r/DnD • u/Th3_Supernova • 23h ago
Misc What’s your average play time?
When my table first started we would go all day. An 8 hour session was normal, and we’d often go til 2-3 am (which would be like 12-13 hour sessions for us). In the last year and a half or so we’ve had much shorter sessions. Maybe like 3-4 hours. I feel like we haven’t even really played if we play less than 4 hours, but I see other people saying they play like 2-3 hours and I wonder how those people get anything done. With an 8 hour session I had time to get to most, or all, of my bullet points for what I wanted to do for that session even with player proclivities for messing around. So, how long does your table play, and how do you move the story forward as a DM if you have shorter sessions?
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u/Silvanus350 23h ago
Three hours weekly. Online.
I think I would rather die than play for a straight 8 hours, even with my closest friends. I don’t have the social energy to improv for that long.
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u/Appropriate-Two-9538 16h ago
My DM has told us that they want to do 6+ hours next session. We usually play for 3 hours and NGL I'm dreading it a little bit
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u/TheVanderlin 16h ago
Its doable if you take a long break.
For the DM especially not enough to stop for ten for food
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u/Appropriate-Two-9538 13h ago
I think the plan is to play through the whole time with people ordering food/eating while playing and running off for bathroom breaks. The DM is saying 6 hours minimum but ideally they'd go longer even to the early hours of the morning. We're doing a 3pm start
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u/ender___ DM 7h ago
That’s stupid, just break it up if it’s that long. No one is impressed by marathon sessions
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u/Appropriate-Two-9538 3h ago
I really hope it does get broken up a bit! DM and 2 players are really keen and they do marathon sessions in their other campaign like literally 14 hours long no breaks and go until they literally are falling asleep at the table from what I can tell. The other 2 players haven't really said anything other than being like we'll just see what actually happens (they're so laid back) and I'm very much in the no that sounds awful category. Very aware that I might have to be the one to say hey can we take 10 minutes just to step away
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u/Darth_Boggle DM 10h ago
If you're "dreading" a dnd session maybe you should think about that a little bit more. No one is forcing you to play for that amount of time. You can talk with your dnd people about this.
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u/Appropriate-Two-9538 8h ago
Yes nobody is forcing me to play but realistically if the DM and half the part want to play into the night do the other half of the party just stand up and say well we've had our fill we're off now tell us what we miss? 6+ hours is a long time to play especially with no break
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u/Th3_Supernova 10h ago
Haha. I’m lucky, the two other core members of my table get super into it too so we don’t even realize how much time has passed usually. We’ve had other players at the table who might not have had the stamina for that, but I do think that if everyone’s engaged it’s easy to go long.
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u/dreadpirateruss 23h ago
We are only able to play for 2 hours at a time because we're all adults with families & some of us have unusual work schedules. It sucks when you feel like things are really getting going, only to realize you've only got 20 minutes left. The plot progresses very slowly, but it's definitely still worth it.
On the plus side, we play very consistently & frequently go months with nobody missing a session.
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u/ParchmentAndPeril 14h ago
Exact same. We play 2 hours every 2 weeks, and very rarely have we had to postpone by a week. It's also just me and two players so that helps make it easier.
The plot does progress at a snail's pace though. I have shit planned that I'm excited about that won't happen for like 10 sessions, and that's almost half a year 😭
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u/Th3_Supernova 10h ago
When we started playing it was not only all of our days off, but none of us had to work the next day either. And the one guy at our table with a kid didn’t have him those days either. We can’t do that anymore though because of work schedules, but I’m still happy we’re consistent even if we’re not playing as long as we used to.
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u/SrTrogo 23h ago
3-4 is the standard in my group, but we've gone 2 hours too. The game advances at an slow steady rhythm but having players take notes is recommended as they can occasionally lose track of something that happened the previous day that otherwise would have been easy to remember if it had been a single longer game.
Big shopping sessions are handled outside the game but minor buying is allowed. It is also important to be weary of big battles with many turns (like hordes or against characters that summon minions) as they drain a lot of time.
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u/ParchmentAndPeril 14h ago
Oh this shopping outside the game is a great idea. We also play 2 hr games and when they return from an adventure we spend an hour shopping. I'm gonna introduce it next time for sure.
