What Does Your Perfect Session Look Like?

[John Dallman]

I can't argue with that. One of the most miserable gaming sessions I've ever had was triggered by a single, inflexible player and a pizza order.

Back when I hosted evening sessions, we ordered delivery from a place that did good Chinese, fish & chips, pizza and burgers. Everyone just told me what they wanted and I placed one order. No, we didn't save money on large pizzas, but the saving in hassle was easily worth it.

 

[pogre]

If you imagine your perfect session of an RPG, what does it look like to you?

What game? What campaign? How many participants? How long is the session?
What is the "breakdown" between time spent in combat, exploring, roleplaying with NPCs, PCs interacting, players fooling around, wtc..?
And finally, what's on the pizza?

Game: Ars Magica, CoC, WFRP 2e, D&D 5.5, Runequest, Homebrew created by my youngest son and me, or Imperium Maledictum.

Campaign: Varies, but with players totally bought in and anxious to play. Constant texts, emails, and posts about events in the campaign outside of the sessions. One shots are fun, but the perfect session for me is going to be part of a long term campaign.

Session: 4 to 6 hours

Breakdown: Lots of intrigue and politics, but at least 35% combat.

Pizza: The Special from a local joint - pepperoni, big Italian sausage chunks, bacon, mushrooms, onions, Chicago-style thick crust with Sicilian-style sauce.

 

[R_J_K75]

Canadian bacon, Pineapple, and banana peppers.

That actually sounds pretty good

And no pizza. Ordering pizza is one of the biggest game-disruptors in existence.

It's not the ordering, it's the "get me the menus, what should we order" so agree on a place for cheese and pepperoni from the start of the campaign. Damn now I want some pizza.

 

[A_Carrington]

My most recent session, also the first session of my current game. Went better than I could have hoped for. Players, several new to the system, didn't try to figure out what I wanted them to do, they just made the best decisions they could. No mystery, no twist, no super special villain. No pre planned narrative to incentivize me to nudge them in a particular direction, or to manipulate outcomes. Just the players, a crisis, the rules, and their decisions, which actually mattered and actually affected how the situation turned out. No fudging, everything rolled in the open. At every step, I was looking forward to discover what would happen next just as much as the players. Everything that makes these games worth playing.

 

[VHawkwinter]

That actually sounds pretty good

It's not the ordering, it's the "get me the menus, what should we order" so agree on a place for cheese and pepperoni from the start of the campaign. Damn now I want some pizza.

Working out the Pizza order once, and then being able to just repeat it is a good idea. I could eat a cheese pizza, though I can't have pepperoni. But those are pretty basic simple pizzas and one of the two should be passable for most, even if not their favourite.

 

[guachi]

No one uses their phone except to look a rule up. No one heaves their dice on the floor or into a mini. Every player has their dice in their hand ready to declare their Action on their turn.

Players pay attention
Players are ready on their turn
Players know what their PCs can do

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I’ve had a few “perfect sessions”. For me, they tend to be when I am far enough into a campaign that the players are strongly invested in their characters and know the rules, and I spend serious time to prep a session that the players engage with, like the premise and add their own special madness to.

There was prison break in NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS where the players spent time planning, meeting contacts and stealing resources so effectively that I never actually ran the prison break — their plan and prep were just too good to mess with!

The session in AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS where they are escaping on the ice, and one of them summons a Byakhee to take him home (staying mostly sane as he does so) and I ask him to make a luck roll to see if it takes him to his home, or the Byakhee’s.

An early session of PENDRAGON where the player knights decide the young Arthur is too Christian and so they take him to a Bealtaine feast where he “meets” Morgause.

A NUMENÉRA game where they defeat their opponents with inventive use of cyphers (my favorite was putting an anti-mass device on them while they were frozen and throwing them into space)

The perfect game for me will always be when I have a set of engaged players in a well-prepped campaign, and my players surprise me with a different take on what I though they might have done, but that makes good sense and gives everyone a chance to be cool.

 

[AnotherGuy]

If you imagine your perfect session of an RPG, what does it look like to you?

I'd have the music, player-handouts and cool social dialogue excerpts/quotes/ideas for NPCs all prepped before the session.

What game? What campaign? How many participants? How long is the session?

I'd be running the final session in our multi-year ToD storyline (not the end of the campaign)
All 5 players would be present (we play face-to-face). No cellphones out for the session.
Session would run along 6-7 hours.

And the climax to end this storyline reaches all expectations - I would want to be surprised by the result as well.

What is the "breakdown" between time spent in combat, exploring, roleplaying with NPCs, PCs interacting, players fooling around, wtc..?

2 hours for each pillar with the fooling around spread out within that.

The session would need to include a challenging combat, a twist/revelation, a call-back or two, a clever puzzle which was solved, character sacrifices but also great wins.

And finally, what's on the pizza?

All our favourites and there would be dessert too.

And at the end I'd hand out custom printed t-shirts to my awesome players which prints would reflect something memorable about this storyline and our campaign and we'd close it with a photo or two.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

My players accept all my rulings as gospel, praise me endlessly, and start a small religion in my honor.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

Seriously though, a perfect game for me is Tons of rp, good fights, lots of laughs, and a great story.