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All-
Let's face it, in light of fast Hollywood movies and rush-rush mmorpg gaming, the culture of gamers of this generation tend to expect a swift pace of game. But how long are your games "actually" taking? How much is achieved, for example, in 3 hours? What is "normal" per number of encounters, Encounter Level, or CR level? What is the pace of your game?
We can do about 10 encounters in a night if the encounters aren't knock-down drag-out fights with annoying monster abilities. Alas, there are usually three or four of these a night, so we usually get about 6 or 7 done.
We play about 8 hours, incidentally.
Well, our Kingmaker runs about 8 hours, and we're lucky if we can get 4 encounters in one night. Really though, we are a really big group (about 9 players in a single party), and we tend to take a while since there are always side conversations going on.
In my opinion, the pace is really up to the people playing. If you want, you can have 10 encounters in 8 hours. If you want, you can spend most of that time roleplaying and only get 2 encounters done. If you want, you can have 1 encounter and spend the rest of the time playing Super Smash Bros. It changes rather radically from group to group, in my experience.
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We play from 3 to 4 hours, and depending on the encounters complexity (location, numbers, powers/abilities, etc.) there are from 2 to 5 combat scenes and as many non-combat encounters too (roleplaying, exploration, complex skill checks, etc.).
Last game, we had three combat encounters (one really long and complex that took almost an hour, with a +4 APL monster, won thanks to the environment characteristics), two roleplaying scenes in the aftermath, one complex skill check scene, and two exploration (mostly narrative) encounters in which the PCs discovered new places.
We're lucky to get through an encounter an hour.
Sometimes much less if there is very much 'social' interaction in the game session.
If what we're talking about is 'combat-possible event per time played,' I think that there is tremendous variation between sessions, but a general average of 1 every 45 minutes.
I have some degree of trouble calling that the pace of the game, however. I'm not sure what would represent "plot per hour," but I feel its somewhat independent to the number of encounters.
My regular group is bi-weekly, and we run about 2.5 to 3 hours. Thanks to a laptop at the table and Kyle Olson's Combat Manager we can usually get through about 5-7 mixed encounters of combat, hazards, skills and RP. Story arc-wise, after four total sessions, we've still barely scratched the surface of a low level campaign. This group has never even met a "boss" type bad-guy yet. To me that seems like a decent "medium" pace. Which is about where I, as the GM, like it. The group hasn't complained yet about it being too fast or too slow.
Well apparently my group is slow as hell. When we play we play for 12-16 hours in one session. We are all older (5-6 40+ players) and only get to play an average of once every three weeks so we do Saturday games starting at noon and often ending from 2-4 AM.
In that time we usually get one combat encounter done and it normally takes us about 2-5 hours to do a combat (sometimes more). Note that our ref likes to run HUGE combats and we are all playing level 21-24 characters now, so that definately impacts the time spent. Also we do a LOT of RP during a game so we usually don't get more than one fight.
In contrast, one of our new players is running us (and our long time DM) as players in Rise of the Runelords, and combats there take only about an hour or so, since we are lower level things resolve faster, there are fewer choices in battle and so things move along more briskly, but even then we seldom get to more than one fight per session.
The Runelords game though always ends before 12 since that GM's game has his 14 year old daughter in it (her first RP experience) so the sessions are shorter as well.
With 5 players in a Kingmaker campaign we typically do 3-5 encounters in a 2 hour session. I find Pathfinder encounters much faster than 4th Ed.
We are currently 6th level. I can see higher level spellcasters needing more time to make decisions, but so far all of us know what we're going to do when our initiative turn order comes up.
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It would be hard for me to say exactly how many encounters we do. We meet about once every week to two weeks for approximately four hours, and we'll usually have one combat encounter. Rarely two. The crux of our games tend to be role-playing---lots and lots of role-playing, particularly between PCs.
I do know we go at what a lot of people would consider a snail's pace, though. We can go three or four sessions before we even make it to the next plot point in the story.
We play 3-4 hours every Saturday with a group of 7 (including the GM). We average two encounters per session with a heavy amount of role-playing and story discussion. It's not unheard of to have entire sessions go by without any encounters, but I don't believe we've ever had more than 4 in a single session.
Some groups play differently than others.
Depends on the GM for my group. We have 7-9 folks at each session and sessions are usually scheduled for 7 hours, roughly. If we run a module type thing, we get about 8 or so smaller-ish combats (even with side conversations) along with a relatively small amount of RP (I think that our GMs who run modules tend not to prep the RP set as much). If we're under someone who created the session from scratch, it's more likely that we'll see 1 or 2 cinematic event-type things (I had my players split up to chase 3 hooligans in a town, using some rule of cool stuff to make things work), 2-5 combats, and 2-4 RP-ish situations that take an encounter's worth of effort/time.
My wife, a merchant cleric of Abadar, recently use Diplomacy and Bluff to draw another merchant away from a shady situation by discussing his stock of taxidermied Nixies (thank you, Crown of the Kobold King, for this wonderful little tidbit) and how she'd like to see if she could expand his trade network. She RP'd the whole conversation with the gnome merchant while the party discretely left a note for the merchant elsewhere in his shop. This is an example of one of our RP "encounters" and the whole thing lasted about 10 minutes.
I would say our group (6 PCs) manage on average two encounters in a 6 hour session. I am running them through Legacy of Fire, we are about to start session 17 and the players are about to enter the House of the Beast proper (there have been quite a few side tracks). We could play faster, but why rush?