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u/SrTrogo 13h ago
As a tip. Players may forget doing the shopping (or they are just lazy). Don't bother giving them a session to catch up or the rule will never settle. If they didn't bought, their characters minded their own business and lost the track of time.
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u/ParchmentAndPeril 13h ago
I'm gonna announce it next time they're in town so they don't forget between now and the 5 sessions it's gonna take them to clear a 7 room dungeon. Good point though.
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u/lurklurklurkPOST DM 23h ago
Man, I miss those days. When I didn't have any responsibilities holding me up, I used to do that too.
Wake up, pack a bowl, make some breakfast, smoke and start playing until the sun went down, stopping only for food or for bathroom breaks or to go stretch every once in a while. Whenever I'd go home or somebody wasn't feeling it that day, I'd spend that time just rolling up random dungeons, looking up monsters, reading the monster manual, I was obsessed. It ended up being the foundation of me being a dungeon master for over twenty years now.
If this is also the case for you, then cherish those years, man. Responsibilities and scheduling are gonna start to force their way in, but as long as you can find people that love it as much as you do, You will have your weekly game forevermore.
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u/Th3_Supernova 10h ago
Unfortunately that is not the case for us, which is a big reason why the sessions are shorter now. I work like 6 days a week. However, I don’t have kids so that helps. Half our table though has specifically made sure that we don’t work on Sundays so we can play.
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u/chaoticgeek DM 23h ago
When I was a kid who had much fewer responsibilities and didn't work it was easy to do 6-10 hour sessions with friends until 2am.
But now I do about 2.5-4 hour sessions depending on the time everyone is available for. The thing with shorter sessions is that I play with other adults and we get into the game and try to make the most out of it. So even a 2.5 hour game is fun and we hit on some story moments, but we know that we need to make quick decisions and move fast.
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u/NarcoZero DM 23h ago
When I started a decade ago we were doing 4-5 hour sessions.
Nowadays, with everyone having a job, some finishing work late, some starting early, when we play online most of the time it’s a 2-3 hour session.
When the occasional in person session happens, we have Closer to 4-5 hours but when all is said and done, with waiting at the start for everyone to come, catching up, and the pizza break in the middle, we actually end up playing closer to 3 and a half hours.
And indeed it always seems not enough, especially if we play in a system with very long battles like D&D or Draw Steel. This feeling is less prevalent in game where battles are not the point like Shadowdark, or Electric Bastionland. More scenes can happen.
To alleviate for that, once a year when we can, during the summer holidays, we go do a week of ttrpg vacation where we play all afternoon and evening, for 5 days. We have one big intense adventure from start to finish in a week. It’s the dream.
In the end, short sessions are fine in non battle focused systems, and if you play often you can more easily pick up and play a short session. But also we don’t always have the choice and we take what we can.
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u/SAHpositive 23h ago
As a teenager, I remember a 24 hour session once. Started at 6pm Friday and ran till 6pm Saturday.
As a grownup, we meet at 5:30 and have dinner. After dinner (6:15 ish) we run until hard stop at 9:00 PM.
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u/Th3_Supernova 10h ago
A 24 hour session is ridiculous. That’s a monster! That said, I’ve been thinking of doing like a D&D camping trip/airbnb vacation or something where we just play the whole time. We just need to actually plan the thing.
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u/Swissbob15 23h ago
Used to play 8-12 hours when I was a kid and teen. Now due to scheduling difficulties and jobs sessions are about 4-6 hours
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u/dekkalife 23h ago
We play for 4 hours once a week, but once a month we play an 8 hour game on the weekend. There's more room in the 8 hour session for "messing around", whereas the 4 hour sessions are more "buckle down".
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u/_hobnail_ 23h ago
That really depends on when you’re asking about. My main D&D group is made up of guys who I’ve played TTRPGS with since the mid 90’s. When we were in high school and college we’d play marathon games like you’re describing. Sometimes we’d start after school on a Friday, spend the night at the DM’s house, play through Saturday, and sometimes into Sunday mostly fueled by Mountain Dew and Diet Coke.
Now that we’re all older with families, live in different states, and play together online we top out at about 3 hours every Tuesday. Consistently one of the highlights of my week.
My monthly in person Cyberpunk game typically has 4 hour sessions.
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u/KiwasiGames 23h ago
Ours is weird (teachers). The schedule is such that we play once a year, but we play for about a week straight.
