I noticed that, in the comments about my last session of the Dwimmermount campaign, there was some incredulity that I played every weekend with my group. Now, given the fact that the campaign is now a little over a year old and there have only been 28 sessions, you can see that, in point of fact, we get together more like once every other week. The realities of "adult" life -- work and family responsibilities, for example -- mean that we often have to skip a week. But, that said, we aim to play every week and we quite often will hit that mark consistently for long stretches of time, with the summer and period around Christmas/New Year being the most prone to interruptions in our play schedule.
I am, however, getting the distinct impression that gaming even every other week is something of an anomaly among my readership. Am I mistaken in this? How often do you typically meet to roleplay? I ask both out of personal curiosity and because a regular jab made at the old school movement is that it's made up primarily of guys who no longer actually game but just like to talk about gaming. Is there any truth to this?
I started playing again in April 2009 and have DM'd 26 sessions since then - everyone on a Saturday night using Skype (including one run from a hotel room in Germany). I agree with the idea that weekly sessions provide the best flow, but like many others, adult life does tend to interfere quite often. I don't think I've had more than a few sessions where every player made it, and no player has made every single session. That is the sad reality with which many of us simply have to deal, but it does not mean we are still not having fun when we can. I can't wait to be in the old age home playing D&D between naps, with the only interruption being the nurse with my meds.
ReplyDeleteOur group plays every 4 to 6 weeks on average for the last year.
ReplyDeleteMy group also plays roughly every four to six weeks. I could play more often, but this is the only group I have been able to find in my very rural area. Online gaming just doesn't scratch my itch the same way.
ReplyDeleteI don't really consider myself part of the "old school community" (I'm more of a well-wisher) but my group does its best to meet and game every week, something that it accomplishes at least 85% of the time.
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ReplyDeleteWe play every month and when I tried to organise sessions more frequently (at the start of the year) - i.e. every other week or even every three weeks - there was a virtual rebellion and cries out "outrage"!
ReplyDeleteAs much as I'd like to game more frequently I guess I shall have to make do with what I can get!
I've been running an OD&D game at my local FLGS for the past three months. We've been meeting for three out of four Tuesdays a month during that time. The game runs from 6:30pm until 10pm, and that's about enough time to have a decent adventure.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the things that might contribute to difficulty in gaming on a weekly basis is the notion that you have to do it for an extended period of time, i.e. over eight hours. I doubt I could arrange for an all-day gaming session more than once a month, and that would be pushing it. But it is relatively easier to set aside an evening or an afternoon for a game session. Combined with my observation that people make bad decisions when they are tired means that I don't mind ending before midnight; 10pm is just about right.
It has been scheduled for weekly for over a year now, as well.
ReplyDelete--There have been a few missed sessions, but overall, I think we played at least 45+ sessions in that time.
Now schedules may either force an alternating week rotation, but that may not be the case.
Session length ranges from 4-11 hours, with 9 hours being average.
I'm not in a game or running one at the moment--something I hope to rectify soon--but when I have, we aimed to meet once a week. If there was a schedule conflict, we just skipped a week. I was unaware that this was somehow abnormal.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Victor's comment; the notion that rpg sessions need to be 8-12 hour marathons is one that needs to be abandoned by any adult that wants to successfully game even every other week. Our sessions, which have ran every week for quite some time, tend to run only 3 hours or so on a Thursday night. And they have been quite satisfying, even though they are shorter. Steering clear of the weekend is important for us as well, as a lot of us tend to have family things going on then.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, my Dwimmermount sessions are usually about 3 hours in length, with the occasional one being longer. Like many, I couldn't imagine gaming for longer than that at a stretch anymore.
ReplyDeleteI DM a group every fortnight. Some of my players play in one or more other campaigns, so they game more frequently, but I myself game every other week. Our sessions average about four hours.
ReplyDeleteHere another one who plays every other week! ;) Our session, btw, starts at 20.00 and end around 2.00am/3.00am (you can imagine how me and my wife feels when the next morning our 15 months old child wake us at 7.30 am...)
