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My group plays twice a month, and have been doing so since June of 2006. We are now halfway through Blackwall Keep. Everyone's loving it, but I'm wondering about the pace of our progress.
For those of you who play about as often as my group, could you tell me when you started and how far you have progressed through the AP?
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We try to play every week, about four to six hours if we can. But as schedules would hold we only meet about two to three times a month. We began in the summer of 2006, right from the start of Whispering Cairn. In that time we have taken two breaks before I began to experience DM burnout and switched over to Savage Tide while another of hte guys runs it. This Sunday we start back with AoW in a 14 hour marathon game beginning with (and hopefully ending with), Gathering of Winds. My plan is to then take two more months to get through the next installment with our regular Sunday night games.
We also play about twice a month for roughly 5 hours each session, since October 07, and are now in the middle of 3FoE. We spent 4 sessions on WC, and will need about 3 for 3FoE (including a raid on Smenks mansion).
If you really started in 2006, I would be wondering as well about the pace. On the other hand, if you meant June 2007, that would come close to our pace, but still lag a bit behind. For how many hours do you play each session?
Though, I wouldn't worry about it if everybody was loving it as you said.
My campaign was started on 11/19/05 and has gone 52 sessions. We are nearing the end of The Library of Last Resort. We don't necessarily play every weekend, a break here and there. Plus there is another campaign running and we switch back and forth when an adventure ends.
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My group is playing STAP, not AoW, but we do play about every other Friday night for ~6 hours (includes dinner and socializing). We started STAP in September. We just had our 9th session of this campaign last weekend and it was the first session of Chapter 4. We probably average about 2-3 sessions per chapter. At that rate, it should take us about 14 months to finish STAP.
-Skeld
/In our 30's.
//Have full time jobs.
///Most of us are married with small children.
////Slashies!
My group is playing STAP, not AoW, but we do play about every other Friday night for ~6 hours (includes dinner and socializing). We started STAP in September. We just had our 9th session of this campaign last weekend and it was the first session of Chapter 4. We probably average about 2-3 sessions per chapter. At that rate, it should take us about 14 months to finish STAP.
-Skeld
/In our 30's.
//Have full time jobs.
///Most of us are married with small children.
////Slashies!
Ya as soon as you introduce a significant other into the equation gaming starts to take a back seat and getting a good session in with everybody present becomes harder and harder. My group is all 30's with 1 youngin at 15 so we can't always come together even though we live within a couple miles of each other. Back in the day, we use to play 6pm to 8am and there would be people out cold at the table napping in shifts so we could keep the session going. Now we go 8pm to 3am and everybody is falling out by then.
My group began AoW in Dec 2006, so we've been playing for just over two years now. We try to meet twice a month, 4-5 hour sessions per meeting. We are now one seesion into Spire of Long Shadows (which is about half way through the AP - so I guess we have 2 years to go!)
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Ya as soon as you introduce a significant other into the equation gaming starts to take a back seat and getting a good session in with everybody present becomes harder and harder. My group is all 30's with 1 youngin at 15 so we can't always come together even though we live within a couple miles of each other. Back in the day, we use to play 6pm to 8am and there would be people out cold at the table napping in shifts so we could keep the session going. Now we go 8pm to 3am and everybody is falling out by then.
We are basically in the same boat. We all live here in the greater Huntsville, AL area. The wives are all very accommodating. The trouble is keeping the toddlers out of the dice.
d20 = choking hazard.
-Skeld
///More slashies!
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This is all most illuminating. Most nights we don't get started till about 8 pm, and things start breaking up by 11pm, if not slightly before. We're all a bunch of former 1st ed guys in our 50s that have been playing together since '80, so we move kinda slow at times. But we're having loads 'o' fun, nevertheless.
My only concern with the sedentary pace was the possibility of burning out my players, so I am considering the idea of speeding up the csmpaign--though I am loathe to do so, cos I like everything pretty much as it's written.
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My group started AoW in Aug of 06 and we play every-other weekend. Tomorrow I'll begin tSoLS in full with the group meeting Tenser and going from Magepoint to other places (no spoilers). We start at 9am and play until 11pm.
