Stopping A Game Session During Combat

[Thunt]

Have you ever been playing a game into the wee hours of the night and had to continue playing just because you were in the middle of combat? To me, stopping during an epic battle just seems... off, so we've continued even though we're all tired and desperately need sleep. Are we the only group that suffers from this?

 

[Crothian]

No, we've done it. i try to not start up a big combat if it is getting late but sometimes you just can't predict how long some battle go. I never end in the midst of combat though, it just would be confusing as people wouln't remeber everything about the combat the next time we played.

 

[derbacher]

Agreed. I always try to aim to start the "last big fight" of each session at least 1 hour before the scheduled end time. Of course, my aim is sometimes off...

And sometimes no one rolls well and the fight goes on forever!

But we never stop in the middle of combat.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

It certainly used to happen to me with an old gaming group. One player routinely would start nodding off as it got late in the evening. We continued, often having to summarize for him. I felt a little guilty, but the rest of the group was wide-awake and eager to finish.

These days, I do my best to schedule gaming in the afternoon on weekends.

 

[the Jester]

We've done this many times out of necessity. Hell, some particularly huge battles have lasted us more than a full session. I recall a high-level assault on a formian hive imc, for instance, or the massive battle against the bandits atop the mountains in omrob's Warhammer Fantasy with 3.5 rules conversion of Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth...

 

[was]

We've never stopped in the middle of a battle.

 

[gamecat]

We try not too, but it happens occasionally.

 

[sniffles]

Ditto what Gamecat said. Combat's not as much fun when you're too tired to pay attention. Maybe if you're in the midst of combat and the hour's getting ridiculously late, you could try to find an exciting moment to cut the game. Sort of a cliffhanger moment, as on a tv show. "The party has slain the first wave of ogres and are taking a breather, when suddenly they see reinforcements arriving, and they've got a giant in their midst... da da daaaa!! To be continued."

 

[EdL]

Have you ever been playing a game into the wee hours of the night and had to continue playing just because you were in the middle of combat? To me, stopping during an epic battle just seems... off, so we've continued even though we're all tired and desperately need sleep. Are we the only group that suffers from this?

Used to. Now we end (pretty much) on time. If the battle has to be continued next session, so be it.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Yes and Yes - we have drove through until we all fell out from exhaustion - and we have quit in the middle of a battle with many charts, graphs and photgraphs from cell phones and digital cameras so that we knew EXACTLY where everything was.

They both work - it just depends on what you HAVE to do and what you NEED to do. The times we quit, there wasn't jst a few more minutes - it was, we have to quit now, I've got to (work, go, meet someone, catch a flight to Sweden/Texas/Europe/China, etc)