ReplyDeleteThere's seven of us and we try to play twice a month. We've been doing pretty good with that schedule. The exception was over the holidays where we shut down for the month of December, with real life always taking precedent over gaming. Our sessions last about 3 1/2 hours. Every two weeks seems to work out pretty well for us.
ReplyDeleteWe met on the 1st & 3rd Fridays to game. Setting a definite date pattern has helped everyone keep the schedule pretty well. We do tend to shut down during December and we'll skip a game if more than half of the group (or the DM) has a conflict with "real life". We balance that by trying to slip in a game on the rare 5th Fridays, though.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really an Old School Gamer—I started with 3.0 about the time 3.5 was released—That Said, I find the Old School Movement Fascinating, and I think that there's a lot to be learned from the old school ways that can be applied to any school of gaming.
ReplyDeleteCurrently I just finished running a Savage Worlds Campaign. It was my first experience "behind the screen"—I ran them through the Savage Tale: Zombie Run. We played every two weeks and only missed playing Two Times for a total of sixteen sessions.
Next week we will be Creating Characters to populate a posse for a Deadlands: Reloaded Campaign—I'm still acting as GM.
We still plan to play every two weeks. (Point of pride on my part: that the game didn't completely fall apart over the Holidays. We played on Halloween, the Week of Thanksgiving, and The Day After Christmas—the game didn't fall on New years, but some of the same people were over to play board games)
I run a Labyrinth Lord game that meets once a week, every Wednesday night. We get dinner at 6, start playing by 7, and wrap up around 10 for about 3 hours of playing. Personally, I'd love another hour of game time in there, 3 hours seems just a tad short to me, but not unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteI've also tried running a "lunch hour" game with some coworkers that played for one hour a day as frequently as we could wrangle it. Turned out once a week was about as frequent as we could manage, and I found that one hour long sessions was untenable.
I game most Sundays (with interruptions around the holidays and summer), but of course things sometimes come up.
ReplyDeleteHowever, sometimes I'm doing side campaigns and/or playtesting, so a couple/few months out of the year I'm running games twice a week with two groups (some overlap).
Once or twice a week... Now, aiming for once a week, because we feel, that we pushed our limits...
ReplyDeleteThese are 25-35 year old people.
This campaign I started in about three months ago. Our goal is, to try to game every week, and if someone cancels at the last moment, or has some important duties that keep him away for too long, then we just leave him out for that game day.
I have three groups adventuring in my Isles of Emmon Castles & Crusades. Group A (in-house) tries to play one Saturday a month for 4 hours/session--we average about once every six weeks. Group B tries to play one Friday a month (via Skype) for 4 hours--we also average about once every six weeks. Group C (which includes most of Group B and also uses Skype) tries to play every Tuesday for 2 1/2 hours per session--again running at about 2/3 of that goal. That means that I run, on average, one session per week, averaging 3 hours in length. Plus I'm play in Rob Conley's Majestic Wilderlands Campaign once a week (Mondays).
ReplyDeleteFrom 2000 to 2008, I had a regularly scheduled weekday game. (Which day of the week shifted a few times.) These would typically be fairly short sessions—c. 2 hours I guess—since some people got off rather late and we all had to get up in the morning.
ReplyDeleteSimultaneous to that, most of the other people in the group also had a Saturday night game. Those sessions tended to be longer.
In 2008, we had to suspend the (at that time) Monday night games, but I started attending the Saturday night game every other week.
Recently, however, I’ve started up another campaign with some people new to the hobby. We’ve been meeting weekly so far.
And, yeah, things come up so a weekly game doesn’t mean 52 sessions a year.
(My advice is to not ever schedule a twice-a-month game. Schedule it weekly with the expectation that half the sessions will get canceled for scheduling conflicts. You’ll end up coming much closer to 26 sessions a year that way. At least, in my experience. And not just with gaming—with other things as well)
weekly on a week night, with I'd estimate a 75% success rate. 3-4 hour session typical. We usually have two games in rotation (with different GMs) that alternate, so that each individual game is on an effective biweekly schedule.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the current campaigns are Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP), Mekton Zeta, and classic B/X D&D. (No doubt none of those qualify as “old school” for some readers. ^_^) We play games of varying vintage.
