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?

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

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

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Record: 14 hours.

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

6-8 hours-6 being the average.

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

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

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.

We play for about 2 and half to three hours on average. Everyone turns up between 7 and 7:30, gossips, unwinds after work, and we are usually running between then and 8. We finish between 10:30 and 11, when the hall where we play kicks all the gamers out.

Sometimes it is a bit too short, but generally on a worknight its probably the maximum creative time that we can reliably get out of people. We are thinking of trying to do some one-off weekend schedules for 'event' games, but scheduling adults lives is harder than kids.

We tend to be long-winded. We are supposed to show up at 1:00 and game til 7:30 or so. Like most, the first hour is for stragglers and socializing.

That would make 5.5 hrs. or there-abouts.

I would have to agree with the 3-4 hour groups. Our group meets alternate Saturdays. We set the time at 4 but don't usually get started until about 5. We usually take a break for dinner in there and break up about 10. So 4 hours of actual play.

My experiences lately match Jake's exactly.

But I consider this a bad thing. I long for the long weekend sessions to return, and am hoping that techniqes like Ron mentions will one day make it possible again.

Mike

Hi everyone,

Oddly, back in high school, with my "non-gamer" english lit crew, we played three to four hours -- five hours max. Then, in college, when I hooked up with what we might now call gamers, we started in the mid-afternoon and wrapped up seven to eight hours later to watch Dr. Who.

I realized after several months that the Dr. Who part of the day was more enjoyable than the actual playing. I started saying, "I think an RPG session should be no longer than twice the length of a movie." (Back to three to four hours.)

Why? Cause I think human beings are used to sitting still for a dramatic narrative of 90 minutes to two hours (with engaging, longer exceptions). Once I figured in the book keeping required during an RPG session, you'd end up with something about twice as along to have something with enjoyable pacing, momentum, and climax.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the game mechancis required for this sort of play didn't exist yet.

With AD&D and Champions, so much of the session is dragged out (in my view), with book keeping, page flipping, rules adjudicating and so on, that you'd need nearly eight hours to squeeze the "story" elements in.

I'm finding the games coming off the Forge remove enough of the incoherent qualities that my "double-movies" rule of thumb works great. And so now my ideal is met by the rules.

Christopher

My group averages 3 to 4 hours of play per session. We play on alternating Sundays. We generally get together between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. and play until 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. with occasional breaks. Every once in a while we will push on for an additional half hour to hour if something momentous is happening and we don't want to lose the tension.

One of my players would definitely like longer sessions -- he is also the only one that feels "cheated" if for some reason we have to call off the session or if we get together to socialize and don't end up playing (which is a drag, because he's a fun guy to just hang out with).

My wife, who is a casual player in our game, would be happiest with about 2.5 to 3 hours of play -- she wants to spend her Sunday evenings relaxing.

Personally, 3 to 3.5 hours is enough for me, especially when I'm GMing, which I find to be more taxing. When I'm in the zone, I can go for a while without noticing the time, but much past the 4 hour range I feel like I'm starting to get tapped out creatively. At that point, I almost always call the game right there.

Even in college I don't often remember having marathon sessions. I think my preferences were probably framed by my first long-running group. It was a mixed group age-wise (and gender-wise actually). There was one other guy in the group the same age as me: we were a group when I was 12-16. The other players were in their 20s and 30s. The hosts were a married couple with two kids (4-8 during the group's existence -- they didn't play).

We met on Sunday evenings and played from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. During this time, I always felt 3 hours was too short -- I was having fun and wanted to continue. But that desire meant that, 1) I was always eager to get back to the table next Sunday, and 2) we had to squeeze as much play as possible into the time we had.

Now 3 hours seems like a perfect segment -- enough time for everyone to do interesting stuff, but not so much time that you get burned out or bored.

I don't find anything wrong with my "super-sessions" (TM). 10 hours is usually good, and my players are always begging me for more at the end, so I would consider it pretty good. I guess that we divide it up into multiple sessions, once you condiser session breaks, though. I find it greatly usefull to have a non-RP event every time you game. It allows for more casual play (which is good) and the oppertunity to go into greator debth.

Our gameSoc at uni meets wednesday afternoons and the sessions I run tend to be between 2 hours and 3 - although an immenent campaign change may increase this due to me actually planning something resembling an adventure beforehand (Wild Talents -> TROS)

In high school, we would play for 6 to 8 hours, sometimes longer (this was usually interspersed with running to get the pizza, socialization and other things besides just gaming).

The tabletop group I played with (briefly) two years ago ran sessions for around five hours, usually until the GM fell asleep.