Our group, which was originally 4 to 6 PCs depending on if the other two could make it, played for as long as we could. Usually weekend long sessions at the DMs house. With all the joking and random BSing, we would get to an encounter every few hours. It all depended on the complexity of the DM's homebrew campaigns (Fantastically detailed as I've said before. The man really should write and sell OGL adventure paths). Combat would generally take about thirty minutes to an hour, depending on combat complexity (annoying monster abilities, so on and so forth), and because our DM likes to describe the combat cinematically ("You stab at him with your dagger 'ha!' but it glances off the scale mail with a metallic hiss! The orc warlord laughs at you..."), and we in turn got into the habit of RPing out our combat rolls.
Our group has then since expanded to eight people... Now, we would often have smoke breaks, which got a little irritating because 3 of them were smokers, and the other four (dm included) were not, so it held up the game for us. What was REALLY annoying was when they went to smoke MID COMBAT in combats that were already taking FOREVER.
The other two who were added to the group are smokers as well... Two of the original three were pacing themselves in an attempt to quit before the third came along, since they had just had a baby. Smoker 3 got them smoking a lot more. The other two smoke a whole hell of a lot more, so now they're having smoke breaks every fifteen minutes to every hour, depending on how the session is going, instead of every hour to every two hours.
Now we're lucky if we get into even a single encounter a night... And we're lucky if we even FINISH it before people get tired and crash.... (not-so)unluckily the group is beginning to desintigrate cause the DM is getting burnt out and my gf and I are left without a gaming group and a need to keep gaming (we've only been at PF for about half a year now. Not satisfied yet). Sad part is 6 of our group of 9 are now living together. DM and 5 of our players. So when they start up again, we'll be left out of the loop since we don't hang out much beyond pathfinder (gas prices, yeck), and they are horrible at keeping us in the loop about schedule changes beyond "canceled this week".
On the plus side, gives us an opportunity to find a group more fitting to our play style. We like to put RP above most things. They like to munchkin the hell out of their characters. Our DM was adequate at doing both but the overwhelming number of munchkins left very little RP outside of combat.
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Pace Of Game Calculator
I'm still trying to get more data. Please let me know both how many "scenes" as well as "encounters" you're getting through? Even though all games are played differently, the law of large numbers suggests there may be some "norm" truth in some baseline averages.
Scenario: In 2009, for example, I ran 46 sessions of a campaign.
Each session contained 3-7 "beats", to borrow a word from drama. This means that the location had changed, or the focus of the story had shifted that many times.
Here's some examples of a "beat" to help us figure out what the average "pace of game" seems to be:
> Dromidawr rescues child from well
> Child and Dromidawr meet up with party in tavern - battle with Xarrk
> The party travels to the Brinewood March - battle with Bulleywugs
> Eskatar finds the dungeon entrance - battle inside with the Mugclaws
> Ovromidian discussses whether it is ethical to open the tombs vault?
Okay - there are 5 "beats" for lack of a better word, and the examples are just made up, but precisely how you would "summarize" the main segments of an evening's session.
In this example session, there happened to be three short combats ('short' is defined as <40 minutes). In this scenario there happened to be two main roleplaying "beats" as well, for a total of 5 "beats" to the evening.
Given that the example session started at roughly 6pm and finished at roughly 10pm, that means a 4 hour session, during which we should subtract some time for short breaks, or as in the case of some tables mentioned earlier in this thread, subtract time for smoke breaks, pleasantries, "BS" etc. Hmmmn. Let's estimate 40 minutes (-10 for welcome, -10 for goodbyes and planning next session date and giving xps, and -20 minutes for miscellaneous breaks or BS.
Lets say...
240 minutes game time - 40 minutes = 200 minutes.
200 minutes (divided by) / 5 "beats" = 40 minutes per "beat"
Even though my typical sessions contained anywhere from 3-7 "beats", I feel safe to say that most contained about 5 each session over the roughly 4 hours of weekly play time.
Totals
With a years's worth of game data (I had been jotting down all the beats for 1 full year), out of roughly 46 sessions and roughly 230 "beats".
But what I'm still searching for is whether my "pace of game" is an "outlier" on the bell-curve of game speed, and whether there's opportunity for me to speed it up?
I average about 1 "beat" every 40 minutes. This implies on average my combats, or my role-play times last about 40 minutes each.
How does your game compare? (I'm seeking to benchmark and learn.)
Your assessment of 1 beat = 40 minutes sounds like my experience. I was going to describe it a little differently.
I'd say that, per hour, I usually see either:
* one major roleplaying scene
* minor roleplaying, one typical combat, and bookeeping/cleanup for that combat.
Let's face it, in light of fast Hollywood movies and rush-rush mmorpg gaming, the culture of gamers of this generation tend to expect a swift pace of game. . .
I've been playing tabletop RPGs for just over 20 years, and I haven't noticed the pace of games accelerating. In fact, I feel like successive versions of D&D have lent themselves to slighly slower combat encounters. Roleplaying sequences, of course, are more personality than system based.
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** spoiler **
Ah-the intention of that statement was to say the "expectation" of speed seems to exist, whereas 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, players just showed up and seemed to enjoy being in-the-moment.
These days, players are a little fidgety, looking toward the "end goal", or "end boss" or expectant that if the GM should keep giving them clues to speed things along. This may also be the outcome of age--older players seem to have less time, but I also see it in the young, somehow a vestige of their card-playing experiences, or mmorpgs. But these are just subjective observations.