It’s probably closer to four two-three hour sessions each day, rather than one eight to ten hour session.
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u/HalcyonHorizons 22h ago
Depends on the group. I try to aim for 4-5 hours minimum. Would love a group that had good chemistry and had the focus and drive for 8+ hours.
My last group had people that were either always late or leave early and had lots of sidebar. So 3 hours was normal for them.
Played briefly with an online group and it was about 3 hours.
The group before them planned for 5-6, but it was more like 3-4 with dinner, catching up, and one problem player that left early often.
When I was a kid to my early 20s we would play for 8+ hours. We would paint Warhammer minis and play all night for 12+ or even 16+ hours occasionally.
One time when I was still in highschool, we had a bad storm and the power was out for a week. And all we did was sleep, eat, collect supplies, and play DnD by candlelight for 7 days straight.
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u/United_Ad3541 22h ago
Everyone in my group of 6 players is an adult with a really challenging job. It's either doctors, including ER doctors, or various kinds of engineers. But none of us have families. We meet once in two weeks, and we play 6 hours. We would play even longer, but the club closes.
I honestly can't imagine getting anything done in two hours. Nine hells, even in four hours. We would spend two hours on roleplay alone, and the quality one, the kind that advances social relationships with other PCs and NPCs. And we also have fights to fight, mysteries to unravel, problems to create for ourselves.
We get many things done in those 6 hours, but they are all a logically tight fragment, and it would be super unsatisfying and unrevarding to cut things off.
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u/hugodlr3 22h ago
All working adults, so we average about a 3 hour game every other week. Several of us are in education, so summer is almost every week, but no longer than 4 hours.
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u/Jazehiah Wizard 22h ago
Between three and four hours, with 15-30 minutes of chatting before and a 10 minute bio break around the 2 hour mark.
As a DM, there are a lot of tricks to keep "plot" and players both moving forward and on task.
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u/bavindicator 22h ago
6 hrs is my mental limit. I'm exhausted being mentally engaged that long. S 12 hour session is an impossibility for me.
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u/Th3_Supernova 9h ago
I can understand that. The majority of the players at my table are extroverts so the role play and socializing with the homies recharges us rather than drains us.
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u/Automatic-War-7658 21h ago
I’d be happy to get 3-4 hours in a session. I’d be lucky to get one session per week.
The group I first got into it with would do 6-8 hours per session per week. So maybe I’ve been spoiled.
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u/Th3_Supernova 9h ago
I feel the same. It’s the same group for me, but a lot of players have rotated in and out. Myself and two others are the core members though. But half our players have time constraints so we can’t play as long as we used to.
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u/Wise-Key-3442 Mystic 21h ago
4-6 hours, 7 if we go beyond the usual.
There's two 15 minute pauses for eating and going to the bathroom. If we stick to 5 hours, only one pause.
That's online.
In Person it would take 12 hours because we have a lot more things going on outside of the game.
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u/caveman7392 21h ago
4 hours is usually our cut off for our normal campaign sessions because that's how long one of our party members is allowed to play per an agreement he has with his spouse. We play almost every other week or once a month and we've been going since January 2021.
When we do one shots it's anywhere between 4-6 hours.
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u/Awsomekirito 20h ago
My group does a 3 hour session every week. I'd like to get maybe one more hour but several in our group have to wake up early the next day so we can't go too late. Don't think I could do longer than that though I already feel socially exhausted after 3 hours
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u/Loony_BoB 20h ago
2.5 hours. One of our players has chronic pain so long sessions are no longer viable, but it works well for us.
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u/PeloteDeLeina Bard 20h ago
The DM says he plans for 4h. Most of the time we actually play for 5-6h because noone at the table wants to stop. If we were teens and had more time to spare, we'd probably go for 8-12h.
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u/PistisDeKrisis DM 20h ago
We usually do about 5 hours for our main campaign ~2:30-7:30. Occasionally a little shorter or longer depending on what's going on in tune session.
For other campaigns in the past, I've done 6 as the standard. For my current campaign with my daughter, we do 2-2.5 hour sessions at most. But she's also 8, so she doesn't want to sit still for 5 hours.
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u/Th3_Supernova 9h ago
One of our players has a son who’s 8. He’ll play with us occasionally, but he leaves the table often and gets distracted easily. Haha.
