Title describes the problem. I try shooting for four to five hour gaming sessions however lately they've all ran WAY over board (six to nine). I can't keep doing this or the collective group of bitter wives will steal the gamers from my table!

From playing the game I think I just judge the pacing way wrong. I'm looking to hear from others how their games have been pacing.

Here's an example of what I think I'm doing.

1. Introduce problem and set the stage. 30min
2. Players seek to understand the problem. Begin gathering lots of information. 1 hour
3. Players try to anticipate snags. Begin collecting resources and bumping fists with contacts. 1 hour of gear runs
4. Players embark on mission. 10 minutes.
5. Players encounter unexpected situations. 1 hour of debate
6. Players navigate the scenario. 1 hour
7. Players enter combat. 1 hour
8. Players realize there's a conspiracy. 1 hour of arguing/plotting
9. Game master rushes the last bits of the adventure through as fast as he possibly can. 12 minutes
10. Wives call wondering where husbands are.

Hey there I know how you feel I sometimes have encounter this problem as well...

But I think the main problem here is how long the debates are try shortening them to a maximum of 15 minutes, Debates are fun in character but players will get carried away.

Another (albeit less fun) alternative is to just end the session at the appointed leaving it off on cliff hanger. Though procede with caution when doing this suddenly ending the game when the players are in the middle of something does tick them off, wait alittle bit let them finish what they are doing and end it (such as combat or gear buying).

Yeah, I have the same problem.

I find that fights take a lot of time in DH. You can do some things to speed them up a little bit, such as having little cards with the most common Bonuses all written out for the PCs favourite weapons. (Ie, Aimed shot with Single-Shot, Red Dot Accurate Nomad, etc: 76). You can also do a little 5 second countdown if they don't declare actions in a fight immediately upon their turm. If they dither too long OOC, rule that their PC does likewise. He simply looks around, keeping his head down trying to decide on his course of action. After a round of this, they learn. Things go more snappy

I found the Psyker to be the worst offender, with rolling an insane amount of dice for his powers, doing some maths to work out powerroll, overbleed, effects etc. Then looking for 9's, rolling twice on the table (Favoured by the Warp, etc).

So I wrote a little javascript webtool for him (se under Havelas).

That sped up things nicely, but it still takes an hour to resolve a medium fight. Much too long for my tastes.

But I guess we're just slow. We like to chat, mess around, discuss options and possibilites etc. We've run a few one-offs, demos, convention scenarios and some of the competition winners from this site, and we regularly use more time than estimated.

Darth Smeg said:

Oh you have no Idea. Combat in DH is actuall quite quick if you know what you are doing (and I don't mean having a few tricks, cards or anything like that).

If you've ever played D&D 4e you know what I mean. Combat in D&D4e usually (at in the games I used to run or be part of) lasted at least one hour. Usually 1 1/2 with 2 or 3 of those per session.

Garner said:

Here's how my games work:

1. Players arrive, pregame stuff, acquisition / avaiability rolls (see last point for more on this) [ 30 Minutes]
2. Introduce adventure usually by them getting an Inquisitorial Briefing or summing up what happend last time [15-30 Minutes]
3. Introduce basic area the PCs are / arrive in. [< 10 minutes]
4. Players wander around, do stuff. Detailed areas are explained when needed. [1-5 hours] (usually around 3 with a combat or two inbetween].
5. Combat [~30-45 minutes depending on complexity].
6. More exploring [< 1 Hour]
7. Game Master establishes or describes some situation that ends in a cliffhanger.
8. Exp are handed out. Bravery is rewareded, the usuall. If the Adventure has finished by that point or the PCs have a lot of time on their hands to go shopping they talk to the GM about that. If you don't need to do anyting you can go at that point. [10 minutes]

If at home a player realized they want to do something in between missions they usually tell me at the start of the game and all that is relevant about that (like the dice rolling for avaiability) occurs at pregame.

Hi there

it is rather simple: if you do not want to run games with 9hours...stop after 4 hours and give them an "okay, we finish here today. See ya next time to finish this".

@1 hour gear runs
Yep, gearing up can be quiet time consuming. To avoid things like this is started to prepare "shoping lists" with what is available so every player has
a list and is able to spend thrones. Give them a close in-game time limit for purchases as well. This will justify that every players has just one try
to locate something "not part of the list".

