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Lawless III
2010-05-26, 06:29 AM
We test ran my friend's new adventure/dungeon. He's leaving Friday for a three week trip abroad. So, with everyone's different schedules, we had to do it in one session or wait three weeks.

We started yesterday at about 2pm and just finished at 3 am. Subtracting an hour for two food runs, we played for about 12 hours, a personal best.

It was a great dungeon and everyone had a lot of fun, but I'm totally wiped. What's the longest you've ever played for? Any epic session stories? I'm positive several people on here can top mine, and I'm dying to hear them.

Dr.Epic
2010-05-26, 06:31 AM
Nice! Personally, I've always wanted to try to do a 24 hour D&D session. I'd probably have to have breaks for meals though.

Starscream
2010-05-26, 06:54 AM
I think my record is 10. By that point it was like 4 am, so we started watching horror movies instead. We only stopped because we were too exhausted to feel like reading anything.

comicshorse
2010-05-26, 06:57 AM
We hit 11 hours once ( though that was for a Warhammer game)

Kaiyanwang
2010-05-26, 06:58 AM
Wen I was in High School, we managed to meet at 3.00 pm, play until dinner, and then play to the next dawn.

We called them "endurances". Good times.

The Rose Dragon
2010-05-26, 06:59 AM
My record is 16 hours.

BigBadBugbear
2010-05-26, 07:00 AM
Our longest session was 26 hours...

PersonMan
2010-05-26, 07:06 AM
My longest was only nine hours, from around 1 to 11, with a break for dinner. But we did that for an entire week, so...

EDIT: I forgot some of the overnight sessions we have. Usually we get there between 3 and 4, and play until we can't anymore, at which point at least one of us has fallen asleep. We usually go to 1 or 2 AM, so 10-11 hours.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-05-26, 07:07 AM
12 hours with breaks is pretty sensible - everyone is still able to think straight and there are no health effects...

I've heard of games going on for days. I've played in LARP games longer than 48hours, always in character, no breaks (except in character breaks - we'd always go to the bathroom in twos, in case the NPCs attacked...). It gets too much, though, if you don't get a chance to rest.

Seth1221
2010-05-26, 07:09 AM
My normal game lasts for about 10 hours or so. We usually met once a week/two weeks and played all day with breaks for meals. Now we don't have that amout of time unfortunately:smallfrown:. Ah, good times...

Kurrel
2010-05-26, 07:12 AM
I've never played none stop for that long, but we do organize rp weekends a few times every year.

The idea being to get together Saturday afternoon, rp until dinner and then cook something/take a walk/etc. Play another segment and then stop for the night. Next morning, walk down to the shops for breakfast and then continue afterwards.

That's the ideal, frequently the second and third segments have been abandoned for movies/board games/etc, but we've had at least a few go from afternoon Saturday to afternoon Sunday.

J.Gellert
2010-05-26, 07:14 AM
Ach, I wish I had that kind of free time.

The best we've done consecutively must be like... 7 hours? But the best overall was the time when we held 4-hour games, 4 times a week :smalltongue:

Blackfang108
2010-05-26, 08:44 AM
My group once hit ~12 hours in LFR doing SPEC 1-1. We hadn't finished, either.

Traveler
2010-05-26, 08:50 AM
My longest was from 1 PM in the afternoon to 6 AM in the morning with about one hour out for food (overall). So about 15-16 hours. We wanted to stop at 11 PM but we just had one fight to go. That fight dragged on to 6.

2xMachina
2010-05-26, 08:57 AM
Order takeout and play as you eat.

Huh, wasn't D&D, but the most I've done (group gaming) was 10am to maybe 5 or 6 pm. Risk and the variants usually, or other games.

Quietus
2010-05-26, 08:58 AM
Three days.

It's a tradition among my friends. At our bachelor parties, none of us are really interested in the "Go to the strip club, laugh it up, see naked womens" that is stereotypical of such things. The only DD's we want to see, have an ampersand between them.

So, we get together on a Friday, typically noon or earlier, kick the women out of the house if necessary... and the game starts. We either break for sleep (or crash as needed, the game continuing), or we've tried doing a two-DM setup, with one cycling in when the other needs a break, usually just to sleep. In one occasion, we were at my apartment, and the game continued while I was cooking, shouting in my actions from the kitchen so everyone in the dining room could hear me, with one of the DMs hanging out in the hallway to make sure he heard me. The game continues until everyone has to scatter on Sunday night, to make it to work Monday morning.

Of course, we've only done this twice... but if I, or any more of my friends, get married? D&D carnage part 3, baby!

Rensvind
2010-05-26, 09:17 AM
9 to 14 hours is pretty much standard in my group :) (with breaks for food and stuff)

@Quietus: That's sounds like real fun, must try it out during the summer or sometime when everyone is free :D

Quietus
2010-05-26, 09:20 AM
9 to 14 hours is pretty much standard in my group :) (with breaks for food and stuff)

@Quietus: That's sounds like real fun, must try it out during the summer or sometime when everyone is free :D

It is! It's hell on your body if you don't keep things sane, though - make sure to have plenty of regular food as well as all the junk food you want. Even just some prepacked salads, or a bit of cut fruit, goes a long way to both making sure no one dies/gains 700 lbs, and stopping your house from becoming filled with a rank green fog.

Jarawara
2010-05-26, 09:23 AM
I've done weekend marathons before. Get home from school, start game on Friday night. Play till we drop. Wake up, eat breakfast, play till we drop. Wake up, eat breakfast, play till the afternoon. Cram for Monday morning test.

