How long are your game sessions?

[Matt Wilson]

Another post got me thinking about this. How long are your game sessions?

When I started the game I recently wrapped up, I planned it for week nights, for about three hours. I recall cries of protest from a few candidates about how five hours was the bare minimum for a good meaty game session.

I have my suspicions about why that is, but I'm wondering about Forge folks. How long do your game sessions tend to be, and are they as long as you want them to be?

To answer my own question, I can't imagine doing much of anything for five hours. The game I ran was typically from 7-10, and I felt like we covered a heck of a lot of ground. The S&S game I'm in on Thursdays is about the same, and we seem to get a lot done. The shorter game sessions feel like they've had the fat trimmed, so to speak.

Anyone have similar/different experiences or preferences?

[Paul Czege]

The shorter game sessions feel like they've had the fat trimmed, so to speak.

Yes. In my experience, 3 hours of play is just about perfect. We've occasionally pushed the 4 hour mark, and it's noticibly more taxing.

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Until a couple of years ago, a typical session for me would be about two and a half hours. Lately, it's lengthened, largely because the groups have gained a lot of shared ownership of the actual play, thus "what happens" is more reliably going to be really full, and also because we mix and match actual play with some breaks and socializing. Three and a half hours is a pretty good estimate.

Best,
Ron

[jrients]

Back when I was in school most games I was in could go on for 6 or 8 hours, sometimes 10 or 12.  Many times I thought this was a drag.  Most of the longest games were AD&D with dozens of combats per session or Champions with one combat taking hours.

In my experience, most AD&D players that picked up the game as a teen have some sort of war story of a marathon session.  Mine is running The Temple of Elemental Evil in its entirety over a long weekend.  We had brief meal break now and again, but that was it.  It was awful.

Nowadays, four hours seems like long enough to get everything done.  Unfortunately, I've got one player still tied to the notion that sessions should go six or eight hours.  He's always campaigning for starting earlier and finishing later.  I'm very happy that my wife simply won't allow us to play that long.  (We play at our home, so she sets some of the ground rules even though she doesn't play.)

[Maurice Forrester]

We usually play for 3 to 4 hours and I find that works well.  I can remember running games that lasted a lot longer but I was a lot younger then.

[gentrification]

We generally block out 4-hour sessions, but the first hour is nearly always taken up by socializing and decompressing after work. So three hours is probably about right.

It took me a while to switch to this model, because I worried that we wouldn't have enough time to get things done. But now that I'm here, I've never looked back. "Trimming the fat" is an apt analogy. Shorter timespans mean you don't get exhausted and lose focus.

[Zak Arntson]

We game from about 6:30 to 7:00 until 9:00 to 9:30. So, 2 to 3 hours. We tend to get the meat of things pretty quickly and our systems need to allow for this. The downside is that if one of us is late or we don't get started early enough, we usually opt not to roleplay and hang out instead.

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Our sessions are technically supposed to run for 6-7 hours, but between people being late, people needing to leave early, and half an hour or so of socializing at the start, we probably only play for 4-5 hours.

[b_bankhead]

For my part at this point in my life I like session that are about three hours. A lot of gamers are nostalgic about rambling 8010 hour sessions and most of the crowd in my area cant seem to get thing in in much under six hours, but more time doesn't mean more gaming, it means (usually) lazy GMs with sluggish pacing, convoluted combats that last multiple hours (and where you can actually leave a note that says 'I hit him with a mace' and go off and watch a video),rules arguments, and Monty Python jokes. I think forcing people to fit things in to 3 hours gives an admireable sense of focus and makes the whole gaming experience more intense. Plus for many people 3-4 is the practical limit of the time they have to put into a session as they get older, I know it's the case for me.

[Eric J.]

8-12 hours (I'm a VERY lazy GM)

Record: 14 hours.

[Jake Norwood]

We play for about 2.5-3 hours generally, with an additional hour of shootin' the breeze right before. Everybody shows up at 6, we get going by 7, game's over between 9:30 and 10. In High School we were the kings of the all-weekend game, but those days are gone. Now 3 hours seems perfect, although we occasionally have a really great game that lasts 4 hours. Less than 2 hourse doesn't seem to work for anything but a Memento-Mori game, which are perfect for "we only have 2 hours to play" nights.

Jake

[Shadeling]

6-8 hours-6 being the average.

[Enoch]

Well I have two gaming groups of differant age ranges.

I am the axis of the age range.

Literally in one group everyone is younger than me.  In the other group everyone is older than me.  In both I'm usually the GM though, the older group has moved farther away so I haven't GMed as much with that group.

Young Group:  Hmm... start at 3:00 end at 9:00.  Subtract dinner 5 hours total.  This is rare since we usually goof off more than anything else.  By 9:00 we usually have grown tired of the game and just spend the night goofing off.

Old Group: It depends on what day and the GM.  When its the old school GM running it averages around 12 or so hours each session (yes it is very tiring near the end).  When its my best friend running its probably around 8 or 10 hours.  When its me, around 6 to 8 hours.

My games usually have enough preperation and force to go for about 6 hours before it slows down.  This Thanksgiving weekend I plan on running a rather long game, probably the longest I have ever ran.  Mainly cause I'm coming home from college and I haven't ran a game for the group in a very long time.

-Joshua

[Ace]

I like a session of about five hours including a break or two (short) and some time to eat real food

We start our games at 4ish to 5ish most times and game till the store closes at 9-9:30

If we need to continue  there is a Dennys across the street  and we  hold chat sessions there.

This is usually used for downtime stuff and casual 'gamer' chit chat as well as finishing up (rarely) stuff that everyone just MUST get done in the game

It works out well,

The Dennys people like our money and since at least two group eat and drink there are used to gamers, good (us) bad and ugly

Everyone is happy

[Jack Spencer Jr]

When I was living with my GM and my girlfriend moved in with us, and we were the only players, we would game all day. Literally.

Nowadays, the group finally all gets there @ 6-6:30 We are usually moving by 7 at the latest. We play, with occasional sidetracks and tangents and cigarette breaks for the GM's g/f (who is currently GMing at this writing) We generally wrap things up around 11. So that's, what?, about four hours with between 3-4 hours of actually playing going on. Give or take.