D&D 5E Would you play in or run a 2 hour pick up game of D&D ?

[Gundark]

Okay picture the scene, you've got a few friends over and you decide to play a game. You've only got a few hours together and you have a few options. You could play a board game, or you could have a game of Magic the gathering or you could play a game of basic D&D.

So how many of you would op for the game of D&D?

EDIT: assume this isn't your normal game night. More an evening where a bunch of friends came over and people wanted to play a game.

 

[Morrus]

Would you play in or run a 2 hour game of D&D ?

We play 2 hour sessions every week. Pathfinder right now, but we played 3.x, 4E, and other RPGs.

 

[Remathilis]

If I could ever get them to shut up and play, yes.


Remathilis "six hour block, three hours of gaming"

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Probably yes, but I would see it as an encounter or two or three, not great for being part of an ongoing campaign. (Planning can take time.)

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'd watch a movie.

Two hours simply doesn't offer sufficient depth to justify doing it from my perspective. Is this a one-shot? Or am I supposed to actually get somewhere in that short of a timeframe? When are my players going to be able to make the trek again?

My approach to running D&D has been to try to do longer and more involved sessions to maximize rare opportunities. To some extent, a consequence of personal circumstance, but the bottom line is I wouldn't want to move the opposite way.

 

[Nagol]

Very short sessions are a problem because there is set-up/start time and tear-down/wind-up time that is pretty inelastic. The smaller the block the greater the percentage spent not-quite-gaming.

Very short blocks can work for a campaign if they are very frequent (several times a week, for example). Aim to resolve a single situation (or maybe two) each session. The frequency is important since it helps control some of the non-gaming time (players catching up with each other) while allowing the players to still see some momentum in the game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It would be rare that we would play a one-off game of D&D for two hours. We would probably play a board game instead.

As I run a standard biweekly game... if I had people over for some other reason, the urge to play D&D again in that time period would be lessened. A board game would be something different, when we could just play D&D again in the coming few days at our normal session.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I would need to think about the alternatives. I'd rather play that session than get stuck in a game of Monopoly, sure. But unless there's an actual purpose (like say introducing new players to the game), I think I might be too jaded to get excited about a 2 hour one shot where nothing gets carried over to another session.

 

[Jester David]

No.

I play TRPGs every other week already. If I have friends over, even if it's my gaming friends, we're either doing something non-D&D/Pathfinder (like Dread), a board game, or a card game.

 

[Uller]

Yes. I would gladly run a one shot for 2-4 friends over the course of a couple of hours. I probably wouldn't do it on a whim unless I had a handful of adventures handy that were good for that sort of thing. In my youth I could have winged it (wung it?) but now, not so much.

If someone offered to run such a game I'd be in.

I used to run a once per week lunch time game at work. I'd take an hour and a half for lunch to leave 30 minutes to grab a sandwich from the cafeteria, set up the game and tear down and an hour for playing. We had 4-5 players each time and everyone understood if you wanted time to BS and eat, you took a longer lunch. From noon to 1:00 it was game on.

I also used to run a once per week online game at RPG table online that lasted about two hours or so per session. Both games were basically episodic style adventures...I started the campaign with a fight...how the characters got there, backgrounds etc were immaterial and worked out later as needed. After the fight, a bit of RP, development or exploration, maybe a second fight, puzzle or obstacle and finish with a cliff hanger. Next week would start with "roll initiative!"

This was all with 4e. I'd be even happier doing it with 5e since it moves so much faster. Our current group plays for about 3 hours every week or so but there is a lot of chit-chat. It's probably about an hour and a half of actual gaming. We tend to fit about 3 encounters plus plenty of exploration and RP in that time.