How many hours of play?

[Paz]

It sounds like some groups have now finished Rise of the Runelords (or, at least, are very close). I am interested to know approximately how many hours people have spent playing through the whole adventure path?

My group only gets about 3 or 3.5 hours of play each week, so I'd like to be able to get some idea how long it would take us to do the whole thing.

[Disenchanter]

That is a hard question to answer. Groups just run differently.

I would guess, that if your group runs a roughly even split of role playing and combat focus, and they are relatively good at figuring out plot line (and sticking to it) and tactics, that about 4 to 6 months would be about average for your 3 to 3.5 hours per week.

[Mary Yamato]

We probably averaged 8 hours a week (not all in one session) and I think we may finish within the next two sessions. We started immediately when #1 came out, so that's almost exactly six months, 26 weeks x 8 hours = 208 hours. So a group that went at our pace but played 4 hours a week would take a year.

We did some fairly hefty side adventures between 3 and 4, though, and also took an extremely combat-heavy and therefore extremely slow approach to #6. (For a while I thought my player was determined to fight every giant in Xin-Shalast.) On the flip side, with only one player we're pretty focused, and the player is very well organized so combat goes fast.

Groups vary wildly, as we learned when we had two different SCAP campaigns with the same GM. But I'd say that RotRL is slightly more than half as long as SCAP or AoW, if that helps. Maybe 3/5.

(Just as a point of curiosity, how long in-game did peoples' campaigns take? Ours was almost exactly a year; started at the Fall Equinox and hit Xin-Shalast about a month after the Summer Solstice. If we had teleport the PCs could be back in Sandpoint for the Swallowtail Festival and Goblin Day.)

Mary

[evilvolus]

I'd say that there's *at least* 20 hours of play in Burnt Offerings alone. My group's not all that slow, and we're about to put our 4th 6+ hour session into Pathfinder #1.

Weekly 3+ hour games? I'd guess a year or more.

[Paz]

Many thanks for the replies; they're really helpful.

[Jodah]

I started near the end of september, and my group is more than halfway through HMM. we do weekly 5-6 hour sessions. but, they dawdled alot during burnt offerings, and after skinsaw I had two sessions that were fun sidequests. and there have been interruptions and player absences, so we havent gotten as far as I'd have liked this semester. plus, winter break meant a month-long break after skinsaw. Things are picking up now. and I hope to be done before the end of the semester.

[Selk]

My group plays every other week, 6-7 hours per session. After six sessions we're halfway through Skinsaw, but I tend to fluff my games with a lot of side roleplay. So... about 90 hours for the whole AP? An Associate's Degree in Runelord Asskicking?

[azante]

My group plays 1 night a week, usually 4-5 hours. We started in December, took two weeks off for the holidays, and started HMM this week. So we're at about 20 hours per module.

However, my group is pretty... weird. They can circumnavigate entire sections of the adventure and still piece everything together.

[deathboy]

My group is now in HMM and we tend to play one day a week for about8 hours, after break times for smoking and dinner. In all I believe that we have clocked about 70 hours of play, this includes downtime activities between adventures.