So, yeah, we have an incredibly long day which is broken up by at least 2 meals and a group who is riddled with movie puns and other fun foolishness. The group is on the teetering edge of APL 13 with 5 full-time players, 1 part-time, and 1 cohort.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know how you play for 3 hours (or so). Most of us refuse to get out of bed on a Saturday if we would be playing less than 6, but perhaps I am just spoiled... lol
I am also in my 30's (37 to be exact) with a fiancee, mortage, kids etc. and I am heartened to know at 50 you guys are not "too big" to be playing D&D. I resolve to play until the pry the dice from my cold, dead hand.
FW
Holy crap! You mean there's more of us in Huntsville, Al. My group is also in their late 20s to mid 30s some with kids, some not, and some hopeful that they don't have kids somewhere. We also live relatively close with a few that have moved away. We usually mix some beer into the equation and the seems to give us even more of an excuse to get together.
Now, to the topic at hand, we started about a year ago or maybe more like a year and a half and are wandering around in A Gathering of Winds. My goal is for this AP to last until 3 to 6 months after the start of 4e to see if we even want to progress or not.
Ya as soon as you introduce a significant other into the equation gaming starts to take a back seat and getting a good session in with everybody present becomes harder and harder. My group is all 30's with 1 youngin at 15 so we can't always come together even though we live within a couple miles of each other. Back in the day, we use to play 6pm to 8am and there would be people out cold at the table napping in shifts so we could keep the session going. Now we go 8pm to 3am and everybody is falling out by then.We are basically in the same boat. We all live here in the greater Huntsville, AL area. The wives are all very accommodating. The trouble is keeping the toddlers out of the dice.
d20 = choking hazard.
-Skeld
///More slashies!
We started Age of Worms in April of 2006. I made some changes and added a few modules (Dymrak Dread, Sons of Gruumsh, Vampires of Waterdeep, Dragons of Despair, Taboo Island). I also removed "A Gathering of Winds" to even things out. All told, we just finished "The Spire of Long Shadows" last week, and we plan on heading down into Deepwinter Vault for the second enstallment of the Vampires of Waterdeep trilogy this Sunday. Party levels range from 12-14. Oh, and we typically play from 1 PM to about 5:30-6 PM on those Sundays. We're all in our late 20s/early 30s, and two of us are married, so we can't play like we did in college anymore (6 PM to 3 or 4 AM).
It's been a great ride so far. I suspect it'll be another year or two before the entire campaign is finished.
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We play (nearly) every Tuesday, 7ish to 10:30 (some weeks, "or so"). We're 19 sessions in (one double-length, one almost completely lost to loot accounting) and are almost done with EaBK. Next session will have the lizardlings fight, the Spawn fight, and hopefully enough time to bridge them over into Waterdeep for HoHR.
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Holy crap! You mean there's more of us in Huntsville, Al.
Yup. There are a couple of other groups in HSV that I'm aware of.
We usually mix some beer into the equation and the seems to give us even more of an excuse to get together.
We used to do this too, but none of us really drink anymore, so this has fallen to the wayside.
-Skeld
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Our group is mostly 20somethings in So. IL, we've been playing since late spring '06, and we're on the tail end of HoHR. There have been numerous hiatuses as various members have started or ended relationships, juggled childcare, visited relatives, gone home for break, studied for finals, gotten new work schedules, etc. Our PC numbers have varied from 3-7, and are currently hovering at 4-5. A couple of us are in college, most work hourly wage jobs, one member is going through a divorce, and two players had a relationship that ended in a fairly dramatic breakup, resulting in our longest hiatus to date.
Real-life stuff keeps happening, though, apparently without any consideration for the fact that we really, REALLY like AoW. We play any Sunday we can, which I suppose averages out to about bi-weekly, though with all the stops, maybe once every 3 weeks is more accurate? I'm not sure. I think we're overall fairly satisfied with the pacing of the module, though we do tend to break up the dungeoncrawling with more in-character conversations and "side-quest" pursuit than some groups do.
Good topic! I feel a bit better now; there's a running joke/lament about how slow we are at getting through just a few rounds of combat, and I thought we might be lagging waaay behind.