ReplyDeleteI run separate Labyrinth Lord and OD&D campaigns, each in alternating weeks. Obviously, there are occasional missed sessions around the holidays or due to illness.
ReplyDeleteSo... Right now I'm DMing once a week. Sessions are usually 3-4 hours. Players are all in their 30s. There seems to be no shortage of people who want to play D&D.
Fun hobby!
The group I DM for nominally plays once a week. We can still miss sessions because of reality however.
ReplyDeleteI also play an irregular campaign or two getting me 1 or 2 more sessions a month and get in 1 or 2 fill-in games a month.
We game every week and I do everything in my power to make sure we actually meet and play weekly. All of us are adults with jobs and a couple of us are married or in long-term relationships, although I'm the only one with kids.
ReplyDeleteGame Night is sacred and I'll move heaven and earth to make sure we play. :)
I don't run or play at all. I have been looking for a group locally but not much success in Stockton. So yes I am the stereotype, but I also lurk on 4e pages as well (Grognardia gets two mentions in a WOTC article on Drow this week) and in general keep my self in good gaming shape just in case the need arises. Ever Vigilant.
ReplyDeleteMy (quite small) group aims to play for about 4 hours every other week. We manage it about 75% of the time. Sometimes we miss a week.
ReplyDeleteLabyrinth Lord. Twice a week. One game usually goes about 4 hours, the other goes anywhere from 4-8. Sometimes, during winter and summer break, I'll play more often than that, but that's the during-school baseline.
ReplyDeleteFor the past 2 1/2 years my gaming group has met every Monday for (roughly) 4 hour sessions. It's taken some dedication to commit to the schedule but I think it's led to more consistent and sustainable campaigns.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was running games, every two weeks was the standard, even in the late 70s, early 80s.
ReplyDeleteOnce a month. Demographic is currently male, married, 1+ kids. We have one bachelor in the group. I'm the oldest at 43 (ack!) with the rest being scattered throughout the 30's.
ReplyDeleteSessions run about 6 hours each. Maybe if the frequency were greater (and the logistics to get folks together not so involved), we'd be able to work out shorter games.
James, like you we shoot for every week but hit the mark 50% of the time. Three adults 30's-40's and three children ages 8-13 play Rules Cyclopedia Basic D&D in the published Mystara setting. Hope that info helps.
ReplyDeleteI DM a local group. Before the holidays we were playing nearly every week. Also, I play online via skype with old friends from high school. Likewise, we play almost every week.
ReplyDeleteSessions usually run between 4 to 5 hours.
The main problem is that both of these groups are small (3-4 players) so if someone cannot make a game we typically decide to opt out for that weekend. This makes for major lulls in play during the holidays/summer.
Everyone is in their mid-20s and no one has any kids, so that helps a bit.
We have had a regular group of about 7-10 30-40 year-olds with similar career/family obligations playing for several years and that has been playing s&w since July.
ReplyDeleteThe only way we've been able to deal efficiently with all the different obligations and commitments of 10 different adult professionals is to designate one weekend evening a month (usually the third Saturday or some such thing) as the regular "game night" and then hold lengthy sessions that evening (usually from 7:00PM - 2:00-2:30AM) for whoever can make it. With such a fairly large pool of players, we almost always have at least 4-6 folks who can make it come rain or shine.
And although many of us wish we could play more often, the length of the session seems to satiate us pretty well for the week or two following the session. True things occassionally get "strange" as the hours get late (and the bourbon flows) but I think each of us relishes this small chance to relive those all-day/all-night marathon sessions that were such a big part of our childhood experience with the game.
Finally got a game started (yesterday) and I'm hoping it'll be a once a week thing. Personally, though, with time permitting, I do prefer sessions longer than 3-4 hours when possible - 6 to 8 might be ideal (with enough food and such) - (certainly no all-nighters anymore though, too old for that now...)
