In a recent interview, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford talked about how WotC’s D&D design accommodates streaming and busier adult gamers by dividing adventures into shorter, bite-sized content.
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“So you’ll notice that around the time we came out with the Essentials Kit and then continued on with a lot of our adventure content — even when it’s a large, epic campaign, like last year’s Rime of the Frostmaiden —they’re much easier to divide up into digestible segments that where … if the DM wants to just read a part of this big book, or just run one of these little quests, we’re making that easier to do. Not only to make things less arduous for a brand new Dungeon Master, and with new groups of players coming to D&D for the first time, but also because of that format of play, also suits streamed games better.
“We know streamed games, with the exception of maybe Critical Role, tend to be shorter than a lot of [traditional] tabletop games. You know, in the old days and even today, a lot of people’s tabletop games [sessions] might range between three and four hours, although we’re seeing the average length go down — most streamed games are often sometimes as short as two hours, or even 90 minutes.”
“We know streamed games, with the exception of maybe Critical Role, tend to be shorter than a lot of [traditional] tabletop games. You know, in the old days and even today, a lot of people’s tabletop games [sessions] might range between three and four hours, although we’re seeing the average length go down — most streamed games are often sometimes as short as two hours, or even 90 minutes.”