The purpose of quantifying how many "beats" per 40 minutes is to see how mainstream my pace is with most other Pathfinder RPG games. Any Gm can adjust their games, and games are played thousands of different ways--but you know, we have a lot in common.
Last week, for example, we were short 2 players, so on those weeks I run a "LOWERS" campaign, meaning I asked the players to start from Level 1 again with different characters, even though their "HIGHERS" campaign is the main focus. This enables us to always have a game, since the highers is more intense, needing all the players, and the lowers is designed to be much more flexible, where certain PCs could skip out certain sessions, as its more episodic than serial.
Any how, I was thinking it went like this:
In 3 hours (short session) we had 4 beats. And I find it interesting that despite different campaigns, I've found a simple, consistent way to measure my own "pace of game". Again, now 40 minutes per "beat" in retrospect.
Now I'm most interested in getting more information from other Pathfinder RPG players about their "pace of game"???
All - what's your "pace of game?"
My group plays about 5 hours or maybe a little longer depending on how quickly we get settled in for the game. We average 2-3 combats per session if they are fairly short. Last week we had a pretty big fight with 4 hill giants and a fire giant that took a little over 3 hours and 12 rounds. It would have lasted longer but my character scored a lucky crit on an AoO with my great axe, as the fire giant tried to rush past me to clobber our wizard. (He made him angry with electrical sphere spells.) Currently we are five 8th level PCs in this AP.
I think our GM thinks fights are too easy if we finish a fight faster than 6 rounds or so. We have alot of fights lasting 10+ rounds and a few lasting over 20 rounds so far. Although we have only had two character deaths so far, mine (a fighter) and an oracle. If we have a big battle (20 or so rounds) that usually takes up the lions share of the available time to play and is the only combat of the day. The rest is filled in with RPing, bookeeping, invesigating ect.
-Flea
All-
Let's face it, in light of fast Hollywood movies and rush-rush mmorpg gaming, the culture of gamers of this generation tend to expect a swift pace of game. But how long are your games "actually" taking? How much is achieved, for example, in 3 hours? What is "normal" per number of encounters, Encounter Level, or CR level? What is the pace of your game?
We play twice per month on saturdays, between 16:30 and 2:00, taking about 1 hour for the pizza break, so in total we play about 8:30 hours (in truth it's about 7 hours, since we usually spend the first hour and a half talking about random stuff).
Our games tend to have comparatively little combat (I can't remember the last time we had more than 2 in a single session), but a lot of cinematic action situations (which often make up about half the playtime). And when we have them, they are often either fillers that are done with in less than 10 minutes, or complex far-flung scenarios that can last for hours.
My players are very efficient when it comes to pure fighting, and make their minds very fast and ahead of time. We also have a system under which things like initiative and damage are volunteer tasks rewarded with experience, which really helps me keep things active. Also, we don't use minis, so that aspect doesn't present an extra slowdown (we do draw things down in most combats so people get a global idea, though).
It is in social situations that things tend to take much longer (although in a good way). My players love to extend those situations a lot, and while they are enjoyable, I sometimes need to shake things up with an improvise scenario to avoid it dragging along.
In short:
-8 hour sessions twice per month
-1-2 combat encounters per session, lasting either very short (10 minutes) or very long (2+ hours). Turns themselves are resolved very quickly, though.
-CR for most of our encounters is 2-3 levels above the EPL, since they are crafty bastards who use stuff like falcons with magnets and a spyglass to beat things up.
-Pace is very hectic for action-packed parts of the session (which I try to keep to at least 1/2 of it), and very tranquil for social/investigation parts.
We're a four man group and managed to get 1-3 encounters per evening.
A normal P&P evening for us is around 4-5 hours. (yes we have one player who is very slow in combat...)
When we played an average of 6 to 8 hours it would take us two sessions to finish one book of an AP. Every once in a while a book might spill over into a 3rd session, but only for the 1st hour or 2. We also have points where we get into a random conversation about about 15 to 30 minutes, and then we get back to playing. If we had no tangent conversations we would probably finish in 2 sessions 99% of the time at the 6 to 8 hour pace.
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Smokers or non-smokers...
Looking at it from an AP perspective.
We can usually get through the first book in about 3 or 4 sessions ranging from 4 to 6 hours.
2nd book 5 to 6 sessions.
3rd Book 7 to 8 sessions
4th book 9 to 10 sessions
5th book 10 to 12 sessions
6th book it seems like you can do maybe two or three full scale encounters a night, and you have to cap how many people are playing to 5 or less.
Add a session when playing with smokers, but I will admit as a DM those smoke breaks have been lifesavers when the PC's go off script and I need to pull something out of my...um...mind.
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Interesting data.
Wraithstrike says 1 book approx 16 hours.
Ciretose says 1st book approx 16 hours.
Ciretose implies that as levels escalate time.
Assumptions:
>[u]Average[/u] encounter length of 40 minutes
>Party of 5 or less
in the 40 min/beat estimate
>Beat=defined as a 40 minute chunk of an evening's session during which either an rp encounter, combat encounter or mix of both occurs from a story perspective; Example: Meetup in town and learn of trouble=1 beat. Travel to forest and find the lost temple = 1 beat. Dungeon exploration (not multiple levels) and finding of golden egg = 1 beat. Returning the egg to the druids = 1 beat.
