RTL session length ?

By kalle, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hi,

can You give any indication what is a typical or good or reasonable playing time of one RTL session ? I'm planning to start a campaign, and would like to know in advance how much time is required per one session of the campaign.

Thanks in advance.

kalle said:

Hi,

can You give any indication what is a typical or good or reasonable playing time of one RTL session ? I'm planning to start a campaign, and would like to know in advance how much time is required per one session of the campaign.

Thanks in advance.

It varies a good deal in my experience. For me, anything less than 3 hours isn't worth it. I've had times when I've completeted all three levels of a dungeon in less than that time, and I've had times when its taken that long to do one level.

We seem to average about 5 or 6 hours per session. We start after lunch and go untill dinner time. A couple sessions have gone longer with one coming in at 7 hours and one mammoth session at about 8 1/2 hours. The last one was a killer for me. About 6 hours works well for me.

I'm a new OL (two sessions of RtL) but 6 hours is also the time we set and it works out well. Actually, we've only done 5 hour sessions due to tardiness, early leavings, I guess. But a full 6 hours would be perfect. In our experience, that's enough time to do some land map stuff (traveling, uprgrades), have an outdoor encounter, and get through the majority of a dungeon, if not complete it.

I'm usually willing to play all day (my group not so much) but for me it's not worth getting out for less than a 4 hour session.

Ok, I got the box now, and looked through the rules(quickly) and Your comments, so I gather the game can be halted in a reasonable time. I'd say that something like 5-6 hours is quite ok, once You get everybody into one place to play, another thing is how often it is possible for people with families to slip into their own hobbies... Has somebody actually got a campaign finished also, and how many times (or how often) did You get together ?

We meet every other Sunday 1pm - 7pm.

When I was initially organizing the campaign I was thinking every Sunday but my wife, in her wisdom, said every other week was better. I had to see through my own enthusiasm for the game to see that not everybody wants to commit half of every single weekend to playing Descent.

I like the game enough to play every week, honestly, but it is nice to have a weeked off to get stuff done like house projects, family time, etc.

Of course, every gaming group is different. I had a previous gaming group that we could easily have met once per week.