Started AoW in January of '05, finished it in Nov '07. We tried to play weekly, for about 4 hours each session. When we were on our game, we'd complete even heavy crawl modules (like Gathering of Winds) in a month. Then we'd hit a wall and take close to three months to make it through some of the modules.
For those of you who play about as often as my group, could you tell me when you started and how far you have progressed through the AP?
We have been playing every other Friday for a total of 21 sessions. We started in June of 2006. Our 9 person group is larger than most so I've had to add content to up the xp. We are one session away from completing Blackwall Keep. I added 'the Fiend's Embrace' from Dungeon magazine after 'the Whispering Cairn' and before '3 Faces of Evil'. I also added a few other sub-plots, added some content found on the boards to beef up the 'mine shack'
You can track our progress on our blog: http://ageofwormsminnesota.blogspot.com/Our group is all 6th level and we should have 1 or two at 7th by next session. I have another filler adventure before 'the Hall of Harsh Reflections'.
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Our group spent 10 months with AOW, playing weekly for the most part for about 8-15 hours a week. We did take a few weeks off during this time but for the most part we play rain or shine. Most of our group is older and with full time jobs but made but only two of us have any kids (and mine played). We are now playing STAP along with another couple campaigns. The best one is an epic campaign that we started with the AOW characters, one of whom went bad from attempting to trap the soul of Kyuss and who we are not attempting to redeem. I was the DM for AOW and I switched places with the player whose character it was and he is running this and it is a blast.
We play every other week for about 4-6 hours, though we sometimes have to cancel scheduled sessions (usually due to holidays or cons). We began July 22, 2005, have played 55 sessions so far, & are one fight away from finishing "The Library of Last Resort." I've run most every encounter so far in the AP (all but the worm nagas in SoLS), plus added the following adventures & encounters:
*Cry Wolf (Dungeon#102) between 3FoE & EaBK;
*The Statue Gallery (Dungeon #93) between HoHR & tCB;
*An ambush by Okoral-cum-Favored Spawn on the road to Magepoint;
*13 additional encounters in the jungles & in the city of Kuluth-Mar;
*An ambush by a rival adventuring party in the Well of Trptych Knowledge;
*Lots of additional roleplaying encounters.
Given the abount of time high-level encounters take to run, I give it another year.
My group started AoW on May 25, 2006, and plays weekly for about 3 hours (all but one of us is an adult with a full time job). We have had 67 game sessions so far and are about mid-way into Kings of the Rift. I am hoping to finish up just about the time 4th Edition is starting to come out.
Started in Dec. 2006, so we're at 13 months of play so far. We managed to meet pretty much weekly for the first few months, but work pressure in the back half of 2007 meant we slowed down to perhaps once every two weeks, with a five week hiatus Sept-Oct. Looking at my notes, we finished session 38 last week, so we're averaging about 2 weeks out of every three. Our sessions run about 5 hours.
We're just at the midpoint of Hall of Harsh Reflections - we just finished Sodden Hold, and the players are doing some shopping before they go check out the Cold Forge.
We play fortnightly, and our average game only goes 3 - 3.5 hours.
We started in 2006, I think about October. Not sure exactly, I blame the beer haze.
Just before Xmas (2007) we finished Kings of the Rift.
We do muck around a bit, which can probably be blamed on all the good/bad food and drink we consume on those nights.
We started on May 12th, 2007 and play every two weeks. Our schedule is 6 hours per game, from 6 pm to 12 am - but we often go an hour or so over. We also had a Marathon Session where we went up to a cabin in Nothern NH one weekend and played from Friday evening until early Sunday morning with only a few hours of sleep in between.
At this point we've had 19 sessions, and are right in the middle of The Spire of Long Shadows. Not too bad, in my opinion. We've got another Marathon planned for May, and should have the campaign wrapped up just in time for 4th Edition in June at this pace.
We are on week 19 (playing once a week) and have just started Champions's Belt.
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We have a group of seven (6 players + myself, the DM). If I recall correctly, we started almost exactly 1 year ago.
Playing an average of 2-3 times a month, we are at the beginning of A Gathering of Winds.
Granted, our pacing has been slowed by serious family illnesses, grandparents passing away, vacations, and holidays - so we probably have had maybe 25-30 sessions at most (averaging about 3 hours each - interrupted by children, meals, and random tangents).