>Average player skill (fast, slow, tenured, new)
>Time for gathering, packing up, break times, and smoke times already added in.
>Use an AP book as a "standard" designed adventure pace
>Session average of 4 hours = 240 min
>Average book 1 = 16 hrs = 960 min
>In actuality the encounters (rp & combat) can be short 20 min or long 60 min, but the story beats progress at roughly 40 minute intervals on average.
Math: 16 hours of gaming = 960 minutes. 960 divided by 40 minute beats = 24 beats.
Question:
Is it roughly accurate to say that the 1st AP book in a series has roughly 24 beats including combat and roleplay?
OR...
Would it depend on the book number in series:
book 1: 940 minutes 24 beats
book 2: (+1 session totalling +4 hrs) 1180 minutes 29.5 beats
book 3: (+2 sessions totalling +8 hrs) 1660 minutes 41.5 beats
book 4: (+3 sessions totalling +12 hrs) 2380 minutes 59.5 beats
book 5: (+4 sessions totalling +16 hrs) 3340 minutes 83.5 beats
book 6: (seemed to taper-off at the book 5 max time)
How long are your AP books taking in gaming hours? Do they really range from 940 minutes to 3340 minutes each? Or would you say the escalation initially proposed above by ciretose counts too many hours added to each book? Is there an "average" amount of time any book takes? The leading estimate is roughly <16 hrs per book. I'd like to hear more data.
Edit: Interesting that if you take 6 months of weekly gaming, assume one 4 hour session per week over 24 weeks, and assume playing 6 AP books every 1/2 year... you get 17.33 hrs of gaming per AP book.
See, this is why I like PCs to top out around 10th level or so. I'm not trying to gimp my players or put brakes on their fun, but when we're up around 12th level, combats grind to a halt as everybody is searching through lists of abilities and spells trying to see what options they can come up with for a particular encounter.
Imposing time limits, reminders to think on other players' turns, and bringing out the stopwatch only go so far to alleviate this.
But getting back to data collection, I think at our most streamlined (meaning quickest, best-thinking players), I'd say we could:
1. Get marching orders
2. Fight off a small ambush on the way
3. Invade the dungeon and get the first level cleared, including:
a. finding the hidden opening to the dungeon
b. fighting at least two good-sized encounters
c. solving at least one difficult riddle
d. figuring out how to haul loot and whether it is worth a trip back to town
4. Go back to town and report in
5. Defend the town against a night attack
6. Roleplay information gathering about who attacked, who knows what, and who is ready to hire heroes for a counter attack
All of that would take about 6 to 8 hours, and we would eat during that time.
Now, when we've had disruptive players, or rules lawyers, or both, we've had the game slow down anywhere from doing all of the above in 10 hours, to doing only half of the above in 10 hours. The worst sessions I can think of immediately would be a couple of times when nothing at all happened because one or more players was in a foul mood, and the time a single combat took the entire session because everybody was worried about the rules lawyer getting angry. Admittedly, it was a large-ish battle, but all the second-guessing really hurt us.
So a significant drop depending on who is in the game.
Interesting data.
Wraithstrike says 1 book approx 16 hours.
Ciretose says 1st book approx 16 hours.
and more stuff.
Boss fights seem to take longer at higher levels, but other than that not much changes. Of course how well the group is at handling high level play, and knowing the rules is also a factor.
The time never really increases as much as the beats indicate when I am running an AP, but I don't know how that applies when other GM's run things.
It's worth considering that the number and pace (pulse) of the beats in a gaming session are influenced by the kind of adventures the players enjoy. Specifically, do they delve into dungeons with any frequency?
It may sound odd, but I think it is significant, and the dynamics of a dungeon crawl make it an oversimplification to call it all one beat. Dungeon encounters pace out differently than battles on the road or in the plot in my experience. Usually they're faster and simpler and more closely packed... or because they're more closely packed, each encounter is smaller. There's a certain sense that neither side is fully prepared for the other, and any given fight has the potential to bleed into each other. In terms of in-world logic, most dungeon encounters involve bad(or neutral) guys going about their business at their home base, not banding together in large groups and organizing big clever ambushes or confrontations. There are exceptions, of course... well guarded gates, cunningly trapped and watched choke points or treasure vaults, the throne room of a wicked paranoid king expecting heroes, or other big boss types. With the exception of palpitations like that, expect to have a rapid and consistent pulse.
Let me share a personal experience from a game I'm running. Most of the time the party spends 3-4 beats a night wandering through a jungle and interacting with their villager friends. Just recently, the heroes went into a small dungeon and cleared it out almost completely in one sitting. In one night, they passed through no less than 8 beats including a big boss-battle! The old dungeoneer's heart is racing now!
I think I noticed this because my gaming groups tend to steer clear of dungeon crawls, tending to favor urban settings where they can have a few role-playing encounters and a big fight or two; or go following plot based adventures (wilderness or urban,) where they go from major encounter to major encounter in service to some major goal. Therefore when a dungeon crops up they feel the need to investigate, the difference is somewhat noteworthy.
Grant you, to some degree I think they ocassionally venture into dungeons for my sake since I enjoy running dungeons, but that's neither here nor there. ;)
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oversimplification to call it all one beat
Agreed.
An evening's session, for purposes of getting these estimates, could involve many beats within one setting such as a dungeon.
