th-level characters who've been adventuring for about 4 months of game time.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

As someone who plays with Hackenslash 3-4 hours is about the average time we manage. Sometimes we play less and talk more and sometimes we get wasted time as well.

It would be nice to play longer sessions or to occasionally have a much longer session but the question is when we could fit it in. Two of us have children and we all have work the next morning so playing to 2 or 3 in the morning isn't possible anymore like we did years ago where we used to have 7-8 hour sessions.

Hackenslash - maybe we should aim to start by 7pm or something and get an extra hour in, or maybe once a month, couldn't imagine any more frequently with other commitments, we could play for a longer period but it couldn't be at Gary's as we have a limit of midnight there.

On DM prep time I agree, it would be nice to see how long others spend in prep and what they prep.

 

[Destil]

Wow, we must be on the high end of things. Our sessions tend to last around 8-10 hours each.... with the DM (me) running out of prepaired matireal around half way, typically .

 

[Mark]

Four hours seems too short but eight hours can be too long unless a decently long break is taken in the middle, IMO.

 

[diaglo]

as a player i devout 8 + hours per session preparing for my role in game. our session are 6 hours a fortnight.

as a DM i used to devout about 2 hours of prep/ 1 hour of gaming in between session.

 

[Hackenslash]

Good Response to my Poll...even though I can't vote on it...due to crappy AOL.

Hi All,

Thanks for the response I am surprised that the highest result is in Fact 3-5 hours, but maybe that's due to other commitments and many of us would love to play longer. I will post another poll on the "Prep Time" and combine it with "and what do you prepare" as I must admit to being curious as to how many DM's "wing it" or are just very good at "adlibbing"....did I spell that right ? Oh and Lord V. I would like to discuss the possibilites of maybe increasing the game time with the group at the next DnD session as we could in fact start a little earlier and maybe do a longer session once a month at your place ? Cheers All....