At this point, I'm hoping to keep everyone excited enough about the story that gaming burn-out doesn't kill the campaign.
/In our 30's.
//Have full time jobs.
///Most of us are married with small children.
////Slashies!
For the record, this describes my group quite well also.
My group began AoW in Dec 2006, so we've been playing for just over two years now...
Might want to check your math - that's just over one year, if you didn't mean Dec 2005...
d20 = choking hazard.
You think they're bad - those things are practically round. I worry more about those pointy d4's! They're not just caltrops for nerds anymore...
OK, this is depressing. In my group of 5 (4 players & a DM), formerly 6, we play every Thursday evening, ostensibly from 7PM to 11:00, attempting to get in 4 hours (though we often are delayed getting started; 3.5 hrs per session might even be a generous average, and that's before you take a couple of smoke breaks and the incomprehensible hourly "Why aren't you home yet?!?" phone calls from one player's newish ghoulfiend into account), but since we alternate between 2 separate campaigns after each adventure, it probably averages to playing about twice per month or so. We just about finished the Hall of Harsh Reflections (close enough to switch campaigns anyhow) right before Christmas '07, and I began DMing the Whispering Cairn partway through our February 2, '06 session (I ran a few other dungeon adventures before they started the AoW path; took me forever to finally have the adventures catch up with the PC's so I could stop having to scale everything up a few levels...). That's almost 2 years so far, and we're still only just finishing the 4th adventure. I think we're probably the slowest moving group ever, though it is comforting to learn there are other slow-moving D&D groups out there too. I'm certain most other groups can easily plow through more than one adventure every 6 months! I just can't get my players to cut out all the table-talk during combat for some reason. Never let a guy with a Master's degree in economics join your group BTW - they seem to have to painstakingly examine every possible option and angle, weighing opportunity costs or what have you before ever making any decisions. I kid... sorta. I gotta get a handle on this whole deciding each PC's actions by general concensus thing and beat it out of my players though, if we're ever going to get through this campaign - I have a feeling I'll be getting a little sick of it by the time the 4 more years it should take to complete at this rate have gone by! Although, I have enjoyed it immensely so far; maybe it won't be so bad...
Anyhow, that's how far we've gotten; if your sessions are roughly the same length as ours, maybe it's worth comparing progress. At the risk of going slightly off-topic, any tips for speeding up play would be helpful. To others on this thread as well, perhaps.
Kang
We try to play every week, about four to six hours if we can. But as schedules would hold we only meet about two to three times a month. We began in the summer of 2006, right from the start of Whispering Cairn. In that time we have taken two breaks before I began to experience DM burnout and switched over to Savage Tide while another of hte guys runs it. This Sunday we start back with AoW in a 14 hour marathon game beginning with (and hopefully ending with), Gathering of Winds. My plan is to then take two more months to get through the next installment with our regular Sunday night games.
I did SCAP in its entirety playing once a week for 4 - 5 hours a session and it took us 3years. Everyone loved it. To quote one gamer "What I always dreamed DnD could be".
I started AOW with a different group but under the same gaming conditions in Nov, we start 3FOE today.
Link to our AoW wiki. We've been playing since September '06, and are about to start Blackwall Keep.
We try to play weekly (we play on Thursdays, so it's shorter sessions[3 hours or so]), but we've had some hiatuses during that time,as well.
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Well, some of the posters seem to manage to move along at, what would be for my group, an extremely rapid pace. Still, other posters give me some solace:
Thank you MattW, Armaxis, Evilvlous, Cortney, Raidou, Dr. Pweent, and Shadowdenizen, for helping my group not feel like total sluggards!
Like Kang, I wouldn't mind some advice on how to speed up play without either cutting the heart out of the adventures, or stripping the role-playing out of the individual sessions.
And don't suggest removing beer from our sessions--that's not going to happen!
Overall, the conscensus on "Age of Worms" is mostly positive.
We have a blast with it; I'm lucky to have this group to play with; the core four of us have been together 5 years, and we have a pretty liberal policy on new people,which has worked in our favor.