For example (5 beats here):
>>PCs entreat the 70 ft wizards tower
>>Myromidian discovers the arcane laboratory(Floors 1 & 2)
>>Slyvanus defeats the alchemical guardians and finds the hidden plans(Floors 3,4,5)
>>The PCs solve the barrier's riddle and attack the wizard's pet(Floors 6 & 7)
>>Epic battle with Wyvern Master atop the tower
At the end of the evening, as you summarize the beats of a game, this would be an example of the main sections. These each could include traps, battle, and roleplay. The 40 minute average per beat makes the assumption that the GM's designs are of the thoroughness and quality of a module or AP section.
In cases where there is a multi-layered labrynth, sometimes a whole level could be one beat, or in cases where much is happening within each level, I would dice it up as shown above, into the main beats of the "story".
The difficulty I'm overcoming by using story beats, is often folks say they cannot estimate or provide data, because they are seperating combat and rp, whereas "beats", at least for me, seem to be providing good estimates of the pace of people's games.
Keep those estimates coming. What is everyone else's pace of game?
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Now, when we've had disruptive players, or rules lawyers, or both, we've had the game slow down anywhere from doing all of the above in 10 hours, to doing only half of the above in 10 hours.
What an excellent point!
The same happened to me-if not identically. And can happen at any time depending on who is playing. I completely agree, that the beats of a game seem to get "halved" when there is too much disruption, rules-lawyering, and I would add... too much over-simulationism/rules-lawyering. The latter item I've added, because the onus of over-simulationism is upon the GM, who might get drawn into the minutae by the rules-laywering and therefor not attend to the pace of the game. I know this first hand.
For example, when the rule-lawyering involves a high degree of minutiae, the GM tries to "protect" himself from the rules-lawyering by starting to explain things in even more detail, causing a slower game. ?In effect, in my humble opinion, this "feeds" the rules-laywering. A very subtle trick I've learned, and this is actually challenging to do when you have a rules-lawyer at the table, is to attend to game pace, by actually making it faster.
Its a little ironic that those who quabble over the detail, have this effect to bring the whole group toward their snail-pace. I am actually guilty, of being drawn in by the rules-lawyering. I'm talking about the innocent rules-lawyering i.e. a player who is simply accustomed to discussing things like the exact kilometers you can push a horse before their heart stops, the perabola of an arrow's flight when shot by an over-sized strength composite bow, or what the exact cavern height needs to be to wield a great-axe horizontally. (These topics are not irrelevant rules-lawyering, but they are time consuming.)
For purposes of the "pace of game" measurements, we should assume that this type of rules lawyering and the subsequent snail pace would cause about half or only 3/4 of the beats to be executed in a session.
Otherwise, for purposes of pace of game measurements, assume this type of rules laywering is not present at the table, nor is the GM being drawn into it. Assume the GM is an active hand, gently guiding the adventure forward to some degree.
I love many APs and want to run homebrew stuff and want to run classic modules too and Ravenloft and..., so I find playing time to be too valuable to waste.
Standard round: 2 minutes, even with six players and my preference for numerous foes.
Players are 'playing' at all times, moving the story forward, exploring plot points, seducing/cajoling/entertaining/investigating/whatever.
One player's break is another player's time to visit a sage, while another player's buying spells and two others are going over door tactics.
I would not expect any 'beat' (from tower example above) to take 40 minutes, unless it involved party-stumping puzzles, DM-stumping "solutions", or that tower had 3+fights per level.
I think
But getting back to data collection, I think at our most streamlined (meaning quickest, best-thinking players), I'd say we could:
1. Get marching orders
2. Fight off a small ambush on the way
3. Invade the dungeon and get the first level cleared, including:
a. finding the hidden opening to the dungeon
b. fighting at least two good-sized encounters
c. solving at least one difficult riddle
d. figuring out how to haul loot and whether it is worth a trip back to town
4. Go back to town and report in
5. Defend the town against a night attack
6. Roleplay information gathering about who attacked, who knows what, and who is ready to hire heroes for a counter attack
All of that would take about 6 to 8 hours, and we would eat during that time.
is a good objective/healthy speed, but it beats most posts re:time I've on this site. If you want an 'average' double this (or triple/quadruple), but I think that's time spent poorly 'not' playing, rather than how fast they do play.
As for APs, I find the 1st books to take longer because that's when the players are learning the plot, their own PCs, and the NPCs. And I prefer to add extra RPing to the early ones, so there's a good foundation for the campaign & personalities for when choices get tough. Once the battles start rolling, it can be over in an hour, but it may take a session to get there.
Players without direction waste the most time.
IMXP, in a railroad or dungeon crawl, players can level every session.
In a sandbox, it might take 30 min. just to determine a "best" course of action. (Which is sort of a limit, after which PC's vote.) Then players might level every two to four sessions.
Standard module in 2 sessions ave., including hooks & epilogue.
From published adventures
Feast of Ravenmoor, even with lots of RPing, would be intro'ed and returned from in one session, with plans made for next.
Did "Against the Giants": Hill Giants, 2 sessions (one top/one in 'revised' bottom), same with Frost Giants. Fire Giants was revised to be mainly RPing for 1st level (because by that time the party had their giant-killing routine down too well for giants to have a chance) so can't really use that, and it took longer...
Serpent AP
Island: Expect several sessions due to sandbox nature and many NPCs (who need to be developed for arc) and 'survival' learning.
Road to Ruin: One session adventure, maybe two if distracted or they deliberate over factions.
Until city sections need to be claimed, which can take who knows how long due to sandbox/RPing/"What are we doing again?" nature of it.