ReplyDeleteWe play everyother Saturday, hence my player's having the nickname "the Fortknights".
ReplyDeleteI remember in college though when we played every bloody week, 3 or 4 times... and then after college every week.
I think every week can be done, if you have players who are into it. Though children do a lot to adjust that as well.
We play weekly on a weeknight, alternating between 3 or four sessions in a row each in two campaigns. Playing every week on the same day makes it easier schedule around than a biweekly schedulesince it's so consistent—nobody accidentally double-books because they mixed up which was game week and which wasn't.
ReplyDeleteWe've been on this schedule since December and we've managed 4-5 sessions of each campaign, typically meeting between 6pm and 11pm. There's four of us—one student, one full-time parent, and two who conveniently work at the same company, and we range from our 20s to 30s.
Prior to the current schedule we tried to schedule each game instead of having a regular day, and we aimed for weekends out of habit. We played very irregularly, sometimes missing two months due to other commitments or just needing the weekends for family and errands.
Every Wednesday night, 7:30 to 11:30. Usually AD&D, alternating some Gamma World, Boot Hill, MSH, and soon some Star Frontiers. But every week, definitely.
ReplyDeleteI've been quite lucky in that my group meets once a week, with the occasional break for holidays, cons, etc. If more than two people can't make it, we generally don't play. Even then, the remainder will still sometimes get together and watch a movie, or play cards games, or something else fun.
ReplyDeleteGame sessions generally last 4-5 hours, enough for some role-play and a couple of combats.
Only once a month or once every 6 weeks.
ReplyDeleteI'd play more, but there just isn't time with family and professional obligations.
I've been playing with the same guys every weekend for 20 years.
ReplyDeleteBack in 02 we used to play every week, but over the years everything I was involved with changed to once a month/every other month.
ReplyDeleteJust last year we decided that we wanted to game once a week again and now on Mondays we play.
Eat at 6 and just hang out and talk until 7. Get out focus on playing the next half hour, then I put my son to bed. At 8 we start and go until 11.
Until we started playing weekly we all forgot how much we missed it.
Once a week. Always have, always will. (Though there are of course missed weeks occasionally, plus those "down times" esp. the winter holidays.) In the olden days, I would not have considered a session of much less than 5 or 6 hours to be worthwhile, and they actually tended to run longer, like 8-10 hours. But now that I am involved in something resembling "adult life" and gaming primarily with full-time workers and graduate students, the strictly scheduled 4-hour sessions are ideal and probably all I can squeeze in at this point. But I would rather meet weekly for a short session (to keep week-to-week "flow" going) than wait four to six weeks between sessions! I feel for you people!
ReplyDeleteI tend to play in one game every other week, and I try to run my Call of Cthulhu campaign every Sunday afternoon. I admit I miss a few weekends here or there due to life and assorted responsibilities with my job, but since the campaign began in November 2008, I would think we are on a 80% weekly schedule. Admittedly the holidays are always tough (we just got back from a four week off period) but things remain on schedule for much of the spring.
ReplyDeleteI also tend to get the occasional one shot game into the schedule, a four or five hour quick game, either run through my local FLGS or something I organize through the university I am employed at. Add in a larp twice a year, an attempt to make a major convention (hopefully Gencon again this year) it usually leads to what can be considered weekly gaming.
I'm in two games right now. One meets every other week and maintains that schedule 90% of the time; the other is scheduled on the fly each time and averages about a session a month.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't consider myself part of the OSR, so my input may not be useful to the results here, but for what it's worth, my regular group plays more or less every week, with the occasional gap; this week, one of the gang is moving house, and we're all helping, so we're probably boardgaming afterwards.
ReplyDeleteWe would usually play for three or four hours, but since the new year, we've moved our gaming day to Saturdays, which means we tend to play for about five hours.
My group (definitely wouldn't consider it an "old school" group, though we are currently playing the 1989 version of Rolemaster) tries to meet once per month. Sometimes that doesn't work so well, but we usually hit the mark. More frequent just doesn't work, due to varying personal schedules.