@the long hours of disussion
My group "suffers" from the same. It is a thing you have inside your gaming round or you have not. As mentioned above, the best thing is to finish after 4 hours and solve the rest later. No angry wives anymore

To help cut down the hour+ long arguing/planning sessions I sarted listening for the first three ideas that were suggested. Once three reasonable ideas were proposed by players I stopped them and said:

Your have three options, Player 1 suggested A, Player 2 suggested B, or Player 3 suggested C. Which one are you doing?

This will usually cut things down to 15 minutes or so of debate.

Gregorius21778 said:

That is how we always do it. We start at about 20:30 and stop at about 0:00 to 0:30. Otherwise it would simply be not possible without all (including the wives...) going mad. Most "adventures" take 8-10 sessions in our game.

Anyway, your sessions sound fine to me. In our last session we had a firefight in the Turning Hand on Sinophia Magna that took 3.5 hours and thus most of the session...

That is how it usually "works" for us::

20:00: Players arrive sit down, tell stuff about their work, wife, whatever (i.e. non-DH related).
20:30: Ordering Pizza after a 15 minute discussion where and what we order.
20:45: Last player arrives and sits down, while the others watch a trailer for a movie or a video game.
21:00: We start playing and players contemplate where we ended the last session.
21:30: Pizza arrives and we start eating and talking (i.e. mostly non-DH related)
21:45: First PC starts shoppig and/or inquiring.
22:00: Combat starts!
00:15: Combat ends!
00:20: All go home.
00:15: Combat ends!

A little exaggerated maybe, but still....

From your list, Garner, it looks like the main 'fat' to be cut is in debating/arguing time. Not sure how to reduce that- maybe have the situation dictate a time limit (i.e. the train will be leaving the station in 10 minutes- if you are still debating what to do in 11 minutes, you missed the train)?

My group has very long sessions, to, but our delays all come from non-game B.S.-ing...

Thanks everyone for the quick responses. I think I'll definitely try butting in on some of the table debate in my next games. Normally my policy is to let players figure it out on their own and not try to guide their decision making but I think the community is right and I should intervene.

I can also tell by reading over the responses that I forgot to include one of the complications. See my "campaigns" or adventures are usually planned in advance as five 5 hour sessions over five weeks. (what a mouth full!) So far this makes every one happy because we don't have to make a life long commitment to the campaign.

The difficulty for me the game master is actually having a coherent plot begin and end in five sessions.

We do two things inour game hich helps keep it oing. There is little 'shopping'. Between missions our gm says "Gear up, you'll need it", we then take what (rank appropriate) gear we want and it is assumed it comes fom the Inquisitor. GM has veto.

Second, talk to one of the 'pushier' players in your group and ask them to encourage the others to keep the flow moving. In our group that is me, I hate it when we sit at the tabe doing f#$k all. Mysunday arvos are valuable after all.

Hope that helps.

Gearing up takes too much time in my view; perhaps have their inquisitor/Quartermaster prepare some package for whatever mission they have (like a backpack with useful things depending on the mission/location) so you'll cut the time wasted having the PCs only concentrating on armour/weapons rather than tools, gear, drugs etc etc etc.....

We play 3 hours a week (Rogue Trader 2 weeks, then I run DH 2 weeks) and the gearing up/buying is speeded up with the 'package' option, and (to some extent) the limited knowledge of the gear available to the players in the many, many books around, and our debates are also short; no more than 15-20 minutes tops in the worse cases (as we're more action oriented when I and the others play) or is all axed to NOT start violence (treads, discretion, hacking of cog machines to control lights, or whatever, pointing guns at people menacingly) when I run DH and the PCs surprise me with their mostly non-violent ways

Except for the nagging wives (they do nag but so far we can still get away with it ) I recognize your predicament ... in my sessions, a lot of playtime is used up by snacking, jokes, off-topic banter and other digressions. Sometimes I try to get things on track again, but I have realized that it's an important aspect of the game, the social dimension. Take that away and it becomes a job

I... probably couldn't even begin to tell you how time breaks down in my sessions. I just stop at what seems to be a good stopping point. Usually that's dictated by time, by me running out of prepared notes, or when I know I'm looking at an hour or two of combat/investigation/roleplaying and it's midnight.

We just pick up where we left off next time. Trying to do discreet adventures in one night would be like herding kittens. If we had fun, who cares if we're done or not?