We used to do once-or-twice-a-year marathon sessions back in high school, lasting 10+ hours, and would spend the whole weekend playing, sometimes switching campaigns to give one GM a break. I've only done one since, which lasted for around seven or eight hours via IRC (a special Halloween game some years ago).

Our group's typical sessions last around 2.5 to 3 hours.

However, my experience is somewhat skewed in regards to the medium we use to game. I'd prefer to play longer sessions than I do currently because chat-based play slows things down somewhat. Usually we get one scene and one Bang per session, sometimes more. We can run one or two small combats and some role-playing or exploration in that time.

So a game session that normally takes three hours (tabletop) takes around five to six hours via IRC.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: "I think an RPG session should be no longer than twice the length of a movie." (Back to three to four hours.)

Three to four hours huh?

That certainly izn't true for my group. We meet every Monday between 4:30 and 5:00pm, though I cannot recall off hand the last time that everyone was actually there on time and ready to go. We usually start around 5:30 or 6:00 due to tardiness, making food runs and catching up with one another. (This seems to be pretty standard as most of the other posts have also mentioned this.)

We usually play until 1:00am. Now this may seem like a long time but we have noticed a trend that it seems to take us a few hours to really get warmed up, in character and rolling ahead full steam. We break in the middle for dinner. (We trade off cooking for each other every week, a tradition that we find really enriches the night.)

When it's all said and done I would say we play for about 7 hours, although every once in awhile we have a "long" session and stop after about 12 hours and go catch some breakfast. Admittedly it does help that most of us have night jobs, and none of us work on the day we game.

Does anyone else find longer sessions better for really getting into stories, character's heads, etc? Or are we perhaps just slow?

I feel I have to add that our ages range from 23 to 29 and that may have a hand in our long sessions as well.

Even though we run long by most accounts, most of us ask one another with a laugh, "Iz it Monday yet?", at some point during the week. Ah, the joys of having a hobby you are passionate about!

Long sessions were the best! The norm for me and the groups I played with (up until about a year ago when I began doing more artwork). Every, or every *other* Saturday/Sunday, usually from around 11 am until 1 or 2 the following am. Group breakfast to start (prepared by one of us or spouses) then maybe a 1 hour break for food and leg stretching, butt untingling, etc., somewhere during. On average 12 hours. Personally, I never found it tedious or too lengthy for sessions. We would be running out of steam at around midnight though. So that last hour was more wrap-up than anything else.

Not that big a deal when you think of LAN parties going for 12+ hours of Unreal tourney or whatever. But that stuff burns me out faster. I never 'lived' adventures duing LAN parties that I remember to tell to this day.

Jeff

Ziriel wrote: Does anyone else find longer sessions better for really getting into stories, character's heads, etc? Or are we perhaps just slow?

Hi Ziriel,

Welcome.

Like Mike, I've found that system (with a strong intention for the characters, with the characters setting their own agendas), allows for a faster "ramp up" than most players are used to.

I've found time and time again that the first three to four hours of play are often spent "figuring out" the GM's "real" plot, or which NPC you actually have to talk to, or the guy you really have to kill, or where the monster really is... Or whatnot. Until that point, the PCs are often bumping randomly into stuff as the Players sort through the clues and look for the entry point into the really increase in story speed.

(This has been my experience. Your milage may vary.)

That's why I use the use movies as a time guage (doubled for book keeping). Most movies get going strong within the first ten minutes (whether it's an action movie or a puzzle movie or whatnot). A game that can get folks hooked into strong, forward moving action within twenty minutes (as opposed to still sorting through a long list of possible suspects/locations/clues that really matter) will ramp up faster.

Some games here on the Forge encourage this speed. But they really demand giving up certain assumptions about the pace, rythym and roles (of players and GM) to be enoyed.

Take care,
Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote:

That's why I use the use movies as a time guage (doubled for book keeping). Most movies get going strong within the first ten minutes (whether it's an action movie or a puzzle movie or whatnot). A game that can get folks hooked into strong, forward moving action within twenty minutes (as opposed to still sorting through a long list of possible suspects/locations/clues that really matter) will ramp up faster.

Some games here on the Forge encourage this speed. But they really demand giving up certain assumptions about the pace, rythym and roles (of players and GM) to be enoyed.

First of all, thanks for the warm welcome.

The system we are using iz actually one of our own devising. (Perhaps one day it will even be finished. *grin*) When I refered to getting into the flow however I wasn't really speaking in terms of game mechanics. We often don't even touch the dice or look at our sheets during our warm up period.

It seems to take some time to recap what we did last session/what we were planning to do this session, establish mood, and get everyone back into the frame of mind they were in a week ago. This may in part be due to the fact that we tend to run stories that can last over a month within a larger long running game (5 years now).