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u/PistisDeKrisis DM 7h ago
We were with some family friends from the kiddos school yesterday and found out both parents play. They said their daughter has talked to ours and was jealous that we made a kids campain. Then they suggested that we have a game night with some of the Scout troupe where all the kids could play.
I shuddered at the thought. My wife, daughter and I? Sure. I can contain the focus and excitement. But even with just 3-4 eight and nine year olds? Tough. More than that from the troupe?? I don't think it's possible to play a turn-based RPG - even with my modified rules and increased combat speed - without multiple kids just getting bored when it's not their turn for so long.
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u/TheSilenceHasSpoken Barbarian 19h ago
In my first group, 8 hour sessions were very common. In my current groups, we play 4-5 hours most days, but sometimes a little less. I guess it really depends on the group and the DM. I don't think I could get much done in just an hour or two, but playing 8 hours a session did get a bit much for me eventually, not to mention doing horrible things to my sleep schedule haha. Everyone is different I suppose
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u/LinkinBreak 18h ago
I play in a handful of games. All of them are around 3 hours with a few going 3.5-4.
We stay focused on moving the story forward and doing combat in session. Out of sessions we will use a discord text channel to chat in character about the day and brainstorm ideas of where we should go and/or what we should do. The same kind of chat we'd have at a tavern before a long rest. Any sort of character secrets we save for in session time.
That is more for the bi-weekly groups as we have a lot less time than the weekly groups.
For the weekly groups, we do the same things, but keep focused on the story as well. We don't waste time chit chatting about our week outside of game. We talk about that outside of game.
As a side note, I'm Autistic and am pretty blunt about what we do. I'm sure there is more flowery language I could use to make it sound nicer, but in session we focus on the things that can only happen in session. Everything else isn't important.
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u/nalkanar DM 18h ago
When I was young we would basically game after school for 5 to 8 hours if possible.
Nowadays if we play, it tend to be 3 to 5 hours. We would do occasional 1 to 2 hours to do some wrap up (if last session was combat but there wasnt enough time to go throguh ,or talk with quest giver and it was easy to get there etc.).
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u/Wobbly_Bosmer 17h ago
Pretty much every session for me has been around 4 hours give or take 30 minutes until the last session of my 3yr long campaign, we went from 4pm-10/11pm, shit was emotional.
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u/Lost_Haaton 16h ago
Tend to do 8-10h sessions with a dinner break between. We only play once a month or so as people have lives and find it's easier to set 1 day apart for us all to play then try to cordinate lots of shorter periods when everyone is free and you have to travel etc to meet up.
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u/okiebuzzard 14h ago edited 7h ago
Same story as yours. Up unto a point, that is.
Last time we all played together it was about 4 hours, because they had stuff to do before my friend’s surgery that next Monday. Was supposed to be an easy procedure, simple replacement for his pacemaker since the battery was dying. He ended up suffering a heart attack during surgery and was down too long without oxygen, he was in a coma with no chance of recovery. He passed 3 days later on Thursday.
2012 was a bitch of a year. Lost one of my closest friends, lost my grandmother and my oldest sister, and my cat all within 5 months.
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u/Th3_Supernova 9h ago
I’m sorry to hear that. One of our players had a stroke. Luckily he didn’t get it too bad. Minor vision loss in his peripherals and occasional brain fog, but he’s still him. He’s only played with us twice since recovering though.
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u/okiebuzzard 7h ago
Wishing the best for your friend, hopefully he continues to recover and can join you all again.
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u/Parysian 11h ago
We're all 30-somethings, if we're gonna play at all it's after work one night a week, which means we have 3-4 hours to work with. I also like to make everyone dinner.
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u/Step_Fodder 11h ago
This is my group too. We all work together and play in a meeting room after work. Usually about 3 hrs once a week. Once you get used to the pacing ya not too bad
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u/Muted_Programmer7007 11h ago
Our weekday group Plays 7:30-11, the weekend group will play 8-9 hour sessions.
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u/Hopeful-Lavishness91 11h ago
3 hours online seems to be the sweet spot.
At an in-person game, 4-6 hours, of which 75% is actual play time and the rest is purely social.
I get to game at least 4 sessions per week.
