Some Statistics from the first 25 sessions of my last 3E campaign

[theredrobedwizard]

How long were your sessions? Only 6 1/2 months to complete the Rise of the Runelords seems like a very short amount of time. Does your group mainly focus on combat, and not so much on roleplaying or is there some other reason that you were able to fly through it so quickly?

Olaf the Stout

Those were six hour sessions, once per week. It's not that we focus on combat per-se, but more that we cut to the heart of the roleplaying matter at hand. No bartering with the shopkeeper for every single item, etc. It's a really pulp-ish group; cut to the interesting parts, leave the tedius/boring stuff off screen.

For instance (Rise of the Runelords spoilers --->) [sblock]In the third module, the group ran into the woods following a bear. Therein were a bunch of redneck inbred ogrekin. The group checked out the barn and low and behold, there were the missing rangers or whatever the group was looking for. After dispatching whatever threat was in the barn (I think it was a spider of some size), they decided to just burn the farmhouse to the ground. Lots of lantern oil and fireballs later, the house and the majority of its inhabitants were ashes. Mammy survived, and the party fought her. Then they went back to heading to their destination.[/sblock]

I believe the term is Hickman-hacking. Nothing interesting happening? Kick down a door and find something interesting.

-TRRW

 

[Jorunkun]

Is online play faster, slower, or about the same as tabletop? Just wondering, in terms of how this data relates to what we've already seen in here...How long are your sessions?

5 to 6 hours per session, including the first 30 mins where people sort of trickle in, pick their spells etc.

The way we play (everything is typed out, no voicechat) it's possibly a little slower than ftf on average, though a lot depends on the situation. In general, ftf is faster when players need to talk (=type) a lot amongst each other to coordinate their next steps. Combat as such is about the same speed, and exploration / mapping is much faster and smoother online.

 

[el-remmen]

I intend to keep collecting this data and will update the thread when I get some sample comabt lengths in real time, and of course will update the combat lengths in rounds after another 25 sessions (so in another year).

 

[el-remmen]

Excuse me for bumping an old thread, but I was looking at some of my old ENWorld activity and re-reading old stuff and stumbled upon this record of the last 3.xE game I ran and some statistics I kept for combat encounters.

It really makes me want to start keeping track of this stuff with my 5E group which just hit 4th level (after 15 sessions) and see what the differences are. We definitely haven't had any 20+ round combats, but a few have topped 10 rounds.