I've kept both of the previous polls open for now, so, if you haven't yet voted in those, please consider doing so. The more votes they receive, the better the picture I have. My intention is, sometime after all the polls are closed, to do a brief analysis of the results.
Monday, February 24, 2025
How Long Are Your RPG Sessions?
I'm going to continue posting polls each Monday for a few more weeks, because I'm very curious about how the other half lives, so to speak. I know my own experiences gaming, especially over the last decade or so, are quite unusual, so gathering this data gives me a bit more insight into what my fellow roleplayers are doing (at least those who regularly read this blog). As always, please feel free to use the comments to clarify or expand upon your vote.
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Probably 4-4.5 hours so I went for 4-6.
ReplyDeleteWeekly online game is 2.5 hours and that's what entered in the vote above. Less frequently, 3-4 times per year, we meet face-to-face for a weekend of roughly two 6 hour sessions.
ReplyDeleteI have two groups. One plays fortnight week nights for about 3 hours. The other plays monthly-ish for about 5 hours. As one group plays more often, I chose that one for the poll.
ReplyDeleteIn our last three-hour session of X1, The Isle of Dread, here's what happened.
ReplyDeleteAfter gathering information from the Rakasta (cat people) camp, the party of five PCs moved north with their horses. They traveled through hill, jungle, and then onto mountain over five days without incident to reach the rope bridge spanning a chasm to the fabled plateau. After some deliberation, the impatient fighter took the lead and tested the bridge. Since it held his weight, the others followed at intervals. Fortunately for the party, the pterodactyls did not strike (75% chance).
So, the party (sans horses) marched across the savannah atop the plateau toward the dormant volcano that scraped the clouds above. Along the way, they spotted and kept well clear of a titanothere (herbivorous dinosaur) chewing on trees. In search of ingress, they walked around the volcano’s 24-mile perimeter where they defeated four Dire Wolves and later two Sabre Tooth Tigers (one “defeated” by charm mammal) in mortal combat, albeit with some serious wounds later healed by the cleric. No easy way in, so they climbed up, but the magic user slipped and fell to death’s door. The cleric stabilized him so the party waited (and foraged) a week for fully recover before proceeding. Eventually they continued over the dormant volcano’s frosty edge and down into its tropical crater where they spied the crater lake with Taboo Island and native village.
After some chest thumping, spear chucking, and battle cries, the natives of the village relented to accept the party as peaceful visitors. In the parley the followed, the Chief – a stone statuette – spoke via his handler, Fano “The Talking Chief,” to ask that the party use a village canoe to reach Taboo Island and defeat its pirate inhabitants. Over a feast of roast pork and fermented yams the party accepted.
Upon reaching Taboo Island, the party beheld the shattered ruins of a once great civilization and the makeshift pier at the foot of a neglected temple. So, they anchored at the temple and proceeded up the stone steps past the giant feet of a once mighty statue into an ambush by spear-wielding pirates. The party defeated those guards and now stands ready to enter the temple interior.
This isn't relevant when you're mostly doing PbP, but going by the last five years or so when I was still playing FtF regularly I put down 2-4 hours, trending toward the high end of that and ignoring time lost to waiting for late arrivals to show up and similar BS.
ReplyDeleteIf i look at lifelong averages it would be solidly in the 4-6 bracket, with much, much longer sessions in my high school and college days pulling the numbers up.
Our (D&D 5e) sessions typically last for around 2 hours, but we usually try to find a 'natural' point to end the session, so we don't end it halfway through a combat encounter or something (so sometimes it may be slightly over 2). The reason it's 2 hours instead of something like 4 (which seems to be more common) is not because we would not like to (or don't have the time for), but because not all of our players can stay focused (attention span wise) on a game for much longer than that.
ReplyDeleteReally enjoying these polls so far. Another aspect I'm really interested in (but you may not be), is how often people play (more than once per week, once every week, every 2 weeks, once per month, etc.).
ReplyDeleteAlso, it might be interesting to poll how often someone is/has been the GM/DM ? Like for example 'Forever GM' (always), on a rotating basis in the group, 'just' one single campaign, only a one-shot, 'never' (always a PC) ? (but I think you can come up with better questions).