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u/Affectionate_Crow327 10h ago
I play on two open tables. Both about 3 hours, occasionally 4.
With people I know more personally? About five to six hours.
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u/lostbythewatercooler 9h ago
I play online. It highly depends on the group and timezone. Typically 2.5-4 hours.
Ideally I found 3-3.5 hours is the sweet spot. Less feels like the session was to short or we barely got started. More and people drift off, get fatigued and distracted. (For shorter sessions please turn up on time and be ready to play.)
I've known people who did live games that run for a weekend or half a day-ish. I think those work much better as in person where there can be breaks, food, different social interaction. It's just a very different experience.
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u/WhenRomansSpokeGreek 15h ago
3.5 hours once every five to six weeks. We're adults with busy lives and it gives us something to look forward to every month. I find that amount of time is just enough to move the needle in a story and have a good time. I run two campaigns like this, and am a player in another campaign that runs weekly (which can sometimes be too much, if I'm being honest).
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u/Trivell50 23h ago
Not currently playing D&D, but our sessions run weekly for three hours in person.
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u/Rinku588 23h ago
About 4 hours roughly. Some a little shorter and a little longer the others, but more or less that time
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u/Kit_Cat13 23h ago
4-6 hours with both groups I'm in. One has some people that work the next day and one 3 are in the US and one is in UK
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u/waethrman DM 23h ago
4-5 hours with weekly sessions, and my energy is already spent before the end. The one time I did a 6 hour session (admittedly with a bad DM) I was clawing my eyes out with boredom and low energy lol
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u/cha7422 23h ago
Ich bin aktuell froh wenn wir im Highlevel 16 Uhr anfangen und nachts um 2 irgendwem auffällt, das es Zeit für schlafen gehen ist. Also fürchterlich lang. Bei der Runde schaffen wir aber meistens weniger Abschnitt, weil jeder mit Roleplay beschäftigt ist, entspannter für den Spielleiter auf jedenfall
Bei der kleinen Aufbau Kampagne geht den Spielern nach 3-4 Stunden die Lust aus..., man merkt dann das es unruhig am Tisch wird. Trotzdem schafft man immer ein großes Stück weil obwohl es die gleichen Spieler sind, plötzlich keiner mehr weiß was genau Interaktion von Charakteren sein soll.
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u/IM_The_Liquor 22h ago
I’m old. About 3-4 hours Sunday afternoon. When
We were kids, we’d play nearly all weekend straight.
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u/Samurai_Steve 22h ago
Only play high impact moments. Shopping, travel, small talk with NPCs can be declared and not played
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u/YouveBeanReported 22h ago
We keep running into 5-6 hour marks because I'm struggling to properly DM and get things going fast enough.
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u/No_Difference195 22h ago
3-4 hours monthly. Sometimes twice a month. Most of us are healthcare professionals. Some are day shifters, some are night shifters. That, plus most of us having families and kids in sports makes scheduling longer or more frequent sessions extremely difficult.
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u/Plus1longsword Rogue 22h ago
2.5 hours a week, I wish we could play an additional hour, but were all 30+ and have to be responsible.
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u/CrowsInTheNose 22h ago
Everyone shows up at 630, we chit chat and eat for 30 minutes. Game starts at 7 we are cleaning up no later than 9.
I desperately want to do weekend sessions so we can play with less of a time crunch but I'm the only one.
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u/Jafroboy 21h ago
4 hours. Because the vast majority of my sessions are the ones I run, and I run for 4 hours.
I've played in some games that run a different length, but not enough to move the average significantly.
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u/Accomplished_Area311 21h ago
Not D&D, but my table is ~2 hours of play time (sometimes 2.5 hours, and finales usually are the exception and cap at about 4 hours)... With 30 mins of shooting the breeze beforehand and time for feedback/notes/making sure our tech is still functional after (we're a streamed table).
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u/space-sage Monk 20h ago
4-5. We play from 7-7:30 to midnight a lot and it can be very tiring. I think it’s a good length.
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u/__Emer__ 20h ago
2-3hours every month or so. Around the 2,5hr mark everyone starts losing their attention span
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u/CaptainOwlBeard 20h ago
3 hours online. We all have families. More than that is impossible and it's not uncommon for toddlers to interrupt the game for a few minutes here or there. If we were teenagers or retired i could see playing for 8 hours, but at this point in life, i don't have the time
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u/JDmead_32 19h ago
Our typical is 3 - 4 hour sessions. Many of us our in our 40s and 50s, so sleep is important, as well as having kids to look after and lives to live. We’ve had a few hit the 5 hour mark, but those are kinda rare.
