I know every group has a different dynamic and pace, but I'm trying to get a sesnse of how long getting through an AP takes. Is once a week enough for you? Do you do short (5 hour) blocks or do you marathon through the weekend?
I know every group has a different dynamic and pace, but I'm trying to get a sesnse of how long getting through an AP takes. Is once a week enough for you? Do you do short (5 hour) blocks or do you marathon through the weekend?
My group doesnt do pre made modules but we do play once a week for about 4 hours. Some days we do 2 encounters and some good rp'ing and sometimes well get in 3 encounters.Distractions like laptops cell phones and food are our biggest culprits for slowing gameplay.
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In college we'd do once/week 7-hour sessions with occasional extra marathon sessions (usually one-shots about once/month, but sometimes they continued the "main" campaign).
Post-college it's once/week 5-hour sessions.
I wouldn't mind an old-school marathon session every once in a while, but I doubt my players would agree :P (We're all full-time engineers, so we're often busy).
For the last AP we finished (Age of Worms) we played every Saturday, for 6-7 hours each time. It took about one year to finish the AP. Keep in mind that my players tend to be in the "rollplayer" rather than "roleplayer" category, so if your players enjoy immersing into the roleplaying aspects (as I wish mine would) it will take longer :)
Director of Game Development
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Our group plays (mostly) every Sunday for 5-6 hours.
Like most folks, I used to play far more often. At one point I had four different campaigns a week. The best period of time was when I was working nights. Two to three other guys in the group had the same schedule, so when the guys with the day jobs would cut out around midnight, we'd end the regular campaign and all of us night owls would play our other campaigns until dawn. Good times.
Once every two weeks for 9 hours.
Once every two weeks for 9 hours.
Same.
A lot more than I should....
One game on Saturday nights from 8pm to 2am, and one game on Tuesday nights from 7 to 2am. Different games, though.
We've rocked through three APs (CotCT, CoT and 2D) in the last year, and have two books of Kingmaker left. We just started Serpent's Skull.
Waiting... for Serpent's Skull #2 is proving irritating, though. Had to write my own module to keep the content coming and the game going. Glad I did, too, otherwise we'd be taking two weeks in a row off of the game now.
Once or twice in a week with two gaming groups. All others have school so I could play more often that but I don't complain. Sessions are often 4-6 hours long depending on do we play on week or on weekend.
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I know every group has a different dynamic and pace, but I'm trying to get a sesnse of how long getting through an AP takes. Is once a week enough for you? Do you do short (5 hour) blocks or do you marathon through the weekend?
We're doing the big Shackled City AP. We try to meet about every two weeks, but it depends on people's schedules. We tried once a week, but it was too much. Our game day used to be Monday night, for about 5 hours, but now it's Saturday for about 10 hours (including a dinner or BBQ break).
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I currently have three Pathfinder games going on; two I GM and one I play in. On Monday, we usually play for about three or four hours and it's a pretty casual game; I'm the regular GM, but I rotate out games every few months, and it just happens to be Pathfinder right now. On Wednesday, I'm running a Pathfinder Ravenloft game; the game's been going on since Pathfinder Beta, and will probably run through next spring, so it's pretty serious. That one tends to run for four hours every week, and we'd go longer if our schedules allowed. My Friday game is super-casual; we're supposed to play every week for three hours, but we really wind up playing two or three times a month, for two to three hours each.
My wife is currently building a homebrew campaign setting for Pathfinder, and as soon as she's got her game ready to go, I'll be handing Monday nights over to her. ^_^
Jeremy Puckett
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It can vary wildly, and I have to admit that since this IS my full-time career, I can spend a lot more time on it than many professionals my age.
Currently I normally get three sessions a week, one 6-7 hours long on Fridays, one 7-9 hours long on Saturdays, and one 2-3 hours long on Sundays. There are actually more campaigns than that (Fridays, for example, alternates between two games), and some weeks the Saturday game doesn't go off, but that's fairly steady.
I have had stretches with as little as 1 4-hour game a week, and even some times when all I could manage was play-by-email or online games. And of course I have time spend on consoles, casual games, and MMORPGs I don't count.
It can vary wildly, and I have to admit that since this IS my full-time career, I can spend a lot more time on it than many professionals my age.
Currently I normally get three sessions a week, one 6-7 hours long on Fridays, one 7-9 hours long on Saturdays, and one 2-3 hours long on Sundays. There are actually more campaigns than that (Fridays, for example, alternates between two games), and some weeks the Saturday game doesn't go off, but that's fairly steady.
I have had stretches with as little as 1 4-hour game a week, and even some times when all I could manage was play-by-email or online games. And of course I have time spend on consoles, casual games, and MMORPGs I don't count.
I hate you.
/jokes. Man i wish i had that timetable! Best job eva! I'm so jealous.
Owen I want your job !
I'm playing once a week, sometimes once every two weeks (becuase someone is on vacation etc.) for ~4 hours. :(
That's not enough for me, but unfortunatly my ground don't want to spent more time and finding other group with a shift working enviroment is difficult. :(
I play twice a week with different groups.
