Trying to work game session schedules out, just curious how long the average session takes. I know it depends on a lot of different things, but even just an average number would be helpful. Thanks!

That's really hard to say. Back when I was in my early twenties and had no kids, we would routinely have 10 to 12 hour sessions. Now that I'm in my mid forties with a couple kids and a job that requires a 5:30 wake up, the sessions are more like 4 to 6 hours.

If you forced me to pick a number, I'd say 5 hours...? Maybe?

3-4 hours for our group

We usually run about three hours of solid play time. Then up to a half hour of spending XP, rolling Obligation/Duty/Morality, etc. at the end. This is all bookended by an hour or so of general chicanery.

I roll with about one hour per player as a general rule of thumb, up to 5 hours. Anything shorter than that feels a little too short.

I believe the game assumes a 4-hour session with 3 hours of actual play.

4 hours, 3 of which is actual gaming.

36 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

4 hours, 3 of which is actual gaming.

actually, this.

It very much depends. These days we plan to gather at 6-6:30 at one friends house, and have socialized/eaten dinner/start play by 7. We then tend to run until anywhere between 10 and 12, so 3-5 hours.

We used to meet on Saturdays and start around 2, and run until 9-10, with about an hour break for food.

Honestly you can run sessions however long you feel like. If you're just starting off you don't really need to worry about 1/session abilities, and if it ever does come up as an issue there are ways to mitigate that (e.g. you could stop halfway and say this is a new session starting, reroll destiny points, get XP midway, etc.). Destiny points ultimately are a zero sum game so you don't really need to worry about refreshing the pool unless the velocity of spending them is way down.

My group shows up at a FLGS at 2pm (opening) to game and we play until it closes at 8pm, on Sundays. However, of those 6 hours, I'd say only about 4 or 5 are actual gaming, and the other 1-2 hours are socializing or going over character details. And of course, there's the obligatory pizza break halfway through the session.

About 5 hours at least 4 of which are actual play.

My group plays once a week on a weekday night, so we only play for between 2 to 2.5 hours a session.

My group meets fortnightly(ish) and we play for 3.5hours with 30 min of chitchat/xp spending/ GM-playerfeedback

Directly related to time played is xp awarded. I give 20xp a session, plus one player will get a bonus 5 for being awesome. Plus I have started using GM intervention to sprinkle a bit of XP throughout the session (4xp when I pull a GM dcikmove, must be split with another player). Plus at the end of an episode/adventure I give out the bonus XP as detailed in the adventure modules

Most convention RPG sessions go 3 - 4 hours which tracks with how long my home game sessions go.

my weekly sessions run 3.5 hours - 1830 to 2200.

I used to run 1300-2100 with an hour worth of breaks for food, smokes, etc, for 7 hours. The Devs told me that was 2-3 sessions wrth.

I'd say my groups standard session is around 5 hours. Some days we can end up playing for 8. But usually nothing short of the 5 hour mark.

Like others have said anything really shorter than 4 with all of the dilly-dally, food breaks, smoke breaks, or simply just getting up from the table occasionally.. The session feels a little too short.. at least for me and my players.

I recognize the difference between living a care-free life of the bachelor without children, and the working married man with 'one in the oven' at the missus.

We used to do all-nighters in our twenties, weekly. Nowadays we are glad to get an evening of gaming in once every two weeks or so. Probably hitting the 4 or 5 hours mark as well.

5 hours ago, Xcapobl said:

I recognize the difference between living a care-free life of the bachelor without children, and the working married man with 'one in the oven' at the missus.

We used to do all-nighters in our twenties, weekly. Nowadays we are glad to get an evening of gaming in once every two weeks or so. Probably hitting the 4 or 5 hours mark as well.

If we play once a month for 4-5 hours we're doing significantly better than average for our group. Every one in our group is married and only 2 don't have kids. I turned over the GM reigns to one of those two when my sun was born last july.

We're all in our late 30's, early 40's, but our game sessions are usually in the 7-8+ hour range.

The wife and I are the only one with a kid (now 5), so since we started playing 2 years ago we have shamelessly used her as the excuse to host all our games at our house and I GM.

Great for us, we can get her to bed before people arrive, no worries about driving home at midnight/1am, and we can have a a few more wines throughout the game.

(Also means the wife stays up to 2am with the CRB and our folder of printed specialisations planning/replanning what to do with the XP I just gave her/....)

This does mean though that I have never actually been a PC, only ever the GM. And I think at this stage I would be terrible at it.

My preference is a 5 hour session with about 4 hours of actual gaming. I also like to have two sessions like that in a row, for a nice full Saturday.

Right now my group is gaming at a local FLGS (but we have a plan to shift the game to my home once we get moved in).

Start time is 6:00 p.m. (I get there early and socialization and EXP is spent at that time).

I plan on wrapping up and stopping at 10:00 p.m. but often the players encourage that we run longer.

The store employees kick us out at 11:00 p.m.

So for us its 4-5 hours with most of that being serious gaming time.

We usually start at 8pm on Friday, after everyone's gotten off work, and usually go til about 3 or 4am on Saturday

We Game on Sunday afternoons.

Plan is get together at 12:00, game until 6.

Actual is 2 players don't usually show until 1:30, we star at 2 or so and we game until 6.

On 2/6/2018 at 7:29 AM, Cab512 said:

Trying to work game session schedules out, just curious how long the average session takes. I know it depends on a lot of different things, but even just an average number would be helpful. Thanks!

My public games tend to run 1830–2200, so 3.5 hours. My preferred session time would be 1300-2000, for a 7 hour session, but with half an hour break for dinner around 1700-1800, pot luck.

On 2/21/2018 at 5:18 AM, Dakkar98 said:

We Game on Sunday afternoons.

Plan is get together at 12:00, game until 6.

Actual is 2 players don't usually show until 1:30, we star at 2 or so and we game until 6.

Not cool!

Currently for Star Wars it’s about 5-7 hours (depends mostly on what feels like a good moment to stop for the day) on Saturday afternoon. It really does come down to what works for the group though. I’ve had groups with 2.5-3 hour sessions (make sure you can start punctually with shorter sessions like that) twice per week, I’ve had groups with “all weekend, if we can organise it” meetups, groups that only do play-by-post for which the concept “session” is meaningless and everything in between.

For purposes of in-game effects that use sessions as timers (blech, but whatever since they do exist), if your sessions are 2 hours max or 5 hours at least I’d use 3-4 hours as one session’s worth for timing purposes.