Then down below for 1-3 sessions per module again.
Savage Tide:
1 module every 1-2 sessions (except the town-building part).
Age of Worms:
1 module every 1-2 sessions.
I don't dare run Kingmaker...when I could run 2 or 3 other APs in the same time.
ToEE: Moathouse in 2, Temple faction: 1 or 2 each.
Session=6 hours
Realized I was on a tangent with this, so...
I found combat drained a lot of time in our campaigns, away from the plot & character development (which in turn, give combat the weight and drama that make fighting worthwhile).
So I tuned combat, over time, to be much faster.
If somebody doesn't have an action declared when it's their turn, they delay. Players do not discuss out of character.
Are there exceptions? MANY. Fun comes first, and newbies need crutches. But normally we can get around the table in a minute or three. (six player standard)
Quicker combat means more interest in combat, means less digression. Idle players will distract themselves, making their own turns longer, creating more idle players...
A player runs initiative, using cards that can be moved around as people delay/ready etc. That player calls out who's next so they can prepare/preroll. All dice are in sight, even mine (though I don't always tell them what they mean, or if they have meaning).
The party also tracks its buffs on one page (esp. for when the Dispels hit). Tactics have been practiced beforehand.
Essentially, whatever variable wastes time in one session sparks invention so it doesn't waste time again. (i.e. player writes their spells out for city/country/dungeon or the ranger writes up a whole page of the different standard combos for their TWF)
It doesn't get harder at higher levels (except battles can get humongous) since I almost always start at 1st level so players have had time to learn their PCs, individually and collectively, so when new levels present new complexities, they master those, until the next level...etc.
It's not unusual to level up every week or two.
Faster fights leave us time for PC development (i.e. the BBEG in Savage Tide #1 was a PC's sister. She taunted him on his investigation while drawing info right from the source, and his mother disowned him for killing her. Good stuff.) (BTW, I asked him beforehand if I could dismantle his 'rich' PC's comfort zones and he hardily approved.)
If I'm running an AP's first book by Mona or Jacobs, there might be a whole session familiarizing the PCs with the setting/NPCs (they are so richly drawn.) I find taking the time to lay those foundations makes for more involved play later.
Anyway, my statistical response to your survey:
RPing 'beat': 5-10 minutes if clear cut (pass data/meet/buy/flirt), 20-40 if complex (puzzle/investigation/dangerous argument).
Combat 'beat': 5 minutes if straightforward battle at CR, 15 minutes if difficult/complex, 40-60 if multi-layered finale, and 1-2 sessions if grand finale (i.e. non-Zuggtmoy finale of Temple of Elemental Evil).
Gotta sleep...
JMK
For one of my groups, our sessions usually go 3-5 hours. There's usually 1-2 combats, lots of RPing and exploration, and far too much ooc discussion and planning about what to do next. But if they ever take too long, I have my 576 page bludgeon prepared. ;) But in seriousness I usually feel like the pacing is pretty good.
In my other group, sessions are usually about 3 hours and we get through one combat. Maybe. Sometimes. It's a Friday night game and there's constant ooc chatter from overworked people who just need to vent and socialize after the work week's over, and that is what it is. Sometimes gaming works as a reason to get folks together but the real desire is for other interaction. It's still a good game and we actually do cover a bit of ground most sessions, I feel like (the GM takes a lot of stuff from modules).
My mind boggles at the folks saying they have 5 or so combats a session. I can't even imagine. (That's not a judgment, I'm just saying that's so far outside my paradigm I literally can't imagine what that would be like.)
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Anyway, my statistical response to your survey:
RPing 'beat': 5-10 minutes if clear cut (pass data/meet/buy/flirt), 20-40 if complex (puzzle/investigation/dangerous argument).
Combat 'beat': 5 minutes if straightforward battle at CR, 15 minutes if difficult/complex, 40-60 if multi-layered finale, and 1-2 sessions if grand finale (i.e. non-Zuggtmoy finale of Temple of Elemental Evil).
I gotta think this one over a bit... From the outline you shared about what might be done in 6-8 hours, its exactly on par with all the other data--assuming the a,b,c,d,e were rolled up into point #3.
However, you've given me food for thought. I also use initiative cards I made, and the gamers at the table are experienced. Obviously, by my "serious" inquiry, I'm always looking to improve. Players love the game, yet I can't help but feel I can do more to pace things along.
Its possible that all my encounters are complex, since i design them that way. Most of them are APL+1 or APL+2... and i tend not to have the short bash-bash-over ones--- but no judgment here either. They have their place. You talk about leveling every other session, which gives me the sense that there must be a megaton of combat in your games. My players are in-character nearly all the time, and there is a lot of banter, and roleplay before-during-and after combat.
The example you estimated:
1. Get marching orders
2. Fight off a small ambush on the way
3. Invade the dungeon and get the first level cleared, including:
a. finding the hidden opening to the dungeon
b. fighting at least two good-sized encounters
c. solving at least one difficult riddle
d. figuring out how to haul loot and whether it is worth a trip back to town
4. Go back to town and report in
5. Defend the town against a night attack
6. Roleplay information gathering about who attacked, who knows what, and who is ready to hire heroes for a counter attack
leads me to think... you're getting this done in 6-8 hours. Which... if you consider this 6 beats, then it does indeed = 240 minutes = 4 hours of game time per the 40 minute per beat method.