We also have a very character driven feel and spend a lot of time on little details like: "Oh yeah, my character iz in a foul mood because you called him a jerk last session. He's going to have something to say about that."

I do agree with getting a story going quickly and making sure it's engaging from the get go, like a movie. What I'm more refering to is if you are running a mystery story it will slow down in the middle while you look for clues. Then if you cut a session during this slow spot it can take a while for the players to remember their clues, assemble their thoughts, etc. Unless of course the players have spent all their time in between sessions plotting the GM's doom, in which case you blaze forward without delay.

The biggest time factor in my gaming groups is the day of the week. work schedules seem to play a greater roll now, moreso than in college when we could play nonstop till everyone passed out.

You see, one of my group plays on Mondays which means we can't start till everyone is out of work which is around 6, then we have to eat dinner, so we sometimes don't start until 7 or so. Then, we have work on Tuesday which means we have to finish around 10 or 10:30. Tom gets up at like 3am and Scott and I both have a 45 minute drive home.

My Friday game works about the same as far as start time goes, but we often play until people start getting tired - nowadays that's around 11 or 12.

My saturday D&D game is very different. We start at 4pm and usually finish around 11 or 11:30. Subtract the time for food and goofing around and the average game session still runs about 6 hours or so. Most of the time we don't even notice the time pass.

My Sunday game or Kayfabe runs from about 6pm to 11 or midnight and that's rarely enough time to get in everything for the 6 player session as the gaming over the web tends to slow things down. I suspect that if none of us worked on Monday we would play later.

,Matt Gwinn

Well, my games in school were pretty much from midday/breakfast Sunday till mandatory hometime. Sometimes we pulled all-nighters, quite a lot really, but an average of 6-10 hould be feasible. In college things got a fair bit shorter, 4-6 hours, usually on a sunday but sometimes on weekdays depending on schedules etc.

In London, there are gaming clubs that operate in pubs, so these games ran from about 6:30ish to last tube time, which was about 11 - 11:30ish, depending on how far you had to go. This was quite disciplined in that we were relative strangers and the group got quite large, although there was starting chit-chat and drinks-buying.

More recently, a sunday afternoon/early evening pattern was most common, running to 4-6 hours I guess from early afternoon. Frequently dinner will be cooked, this is both because, as was mentioned above, we find it enriches the experience, and as a break which allows me tyo get my shit together.

I;m defnatelty in taking time camp, it takes me a while to settle into character and get the mnindset right, I don;t really like to kick off with too much action. As a GM, I like to give players conversation time, as I like to get a handle on what they are thinking, but I keep an eye on the clock (I often bring my own clock). This gives me time to formulate thoughts and adapt plans to what has now been established and the direction the players are going.

Hi Ziriel,

Thanks for clarifying.

After I posted I realized that you might have thought I was referring to "dice roles" when I meant rules. But if you look at a game like Sorcerer, you'll find lots of mechanics (like Kickers), that really influence the game, but aren't what most RPGers think of when we mention "mechanics". ("Mechanics" for most gamers refer to how a physical or mental action is modelled. Kickers are clearly not that.)

If you're interested in continuing this discussion further, let me know. We should probably start a new thread ("Dramaturgy and RPGs" or something), as we're clearly drifting off thread.

Let me know. And again, welcome.

Christopher

My playing times pretty well match the 3-4 hour average. I usually schedule 5 hours of gaming time, because I know about 1.5 hours of that will be occupied with tardiness and social stuff. We often end half an hour early or so, so the games are usually 3 hours of actual play, sometimes less.

My marathon gaming record was 18 hours in a day back when my friend and I used to do sleepovers all the time on 3-day weekends. We probably did 40 hours worth on that one weekend. Back then, I usually pushed for games that were about 5-6 hours and we would go as long as we possibly could.

Somebody brought up needing time to get into character, and that describes me as well. I usually need about an hour to get into my character and then stay there for about six hours. With my game nowadays getting shorter, than means I usually need a couple of hours to "unwind" afterward.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: With AD&D and Champions, so much of the session is dragged out (in my view), with book keeping, page flipping, rules adjudicating and so on, that you'd need nearly eight hours to squeeze the "story" elements in.

Hello All (first time post, btw)

In my circle game time is generally between 7 and 10 hours. With the occassional 16 hour marathon session thrown in when it's really good.

With the level of concentration on role-playing, interpersonal character interaction, and plot/subplot/metaplot weaving/unravelling my group doesn't even start to feel like they're gaming until around hour 3.

It takes them generally until the 3rd hour in character to feel a sense of complete immersion into the world and story.

But, then again, we may be the most obsessive psychotic gamer elitists in history.