ReplyDeleteI run a game that runs every week, bar one or two off here and there for things like christmas, new year, valentines day or if I'm on holiday.
ReplyDeleteI have five players in my group, five heroes. It's not that often that all can make it and I recap what has happened last at the start of every game session.
We play every single sunday, like church. We've been really lucky to have our schedules work out this way, and if we played much less frequently my players would likely lose interest, or our schedules would drift. Our spouses and significant others just look at it as some aberration of Poker Night or something, so that probably helps a bit.
ReplyDeleteThen again, we're all in our 30's and still playing in punk bands, so it's not as if adulthood has ruined our capacity for fun, as it seems to have for some of my friends.
...if you can be bothered to read this far ...
ReplyDeletein our current campaign i think there was a year between our first and second gaming session. social life, drinking, work etc got in the way. since we had our kids we now play just about every weekend, sometimes friday and saturday, or 2 sessions in one day. d and d has become our social life. i think the frequency definitely keeps everyone interested and commited. there are one or two 'dice widows' who i genuinely feel for though.
Our Wichita crew (generally with 5-7 players + 1 DM) games every other week pretty much like clockwork, outside of the tax season. Our regular DM (Jon "tacojohn" Hershberger) is an accountant, so we've had to 6-10 week hiatuses in the spring from Feb through mid-April or so the past three years. During that time we've played 63 sessions, which is ~14 sessions shy of a regular every-other-week schedule.
ReplyDeleteThis year we may be able to play through the usual year-end/tax season, since I'll begin DMing our secondary PCs through Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth :D
Allan.
(And our sessions are usually ~7-8 hours each).
ReplyDeleteAllan.
I've got a few groups I play with. One's run at a comics shop, and we get together typically twice a month, soetimes once a month, for 5 hours at a clip. The longest running gaming group that I've played with - since college - we typically get together 4-6 times per year for a full marathon day session. Sometimes we'll head to a con together for 3 days and try to keep up with the amount of energy we had as 18 year olds, and do midnight gaming and the like.
ReplyDeleteOur group has been playing for a little over three years. We try to play once a week. Usually we end up missing a few weeks in the summer and winter. When we started none of us had really played any pen and paper rpgs for over ten years.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, we play 5 hours sessions usually. With chatter that boils down to 4 hours, so weekly is good if we want to actually accomplish anything in-game.
ReplyDeleteI run two seperate weekly games, although none of them "old school" D&D.
ReplyDeleteRight now those games are a nWoD crossover game every Saturday day (complete with our kids playing in the back and us adults gaming and BBQing), and a Trinity/Fading Suns fusion that happens every Sunday night with a slightly different group of people. (The Trinity/Fading Suns group is also involved in a pre-revised oWoD Kindred of the East campaign, however we alternate stories between Trinity and KotE. End one story, start up the next one in the other game. Same people and similar time commitment, though.)
As for my gaming groups... I have six other people I'm gaming with right now, and each game has two players that only play that one game. The other three of us are playing both games a week. We are busy professionals with kids, and our significant others are gamers who play every session as well. It's a bit of a logistical challenge at times to schedule games, however since gaming is one of our primary social gatherings, we all go out of the way to make the time each week. About the only time we miss games is around holidays and vacations.
Now that I think of it, in the 21 years since I graduated high school, I'm gaming more than ever before. Actually having a stable job and weekends free has really stimulated my gaming addiction. :)
As to your original question, I have every reason to believe that my friends and I could continue to game with that schedule, regardless of the game system. What really matters more than system is having a group of people who are committed to regularly playing the game.
One group I played and Refereed with played every Saturday for 7-8 hours (about 3pm til 10-11pm) a session with at least a 90% made game date success rate.
ReplyDeleteMy S&W/World of Onn group meets every Thursday for 4 hours (5pm - 9pm). I started a new campaign Jan 7th and this week was the first one that was missed this year. If this holds up throughout the year, we'll get 3 games in a month.
I run a Castles & Crusades campaign for three players on Saturday nights. Most of the time, factoring in various real-world issues, we get around 2-3 sessions in a month, running around 4-8 hours each (although December and January have been gaming wastelands for us, so to speak, due to various illnesses and other factors).