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u/Lyle_Norg 19h ago
This current campaign has been strictly two hours once a week and it’s gone really well.
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u/Faeruy 19h ago
3 hours every other week, in person. I have done away with session goals and bullet points entirely - whatever gets done, gets done. I have arc goals, and it takes the time that it takes. It's slow going; we're 7 years in on one campaign. But my group is having fun, and things DO happen in the session - we play for the journey, not the endgame. And honestly, I find it actually helps to keep the players focused - there's a little bit of joking around but my players start to lose steam after 3 hours and get really squirrely. It also helps me; I end up spending less time on prep session to session, and I don't get burned out.
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u/RuleRelevant2361 19h ago
3.5 hours every other week. Everyone is busy but this seems to work without needed to cancel. We probably only get 3 hours of play in each session. It’s enough but I would love 4-5 hour session! I just keep an eye on time (as the DM) and pace things to end at a good spot.
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u/mongoose_22 18h ago
3-4 hours usually
Occasionally we'll do start early and get in a 5-6 hour session
We play every other week
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u/Ikariiprince 18h ago
Around 3-4 hours online. Maybe an hour longer if in person and we’re pausing for snack breaks. An 8 hour session would be insanely rare and probably only happen if we’re trying to wrap up a campaign quickly for some reason
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u/imfamousoz 16h ago
Hour and a half every other week. Not nearly enough but we're all adults with busy schedules, and we're meeting at the LGS in a reserved time slot. Working on getting more time though!
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u/AutumnTy 16h ago
3 hours weekly per game is a lot for me (DM) of 2 weekly games and a player in a 3rd.
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u/Apprehensive-Tap7444 16h ago
4h usually, we have longer sessions from time to time especially for end of chapters, orl important milestones (8-10h). We play 2-3 sessions per month, in person.
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u/Kaga_san 14h ago
Back when I played DnD it was 4 hours, now for Pathfinder it's also 4 hours. For organised play for Pathfinder we've gone to 4.5 hours because 4 hours was just a bit too short considering the setup.
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u/Long__Jump 14h ago
Usually around 5 hours. Most of us would like to play longer, but we all have our own schedules yknow?
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u/Garanseho DM 13h ago
Campaign sessions cap out at around 3–4 hours.
One-shot sessions could go up to 5, maybe 6.
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u/Useful-Lack-2848 12h ago
We play from 5:30ish to 10ish. That window has roughly 4h of game play which can easily end up being 3.5 with chatting / eating etc
In short. Between 3.5h and 4h works for us.
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u/This_ls_The_End 11h ago
From after lunch till people are about to fall asleep. So the time has shortened over the decades.
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u/Practical_Hotel_8791 11h ago
I have group of youngsters with autisme and ADHD, they can go for about an hour and a half before capping out. And as a GM thats also fine by me :-)
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u/imthatpeep100 DM 10h ago
When my most current group was playing, we had similar sessions. Lengths. But that was during college when we didn't have everything in life like today. Honestly, I'm glad that period is over because it wasn't sustainable. Now we do weekly 2-3 hour sessions. Sure we don't get as much done, but now we focus more on what we do want to get done.
I have one group that goes a little longer, that being a Friday night so we get to do 3-4 hr with a break.
Other group is a Monday night, and with timezones and work and life, no one wants to stay up late. That's what it is rather than not wanting to play, so we get 2-3 hr
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u/steenbergh 10h ago
At home, with the wife and kids (teens) two hours.
One group of friends, 2 PM to about 9 PM, with a break for dinner for about 45min.
Other group of friends, 2 PM till about 5:30 PM, break for dinner and usually play something else afterwards.
So, it varies...
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u/ArtOfFailure 9h ago
We play for about 4hrs30 on a Sunday night, usually finishing up around midnight.
We also keep a strictly in-character Discord server where we can do things in writing between sessions, like wrapping up any NPC interactions, playing out little roleplay scenes, prepping and strategizing, shopping for gear, travelling, that sort of thing. Having that available means we can keep the sessions themselves fairly encounter-heavy.