So, while you estimate your combats and roleplay encounters to be roughly 15 minutes long... I think this example actually places these "scenes" or "beats" back on the estimated timeframes of 40 minutes each on average. So, I'm not fully understanding the difference you point out by saying you play fairly fast?
Let me re-read your post in the morning, see if I can't gain more clarity.
PV, you're responding to me and Bruunwald as if we were one, which may explain the mix up. :)
I used his (her?) example as a 'healthy' game for six hours, and to contrast with how most posters (on Paizo.com as whole) do not meet that mark, which strikes me as wasteful. To me, that'd be the minimum speed for maximizing enjoyment.
I tend to aim for faster than that, with variable success.
Bruunwald was saying it was 6-8 hours w/ meal.
I do have a lot of combat. I relish combat. By tightening up combats, I've been able to add more RPing, & more combat.
And a lot of RPing takes place via e-mail, especially if outside the main story arc or re: individuals, not the group.
Most of the 5 minute fights come from modules, so I'm not offended. (I like to play too, so don't like monsters falling so fast.)
But a 5 minute fight isn't a 1-2 round fight. I seldom have those even in modules. It could easily be four.
Yes, a round a minute in simpler combats.
Essentially, the time it takes 6 players to tell me how they move and what they've rolled, and me adding some flavor. They stay focused on the game in between turns, and usually know exactly what they want to do (often due to another player calling out a request on their turn.)
It keeps combats intense, and OOC comments/diversions limited.
When new people join they often break into OOC banter after combat, sparking the veterans to cry out IC "HEAL!", knowing I'm tracking time until backup arrives.
The incursions run like commandos invading. Time is essential, the enemies are numerous, and a broken flank can lead to TPK. It may come as a series of 'at CR' encounters, but it's really one large scenario, made of smaller dominoes. Time between combats will often be minor, as they don't want their buffs expiring.
In a meatier fight (end fight/wilderness one-shot), I throw enough at them that it'll kill one PC if they play it poorly. (Usually it's the rolls/crits that kill them.)
We can often make it through two or three 'full resource drain' days in one session. So, yeah, a railroad AP module in 1-2 sessions, often using e-mails for further RPing. But again, a sandbox AP module can take 5 sessions, depending on how long it takes players to develop their objectives/learn the lay of the land. Once they do, we zoom again.
I prefer zooming. And, yes, we smell the RP roses. :)
At Deathquaker, I'm sorry you can't imagine 5+ combats/session. :(
Try PFS, they do that all the time.
(I've heard there's a PFS GM who runs her games at a similar pace to mine, often ending an hour early when others are pushing to finish on time.)
As for RPing vs. combat, neither takes precedence over advancing the story. Players are considered in character, in or out of combat. OOC comments often get commented on by the NPCs I'm playing. :)
Our games run nearly every week and generally last 6-8 hours.
Lately, we generally clear about two rooms/encounters in that time span. Sometimes though, we can barely complete even a single encounter (if their are a lot of enemies or special abilities being used).
Not sure why we are so slow. Sure doesn't seem so bad when we're in the middle of it.
At Deathquaker, I'm sorry you can't imagine 5+ combats/session. :(
Try PFS, they do that all the time.
(I've heard there's a PFS GM who runs her games at a similar pace to mine, often ending an hour early when others are pushing to finish on time.)
I didn't say it was a bad thing, I just have trouble imagining it. As it is, with all due respect, sounds like I probably wouldn't enjoy PFS if it pushes stuff through so fast.
Well, that and there's no PFS in the area. The only public-running Pathfinder GM in the area that I am personally aware of is... uh... me. And I don't have time to try and figure out and organize PFS.
Long time since I've actually played, and my goals were not always achieved. But here is what I was aiming for:
Keep in mind that our games usually last about 4 hours, sometimes 1 of which was 'wasted*' talking, socializing, fixing treats, showing off new stuff etc. We rarely had time to go through more than two encounters, three at the most.
- First, my pacing was meant to vary. Some games were designed slow, some where designed to be fast.
- Second, fast pacing didn't mean lots of combat. It meant lots of movement, short time spent in-game compared to out-game, it meant lots of (important) decisions taken by players in short periods of time. Fast paced combat meant no time to ponder whether this action is much better than that, with time as an important factor on the outcome of battle.
- Slow pace meant more time to ponder on decisions. Sometimes slow paced games were more 'casual', sometimes the outcome was critical and roleplay was 'intense'. I'd consider long fights against numerous or powerful opponents as slow paced games.
In all of that, I was making sure that my players we 'going forward' and never felt that they were not going anywhere (regardless of the lack or abundance of encounters). I was always more concerned about the speed at which my players were going through the story than about the number of fights per night.
'findel
*In our group, that time wasn't considered wasted but an essential part of having a good and friendly relationship.
Combats take us about an hour - a little bit long for my tastes, but we have some tactical thinkers who enjoy that kind of thing, so it suits us.
Roleplaying or investigative sessions take a little less, on average - around half an hour to forty five minues.
'Exploration' is the most varied, depending on how well judged we've made the environment. Sometimes we go overboard with description and the players spend ages investigating scenery. Other times we may set an 'obvious' puzzle that takes way too long. It's less of a problem when something we expect to take ages gets skipped - though sometimes it happens that we dont notice the opportunity to interact with an NPC. I'd try to keep these between twenty and forty minutes if I could - I pretty much concede if the players spend an hour on a session like this, since it's very unlikely our group will still be enjoying it.