Minor spoilers for "AoW"/TFoE:
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That said, most of our group was pretty "Meh" (if not "Boooo!") on "Three Faces of Evil". Poorly organized, and a bit of a meatgrinder, we even left out the Ebon Aspect, since the party had just had enough by that point,and were ready to move on.
Honestly, Grallak Kur provided the most intriguing challenge, since we made some challeneges to him as written. THe final confrontation came about as a result of a drug-induced dream (hard to describe via message board.)
Interstingly, the same group of players is also running through "Savage Tide" simeltaneously, and, where we're average-paced on "AoW" we're FLYING through "Savage Tide" for some reason. Four sessions,and we're finishing the first adventure. :)
I GM'd AoW from October 2006 and completed it in November 2007, running it ever other week. I had a sizable group, and I ended up cutting out a lot of the fluff encounters (and low CR encounters) to get the campaign done in a reasonable amount of time (I was gunning for 12 months, finished in 13 months).
We've been playing for nearly a year with our group about every other saturday from @7:00 - midnight. We're all in our mid to late thirties and only three of us have children. I'm the DM and I'll be starting the first part of "The Champion's Belt" this saturday.
I guess we have a pretty unique group.
A decade ago there were six or seven of us who played only sporadically. With the advent of WoW, our numbers were decimated and some people (namely, me) moved 300 miles away. Now three of us play about 3 or 4 marathon sessions per year (meaning one long weekend, minimal other gaming or activities, usually a total of 15 - 18 play hours, including accounting). Usually we play with two players having two PCs each and the third man DMing.
We have, however, been working harder at staying with particular adventure paths. I am DMing Age of Worms which we have been doing pretty exclusively since August 2006 and are currently 1/3 of the way through SoLS (this actually seems to compare pretty favorably to some of the other groups on this thread); another player DM'd the Eberron Whispers of the Vampire's Blade and its sequel (I think); and a third is about three or maybe four episodes into the Cauldron adventure path (the name eludes me).
Talking about kids, we were having trouble with scheduling due to one player's childcare duties so we actually have played two long sessions with his 11 year old daughter picking up a fifth character. It's kind fun seeing how excited she gets by the novelty of playing. On the hand she is 11--a good 11 to be sure but still 11. This has the complimentary effects of limiting how much I can swear at the players but it also sends us to bed sooner (so I am less likely to be tired enough to want to swear at the players).
At our current rate and with some abbreviated action in PoRH, I think we will finish this year (or we will have a series of TPKs resulting in disillusionment).
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Link to our AoW wiki. We've been playing since September '06, and are about to start Blackwall Keep.
Thanks for sharing the link - your quotes section is hysterical! I was thinking about adding one to our group's wiki, but now I'm definitely going to. I look forward to reading more of your exploits.
Our group is fighting its way past all Zyrxog's squishy, tentacled, mindf%#*-y, or annoyingly magic-resistant minions right now...
We play STAP since november of 2006 and AOW since the summer of 2006 in shift, playing every week or every second week with a few months of only 1 game in it. We also did the weekend-house thing for 4 days (best switch off from reality ever). One session is about 10 hours of massive RPG.
In AOW we go against Dragotha in the 11th adventure out of the 12. In STAP we are at the Crimson Fleet base.
All who speak hungarian go to: http://www.elderbrain.com/forum
IIRC, we started last summer (2007). We usually play biweekly, although we add or skip sessions due to RL issues. Last hiatus was a 5 week break due to one player having a death in the family.
Currently we are in HoHR. Lower level of the Sodden Hold (just finished the underwater/giant octopus thing).
Im hoping to shift us into more of a weekly game soon as our schedules seem to be aligning better. :)
We've been playing for nearly a year with our group about every other saturday from @7:00 - midnight. We're all in our mid to late thirties and only three of us have children. I'm the DM and I'll be starting the first part of "The Champion's Belt" this saturday.
That sounds similar to our group, except we only play once a month and are just halfway through Blackwall Keep. We started in June of 2005 and we've had a lot of player changes as people get busy and quit or new folks join the group.
Aaand...HoHR complete! Wooo! Finally, some sweet, sweet downtime...
We left off finishing Telakian and running into Zyrxog and his 2 Thralls.
Next session we will likely finish HoHR as its just Zyrxog's Lair. HoHR has been an excellent chapter in the AoW.