ReplyDeleteMy usual gaming schedule, is three Sundays a month, for about five hours each session. Fortunately, my wife plays.
ReplyDeleteWell, my group have been playing Hackmaster for about eight years now. Most of us are in our 30s and have jobs, families etc. Our sessions are once a month on Saturday, and they run for about 6-8 hours. We usually meet at 5-6 PM and eat. During that time, we go over what happened last session. We then get started around 7 PM and play until 1 or 2 AM.
ReplyDeleteSix-year, weekly schedule with many interruptions (one that lasted more than a year). Currently close to weekly. Ages 33 to 46.
ReplyDeleteOld 1e/2e players who came together to try 3.5e, now, to our surprise, enjoying 4e immensely. Have spread across three time zones, playing on MapTool and Skype. With one annual grand get-together for 20 hours of marathon gaming over a long weekend.
But a DM who also endlessly plots to unleash a sandboxy old-school-renaissance-meets-state-of-the-art-computer-assisted-post-Gygaxian-1e/4e/Warhammer/Harnmaster/RQ-mashup. So is obsessed with reading great blogs like this one.
AD&D every Sunday with 2 alternating DMs/campaigns, have been doing this for years although in the past it was 3.5 and 4E. Usually 4-9 hours.
ReplyDeleteI've come to resent summer (weddings, weddings, weddings) and the winter holidays...
My Rogue Trader campaign is running more or less every week and started in November 2009 but we skip sessions from time to time in order for me to clear my head and do some work actually. When I think of it we have missed three sessions only till now. We are all in our thirties and working adults. Some with kids or pets :)
ReplyDeleteI am also playing in old school WFRP campaign and we also game every two weeks. same people more or less.
I could probably squeeze another RPG in my schedule if I wanted :)
We play every week. In 8 months we have played 33 sessions. We play on Wed nights from 7:30pm - 12 to 1am.
ReplyDeleteOur group is unusual in that everyone works for the same company, and it's a game company to boot, so we all just start gaming right after work.
As Grim said, we get together only about once a month, at best. (I'd love to game twice a month, but I don't know if enough of us could swing it. Or if Grim's wife would tolerate all of us that often... )
ReplyDeleteWow! Thanks Grognardia! It's nice to see that other DMs struggle with the same problem of "can we get a weekly D&D game going?" So far, I guess I've been lucky, with only about three or four sessions canceled. I've found that a good rule of thumb is to have half again as many players as you need for the campaign. So, if you want 3 players, get 5 to sign up. If you want 5, better have at least 7 or 8.
ReplyDeleteOh, and another thing I've noticed is that, yes, talking about D&D can sometimes be its own cool little game. After all, D&D is based primarily on conversation. In fact, some of my favorite D&D moments took place outside the game proper. I don't think that this is something to be ashamed of at all, however. D&D is as much a hobby, if not more, than it is a game. It's like being a football fan: how many hours a week does a football fan actually watch football? The average fan spends more time talking about games he's seen than actually watching them. So with every hobby.
I've got two campaigns to mention, though one just recently died.
ReplyDeleteThe now-dead one was 3.5 and ran for nearly three years bi-weekly about 75% of the time. Half of the six players ended up moving and were an hour's drive away, but we managed to keep the game going for nearly six months before collapsing. With a whimper, unfortunately.
The other... is an homage to old school. Beginning with a core from Dragonsfoot that gamed every other weekend, it now includes a community of 16 players, about 8 of which make it every week. We've played twice in a weekend about the same amount of times that we've skipped a weekend.
It helps that there are three couples in the mix. We game a good long time, too: we meet at 5pm, get started between 6 and 7pm and typically play until midnight - sometimes much longer.
My joke that we'd have to do an all night session with coffee sometime was met with enthusiastic replies. Crazy for a crowd that ranges from mid-20s to 42.
My sympathies to those that can't get a group together.