We also use skill challenges, regardless of what system we're playing in. They generally take fifteen to thirty minutes.
Our sessions are around three to four hours long and we'd all like it to be longer. I think that's caused us to start 'hurrying things along' of late - so we can get a decent amount of story development in each week, which is basically what most of us like the best.
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Here's some specific recent data.
A second PFRPG campaign I'm running occurs on weeks when 1 or more players cannot attend. Its like the off-week campaign I call the "lowers campaign" because the main campaign is running at L14 now. The Lowers include:
>L5 characters
>4 players
>1 PC/NPC
Run Time Last night: exactly 7:15-9:45pm (we stopped 15 min early, for a total of playtime = 150 minutes.
Story Beats:
> EL1 - PCs discuss the end times prophesy with cultists; learn that a malovelent gnoll and escort have entered the dungeon
> EL6 - PC delve into the dungeon beneath evil temple - torture chamber, secret door, imprisioned zombies (looks like someone has been through here) battle with 2 grey oozes
> EL 7 - Investigate dead body on stairwell; trapped treasure room
> Navigate a pit, disable trap, enter large chamber room and battle a Decapus and a Deathworm. (1 party member incap)
> Exit temple, rest, with minor encounter while on watch
Summary: 5 Storybeats in 150 minutes = 30 min/beat (25% faster than avg)
The pace felt good, with a touch of urgency, meaning I was attending to pace by not slowing things down unnecessarily.
By comparison, this felt much more "punchy" and interesting than 40 min/beat. The improvement here was approximately 25% increase in speed.
Definitions:
>Beat - a retrospecive story/combat segment of an adventure, determined by summarizing the gameplay after its done. (This is done for two reasons: first, I have tried sumamrizing it based on design alone, but designs and actual play can be completely different. Second, the summarizing process makes "dividing up" the game very consitently determined by the GM. After many sessions of gameplay the beat divisions become easy to determine. They can be long or short, they can involve any aspect of the game, and does not seperate combat from roleplay, but takes into account all things that happen during that story beat segment.
Analysis:
In retrospect, this activity has increased awareness during execution of an evening's session. This awareness helps prompt me to keep executing and moving the game forward. I had the awareness that after years of play, I wanted to improve the pace of game, but without a conscious effort and some evidence that times were improving, I couldn't be sure.
Anecdotes:
The "beat" system has a LOT of play testing by me, and it can be trusted that any GM who jots-down the segments of his previous session "after its over" will identify this actual outline of segments. By using actual gameplay, rather than the planned module/session notes to divide the actions/encounters/combats/roleplay, it makes for a manageable system to estimate one's own "Pace Of Game".
I plan to keep logging my progress on this measurement system. With the evidence shown today, for example, I can say with confidence that:
>Last night's game was approx 25% faster than an average night's game
>The evidence of increased pace of game was felt by both the GM and players
>The measures used are good indicators whether a game is played faster or slower than the 40min/beat average.
I will keep this thread open for input, and more data is welcome.
In my other group, sessions are usually about 3 hours and we get through one combat. Maybe. Sometimes. It's a Friday night game and there's constant ooc chatter from overworked people who just need to vent and socialize after the work week's over, and that is what it is. Sometimes gaming works as a reason to get folks together but the real desire is for other interaction. It's still a good game and we actually do cover a bit of ground most sessions, I feel like (the GM takes a lot of stuff from modules).
This.
I run two groups. One is every other Friday, the other is about one Sunday a month.
The Friday group has been playing the current campaign for over 5 years. It's a group of friends; we've been playing together since the late 90s, and anywhere between 4-8 players show up for any given game. We have played as little as 3 and as much as 8 hours. Lots of ooc chatter, but that's how we roll. We get done what we get done; I can't really measure beats since for this group I'll handwave anything below about CR30. Last game we played about 4 hours with no combats; three combats in one night would be a lot; they'd have to be easy ones. But the number of combats is not relevant to enjoyment of the game.
The Sunday group is pretty new; we've played three times and they're all 2nd level at this point. We play for about 5 hours and the game tends to derail for geeky discussions or slapstick humor 1d4 times per session. They're running through Haunting of Harrowstone, so there's a lot of non-combat encounters/research in there ... but because of Teh Teenager, I throw in occasional zombies and the like to keep up interest, since he zones out when they're not fighting. I would have to guess, but I think they churn through 4-6 combats per session.
I've also run a lot of convention games. Our rule of thumb for writing events for conventions (for a four-hour slot) was to have 2-3 minor fights plus the final fight. Wasn't a hard and fast rule, but it worked pretty well.
I think the lower the level, the faster a combat will be decided, because there's fewer options and creatures (including the PCs) go down a lot faster.
My mind boggles at the folks saying they have 5 or so combats a session. I can't even imagine. (That's not a judgment, I'm just saying that's so far outside my paradigm I literally can't imagine what that would be like.)
I can't imagine it for the high level groups. For low level groups, no problem. Then again, it depends on the fights. If every single fight is a chew-your-knuckles omigod-we-barely-survived resource-draining knockdown, then yeah. But if there's a mix of encounters from CR-2 to CR+1, then some of them can go pretty fast.
Part of it, also, is knowing how to run a combat. There's tricks of the trade to keep a combat flowing, and a combat doesn't have to run until the PCs reduce every opponent to 0 hit points. This is especially true in a convention game, where there's real-world time constraints. Sometimes a monster just drops dead when it's time has come :)