Shorter Games are Cinematic Games
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The Game Knights get together once a week (Friday or Saturday) for gaming from 8 pm to about 10-10:30 pm. Of course, it usually takes a little time for everyone to look over character sheets, grab some snacks and drinks, and finally settle down around the middle of the living room floor to play. So, we’ll say 8:30-10:00. Not much time at all, right? How can anything get done?
I’ve found that to compensate for shorter game times, we cut the fat from the game and move on to what’s important.
In your standard 8 hour session, you might run 4-5 combats, many of them plowing through a dungeon towards the solo monster at the end. With our group, that’s not really an option. We’d have to spend 3-4 sessions to get through that same dungeon. This is why it took us so long to run Keep on the Shadowfell.
A while back, in our Lords of Dust campaign, the heroes were travelling down an underground river in boats. Instead of having them attacked at every opportunity, they had exactly one encounter along the way, against a fearsome and very tough winged draconian whose whole goal was to tip their boats and drown them. They dispatched him after some creative fighting, and moved on. Later on down the river, they encountered a lone goblin guarding a doorway built in the side of the cavern. They attacked him, killing him in a few shots, before exploring the room and finding some magical items. I could have had the heroes mow through a veritable plethora of goblins defending the horde, but we don’t have time. Instead, the goblins had dispatched a single guard to keep tabs and make sure no local underground wildlife was going to move in on their territory. They certainly weren’t expecting a group of armed adventures.
Think about it: In what movie do you ever see the heroes grinding through encounter after encounter just to get to the important part of the story? 300 sure, but if you were running that as a game of D&D, that would really be the point of your whole campaign (and with the number of encounters in that movie, you could really run it in a single 12-hour session.)
My point is this: It doesn’t take 8 hours a week to make an awesome game. All it takes is 2 really good ones. Give it a try.
Whaaa??? Is a standard D&D session in the US really 8 hours?? I guess you play on the weekend with a dinner break?
I entirely agree with you that a great game can take place in 2 hours. This is close to the standard play length of my group now (in LA). In the past, I have usually played for 3.5-4, and I think that’s pretty standard for New Zealand, IME.
Our group plays for about 8 or 9 hours per session, but we only get to play once every 5-7 weeks. So, while time is of the essence, I still try to include every encounter that ‘should’ be included, according to the plot and layout. All this really means is that every encounter has meaning and substance to the plot. We have no time for random encounters.
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[...] previously I mentioned how only having a couple hours a week to game makes things more cinematic (aka, like a movie). For proof, I offer up A New Hope. We’ll cover the first couple sessions, [...]