The question is: How long do your games last?
One or two sessions; between two to five hours.
For a decade, most of my games have been about that long. I have played a few long-term games and those have lasted anything between 3 months and a year; they were unusual.
The majority (99 games in a 100) last about as long as a convention game, but the actual session length tends to be a bit longer and broken into two when I’m playing with my home group. We used to get together early evening and play until about 10.30 PM. These days, online sessions run 8 PM – 10 PM.
In a way, running games to such tight timescales makes handling convention games easier because all my sessions run to about that length. And playing hundreds of short sessions means I have played hundreds of different systems over the last 10+ years. It means that I can usually judge the writing of an adventure to fit into a one-shot, but I struggle to grasp the broader sweep of campaign writing.
In the end, I get a short glimpse of many things, dipping my toe into the water without committing to a swim across the ocean.
I don’t know whether that’s a good thing, a bad thing or of no significance. I guess some people play only one game and they claim campaigns that run for years and years. I think they’re probably missing out and I might have something to miss out on, too.
I suspect I will never know.
RPGaDay is a prompt-driven experience in tabletop roleplaying, initiated by Dave Chapman of Autocratik, and powered by me and you.
The prompts for this year are as follows — and you can find out more on Dave’s website.
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