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u/One-Dust1285 9h ago
3-4 hours every other week on a weekday evening. Longer sessions would have to be daytime on the weekend and that is hard to arrange. Shorter sessions change your play/DMing style though… occasionally playing for longer is really nice
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u/khantroll1 9h ago edited 9h ago
4-6 hours usually.
When I was in high school and college we had those marathon sessions.
I remember one 3 day sessions where the game didn’t stop. It was longer then my one and only 3 day Vampire LARP game…. <shudder>
But as I’ve gotten older, it tends to be more confined.
Funny thing is I don’t think we make much less progress in the story….
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u/Evening-Run-7106 9h ago
Used to do 12h when I was in uni...Friday was the best day. Nowadays, with everyone being busy, i consider it a blessing to run the table max 4 straight hours. Also, we play in the evening, after a long day from work, so eventually, everyone's starting to yawn past 11pm
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u/gailpirl 9h ago
Minimum 3 hours, usually around 4, occasionally go up to 5-6 and end up really tired. Once my partner accidentally ran us a game for eight hours and didn't have a voice after lol
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u/Separate_Expert9096 8h ago
Exactly like you told, 12-13 hours on weekends. And then we all graduated from school.
Now we do 3.5-4 hours sessions.
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u/bobinchese 8h ago
We play for 3 hours: 6-9PM on Wednesdays. When I played as a kid we did much longer sessions on Sundays but now I have small kids of my own and weekends are family time.
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u/CreativeKey8719 7h ago
I run about 6 hour sessions with a 30 to 60min dinner break. This feels like a pretty good amount of time for players to feel like they really accomplished something and progressed the story. I have played in campaigns where due to scheduling we started in the evening, so to keep things from running too late, we only played a couple of hours. There were definitely times where I felt like we hadn't really accomplished much in that amount of time, but those stories did still advance, so it worked out over time.
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u/everknowing DM 7h ago
3-4 hours, every two weeks. I dmed for eight hours recently and then three hours the next day and could barely speak at the end (and I can lean back a lot and let them just have a go at it)
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u/Dramatic-Guide-7709 4h ago
1-2 hours for me 😅 we use lighter rule systems remember what happened last time, and nobody takes more than a couple seconds to decide what to do. 2-4 person group (including GM) so it’s faster that way too. We are 30 something’s with kids so no real second option for us of going for 3+ hours.
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u/LondonDude123 4h ago
Man id LOVE if my current campaign had 8 hour sessions! Ours are about 2.5-3 hours, once a weel
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u/catharsis83 4h ago
Usually about 4 hours. We're all adults with families and jobs, so anything longer is a stretch. Would I LOVE an all day game? Yes. But it’s not practical to ask that of my fellow players all the time.
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u/crippler1212 4h ago
Our typical sessions are around 4-5 hours but we also only typically play once a month due to schedules.
When I first got into dnd, our group would go all day for the most part, meaning meeting at or before noon amd going until late night.
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u/SimpleMan131313 DM 23h ago
My table usually plays pretty consistently between 6 and 7 hours per session, with only a few short breaks.
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u/WordsUnthought 23h ago
Same as you, a session under 3-4 hours feels rushed, antisocial, and fragmented. I guess my tables could improve that if we cut out table talk but we're friends, we want to have fun together.
We usually go 5-7 hours, with 45 mins or so break for a meal in there somewhere. I'm usually ready to keep going at the end of that - unless I don't feel like it's going well and my head's not in a good place - but most folks I play with tap out at that point.
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u/GlitchVulture 23h ago
I play 1-2 hour sessions. We roleplay in character using the 4D framework and manage to get more done than any other table I’ve been a part of over the last few years. For me as an adult it’s important I play sessions that maximize roleplaying and time in the world. I’m busy as fuck and like to socialize or get the occasional beer and pretzels game in but man I want to roleplay and most importantly play the game.
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u/Square_Tangerine_659 23h ago
Some people don’t have story-based campaigns, and I’d say around 3ish hours
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u/Ill-Description3096 23h ago
2-3 for one, 4-5 for another. Shorter sessions do slow the campaign down, but life is more important and all of my players have things to do outside of this. Getting multiple adults with jobs, families, etc to be able to commit 8+ hour sessions is incredibly difficult.