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good suggestion.
DeleteYou need to start including an option for people who don’t currently have a gaming group.
ReplyDeleteThe thought hadn't even occurred to me. Thanks for the suggestion.
DeleteI've just been using my most recent game, but that's not a complete fix since I mostly do PbP these days and some questions aren't entirely relevant - we don't even have "sessions" as such, for ex.
DeleteMost of my sessions as DM are about 6 hours, give or take an hour.
ReplyDeleteJim Hodges---
ReplyDelete2-4 hours, which was less because we'd get bored with longer commitments, just that life has seldom ever allotted us much more to dedicate to our favorite tabletop devotion.
Longest continuous session ever? About twenty-five hours, 1985, summertime. Lots of jolt cola, total fascination with the jungle temple module our friend authored, complete with new species galore, the best setting pretty much ever. Those long hours awake put us all in a different state of consciousness, I do believe, a waking hypnogogic state in which every encounter was heightened almost to virtual reality. What a day.... I miss those guys!
We hold pretty well to 2 hours so I put 1-2. At the shorter end, it might have been helpful to have choices for 1 hour, 90 minutes, 2 hours, 2.5 hours, 3 hours, and then start going with ranges.
ReplyDeleteI put four to six hours but really that is the whole time that we get together. When you deduct time for us to all have some food and conversation it may dip under the four hour mark but getting together is always for at least four hours
ReplyDeleteI'm one of the few (from the results so far) in the 1-2 hour bucket. While in the old days I enjoyed nothing more than a marathon AD&D session, playing or DM'ing (and would happily game that way now with access to a like-minded group and the free time to indulge), these short sessions are actually working pretty well. I'm currently DM'ing 5e for a very inexperienced group, including my 11-year-old daughter, and D&D is just one of the options we turn to in our semi-regular Game Nights (Forbidden Island, Ticket to Ride, Monster of the Week, and Dread being representative of our spectrum). I have limited prep time (day job which regularly eats into nights and weekends) and admittedly can't help over-prepping when I DM (creating maps and loading them into Roll20 for gradual reveals, naming and fleshing out all NPCs, determining type and flow of trade goods between locales, etc.), so the limitation of a 90 minute to 2 time window, and the regularity of the sessions, actually moderates against my own worst tendencies to overdo it and let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently running a 5E game, which has one or two 4-5 hour sessions a month (although it started as a weekly 1-hour session), and a One Ring game, which takes place a few times a year (whenever we can arrange it) but lasts a whole day (probably something like 12 hours, including meal breaks, when you take into account travel time to and from where we play).
ReplyDeleteOnline games 3 hours and in-person group 4 hours. I'd happily game longer if it were up to me.
ReplyDeleteI give myself a 3.5 hour limit, but in practice almost always going a little over four hours.
ReplyDeleteNowadays I play chiefly with my son, who is only seven years old; his attention wavers after an hour or so, so we tend to play for about that long.
ReplyDeleteBack in my prime -- in my high school days -- we'd play marathon twelve-hour sessions. We'd play until everybody but me had fallen asleep, and then I'd clean up. Them's was the days. :-)
Currently in a weeknight session of D&D24 that runs 7-10 with a half hour social time before that, online.
ReplyDeleteAn intermittent Pendragon game on Sundays which runs 3-6 my time, also online.
And running The Nightmares Underneath here and there for local friends, and that's more like 5-6 hour sessions because we get together in person and it makes the travel more worthwhile.
Anything less than four hours, in person, seems absurd to this Grognard...lol
ReplyDeleteReading through these polls, I am starting to wonder about what TTRPG's people are playing right now, and what their favorite TTRPG is (which may or may not be the same as what they are currently playing). I guess a poll would not really be a good mechanism for looking into this aspect, as you would likely need a list with hundreds (if not more) of TTRPG's; there are just so many of them. But perhaps a post on this subject would be a good idea, giving people the chance to reply in the comments ? Just my 2$.
ReplyDelete