Useful information i can give is limited. We played Age of Worms for about 4 1/2 months and got through maybe 2 or 3 of 12 chapters, and are currently on hiatus from that. And we play about 6 hours sessions, sometimes a bit longer depending on whether we can all get started and focused in a timely fashion.
We play about once every two weeks in one campaign I'm running for about 4-5 hours, and another campaign one sunday for 8-10 hours once per 1½ month or so...
When we were all younger and single, it was every Saturday starting anywhere from 11 a.m. to noon and going until we wanted to stop.
But now being older, and many of us a lot more busy, usually it’s maybe twice a month, sometimes even once. And the sessions usually start in mid to late afternoon and goes until maybe 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. However, there are several that don’t show up as much as they could, one moving to Iowa temporarily and a couple that are in school. And another one married and just shows up when he can.
I play three times a week, a couple of the same people each time play, but we have a few different in each game.
We play Sun 6PM-12PM, Mon 8PM-12PM, Tue 8PM-12PM....
I DM Sun and Tue games.
Sometimes our games run past midnight.
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My main group plays every Sunday for 4-5 hours.
My secondary group meets about once a month for 7-8 hours.
Those are my Pathfinder groups. I also have a bi-weekly CoC group that plays for 3 or 4 hours and an AD&D group that meets... every 5 or 6 weeks. We tend to play as long as possible in that group, minimum 6 hours depending on schedules.
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I asked the same thing on RPG.net in Februrary last year (link to thread).
It seemed that to complete an entire AP would take 42 to 54 sessions of 4 hours each. More than I am willing to put into one story.
I left the group earlier this year, and because they rotate games out (I believe now they have a few APs on the go at once) I still don't think they have completed Rise of the Runelords.
I prefer to write my own campaigns for this reason - I believe I can do a fairly epic campaign with subplots etc in less than 20 sessions.
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I play in two groups - one is nominally supposed to meet every Thursday from 7-11pm, but that game is cancelled at least half the time because various people can't make it.
The other group has alternated between meeting face to face and using Maptools. When we play face to face, it's typically twice per month for 4-6 hours. When we play online, it's once per week for 2 hours. I wish we had some more time to play, but we all work long hours and it's tough to make the scheduling work.
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I might as well be gaming professionally...
Tuesday - GM : Pathfinder Society (4-5 hour sessions)
Thursday - GM : King Maker AP (4-7 hour sessions)
Friday - GM : Online PFS or Player in High Level 3.5 Game (4-7 hour sessions)
Saturday - Player : Serpent's Skull AP (5-8 hour sessions)
Our KM group managed to get through book one in seven sessions...
I might as well be gaming professionally...
Tuesday - GM : Pathfinder Society (4-5 hour sessions)
Thursday - GM : King Maker AP (4-7 hour sessions)
Friday - GM : Online PFS or Player in High Level 3.5 Game (4-7 hour sessions)
Saturday - Player : Serpent's Skull AP (5-8 hour sessions)Our KM group managed to get through book one in seven sessions...
Wow, I wish I had that kind of time again.
Thanks everyone. Using my non-scientific, “read and tally” approach, about half of you pay in more than one game and the other half one game. Additionally, about 23% play once a month or more but not weekly. 36% meet once a week, 27% twice a week and 14% three times a week or more. The most common session duration was 5 hours. Time to complete an AP ranges approximately from 100 to 200 hours. So, the most common group, i.e. meeting weekly for five hours, would be on course to finish an AP in a year even with some of the distractions mentioned and an emphasis on roleplaying versus rollplaying.
The result led me to another thought. If my group has been playing consistently for years, why do we never finish an AP? Some quick searches on epic play and games falling apart between levels 10 – 20 showed me results that indicate the topic is a completely different thread.
I have a weekly game where I run Kingmaker - the group has been together for quite awhile, but the Kingmaker campaign is just starting.
I try to catch online PFS games when I can, but with summer activities that has been a bit infrequent. I believe with fall/winter approaching I will end up playing more one-shot PFS games over VTT.
We usually play on fridays. Sometimes we miss one here and there but are pretty constant. This past friday we played from 5pm friday til 6am saturday. Most of the time though we play roughly 7-9 hours.
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Well I do not play any games face to face any more but I am currently playing in 5 games online.
Sunday I run a pathfinder game and we usually play for 6-8 hours this is a weekly game.(D20PRO)
Monday I play in a 4E game that is supposed to be weekly but sometimes we miss a session here or there and that is 3 hours long. (D20PRO)
Wednesday I play in a Pathfinder game that is supposed to be weekly but again we miss a session here or there 3-4 hours long (Gametable)
Friday I run a Pathfinder game weekly about 6 -7 hour sessions (D20PRO)
Saturday I just started playing in a 4E game it will be 2 times a month about 4 hour sessions. (FGII)
Always looking for more games to fill in my schedule.