I currently have to travel to meet with my gaming group, so it is only every other weekend for me (it's about an hour and a half commute each way). Other members of the group, however, have another group which meets every week (on Thursdays), or otherwise game multiple times per week (and we do have adult responsibilities). It's largely a matter of making the time and prioritizing gaming as an important part of one's life.
ReplyDeleteVerification word: "Mogisse" - the name of a famous feline Impressionist painter.
My OD&D campaign meets every two weeks, Wednesday nights, and has been doing so since September of 2009, with about a month-long hiatus around Christmas/New Year's. So we'll see how it goes. Couldn't manage to do it every week, but every other week seems good so far.
ReplyDeleteAs for the length of each session, we go from about 7:30 at night to 10, so 2 and a half hours, and really, as DM i'd be hard pressed to play for longer, even though the players sometimes probably want to. It's exhausting! I don't have a lot of prep time, so maybe keeping the sessions relatively short helps, otherwise I might feel like I hadn't planned for enough stuff...
By the way, this is the first time I think I've commented here, but I've been reading the blog since the beginning, always very interesting - thanks, James, for doing it!
Some stats so far:
ReplyDelete37 people play every week.
12 people play every two weeks.
11 people play once a month.
Average session length is 5 hours.
Some data.
ReplyDeleteMy Exalted game group gets together on average every 2-3 weeks on Saturdays. Holidays can stretch this out, but we try to be consistent.
I also am a member of a small group of "Indiegamers" which meets a local FLGS to play various games (we just finished a long run of Shadow of Yesterday). That group also meets around every 2-3 Sundays.
I started running a C&C campaign set in a heavily home-brewed Wilderlands for 6 players (all newbies) in November. We set an every-other-week schedule (night of the week varies by my teaching duties each semester), and have kept that goal pretty faithfully (one cancellation, but one additional game during winter break). I'm the oldest (43), with another at 40, and the rest 25-33. The players have enjoyed gaming so much that they are starting another campaign (space/sci-fi) on alternate Tuesdays (alas that I cannot join them, for RL intervenes)
ReplyDeleteI do aim for a biweekly basis but if you look at the Calendar on Toronto Area Gamers site (http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Area-Gamers/calendar/)...you can see that gaming happens much less frequently.
ReplyDeleteI would strongly urge people to join things like meetups and post their games there even if they are private games. For our hobby is dying out because we not using the Internet to connect between each other. So, James, if you like, I would be happy to post your games.
I GM twice a month, ca 5 hours a game, averaging around 20-22 sessions/year.
ReplyDeleteNot counting online gaming, text chat, PBEM etc.
ReplyDeleteI started playing again regularly with the release of D&D 3e in 2000. I have been gaming almost weekly since then, maybe skipping 5-6 weeks a year, with a four month hiatus a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteI happily began my 1e campaign last Monday, to great succes, even with those younger players who have never known any D&D edition before 3e.
I have been in what is essentially a weekly game for the past... 8 years?
ReplyDeleteWow.
And I've just started another weekly one...
Once a week games of Mutant Future, schedule permitting. Me and about half of my gaming group are 40-somethings with family and kids so even once a week can be challenging at times. The other half of my group are 20-somethings with more time on their hands. So far, it is working.
ReplyDeleteThe group I play with are all in their late 20's/early 30's and we meet for three games a week. First I'll admit that I'm not strictly "old-school" (of the three games I have going right now 1 is Original, 1 is 2nd Ed., and 1 is 3e).
ReplyDeleteWe all work at the same place, all have kids about the same age (2 years), and are pretty strict about our gaming schedule...meeting Sunday evenings and after work Tuesdays and Fridays and bringing the kids with us for a playdate at the same time.
The kids and regularity tend to keep the sessions to a strict 4-hour cut off (kids have to be home and in bed by 10 including packing up gaming supplies and travel time).
We've been keeping this up for about three years now (since before the kids showed up) and it has worked out pretty well for us.
Shoot for every other week, on average about every three.
ReplyDeleteWe play every other Friday, about 4-6 hours per session. Things get tough around the holidays - I don't think we played at all in December last year.
ReplyDelete