However, I would say that my personal best is a 10-13 hour session...

... every week...

... for 4 straight years.

Part of a 9 year campaign which we're just wrapping up. Sadly, we can't play those kinds of hours anymore, as my players have gone from being kids in school to college graduates to getting jobs to making way more money that me, and finally on to 'having a life' (whatever that's supposed to be).

Scorpions__
2010-05-26, 09:23 AM
Once dungeoned for seventeen hours from noon till 7:00AM the next morning... We would have stopped sooner but the PCs got into a 4-hour-or-so fight with a Neotholid that kept teleporting all over the place.

12 hour games are pretty standard for my group though.

I've always wanted to spend March Break locked in a shed with the gaming group and everything we'd need to dungeon.







DM[F]R

Project_Mayhem
2010-05-26, 09:50 AM
My record is something like a 15 hour Vampire the Masquerade session, with at least 12 hours of that spent in character.

Epic session.

Benejeseret
2010-05-26, 10:28 AM
Once did a 12 hour long Warhammer 40k mass battle with over 7 different armies participating, each between 1-2K in points.

The clattering clicks of so many dice raining down over, and over, and over, will haunt me for many cycles.

Kaiyanwang
2010-05-26, 10:53 AM
Once did a 12 hour long Warhammer 40k mass battle with over 7 different armies participating, each between 1-2K in points.

The clattering clicks of so many dice raining down over, and over, and over, will haunt me for many cycles.

I did something similar, but only 3 per side (2 caos + dark eldars vs Dark Angels, Blood Angels and Demon Hunters).

The Defiler ista-nuking the Blood Angels Super Badass Elite Guard Rhino* in one blow was priceless.

*and everything inside it

mikej
2010-05-26, 10:59 AM
Nothing more than 8 hours it seems. I wish we did the 12-24 hour marathon games. The only game I've played that's 12+ was Smash Bro...

JohnnyCancer
2010-05-26, 11:32 AM
Chongo longo, those are some long game sessions! :smalleek:

I've never played that long in one go, but when I went to boarding school there was a lot of D&D being played in the winter. It was not at all uncommon to play four or five hours a day, three or four days straight.

Seffbasilisk
2010-05-26, 11:41 AM
12 Hour sessions are awesome...

but this weekend I'm going up to a farmhouse in the Aderondacks. No internet. No television.

I'm bringing my dice.

arguskos
2010-05-26, 12:22 PM
72 hours is my personal best. Only done it a few times, but god if it wasn't glorious.

My standard session with my old group was about 10-12 hours. My newer group plays about 6 hours. My current group is non-existent. :smallfrown:

Seatbelt
2010-05-26, 12:36 PM
I didn't get to participate, because of family stuff. But apparently the most legendary D&D ever played was New Years 2008/9 and it was 14 hours long.

Lycan 01
2010-05-26, 02:22 PM
Oh man, let me think...


My usual sessions are about 4 hours, because by that point we're either wrapped up the mission, hit a good stopping point, or somebody has to leave and we hate playing without important players/close friends.


My current groups are all on tight schedules. College classes, projects and studying, strict parents, jobs... We usually only have one or two 3-5 hour windows every other week or so.

But now its SUMMER!! :smallbiggrin: I'm hoping to do a good uber-session within the next week or so, though it'll be hard to find the right game. We tried Shadowrun earlier this week, but that's not a game I can GM for long periods of time. It quickly overwhelms me, and the players aren't as focused with it as they are on other games... :smallsigh:

So maybe I'll try to run a marathon DnD session next weekend, or a full Call of Cthulhu scenario... :smallsmile:


At any rate, records are...

DnD: 3-4 hours
Call of Cthulhu: 7-8 hours
Dark Heresy: 3-4 hours
Paranoia: 3 hours
Shadowrun: 4 hours
Star Wars: 10 hours (first session, no other session was ever as awesome)

Il_Vec
2010-05-26, 02:29 PM
Back in the day, we used to have 3-day sessions. That was how long the DM could go without sleep. We took turns cooking, and played while we ate. Usually during the third day, the DM would start to lag; that was the time to start "helping" him calculate the XP and treasure. Good times.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-05-26, 02:29 PM
Longest Session... about 10 hours... the wraping up of the trip to aerenal in an Eberron Campaing, the most epic part was, that we actually LARP'ed an escape secene (Jungle+Pyrokinetist with Burning Hands living Companion+angry druidss=ESCAPE) and it was quite fun since me (the rogue) was the only one who actually escaped the Druids :smallbiggrin:

molten_dragon
2010-05-26, 02:30 PM
When I was in college, we would frequently game from 6 PM until ~2 or 3 in the morning, however the end of my sophomore year, our DM was graduating and moving across the country, so we wanted to finish the campaign that session or it wouldn't get finished. We played until about 9 AM the next day, so it lasted roughly 15 hours.

WorstDMEver
2010-05-26, 03:55 PM
Two or three times a month in high school, 5 of us used to play from Friday at about 7pm until Monday at around 6am. We took breaks for food as often as we were hungry and remembered. Towards Sunday morning we'd start having 'zone moments' where one of us would start actually watching MTV instead of just listening to it in the background - 10 minute break as soon as someone noticed it, then back to playing.

It's amazing how easy it is to stay up as long as you're engaged in what you're doing. However, the instant you lose focus you'll feel it. Now that I'm old, however, I find that 8-12 hours at a pop are good enough for me.

Jarveiyan
2010-05-27, 03:49 AM
36 hours - started on a friday at 6pm and ended on sunday at 6am, the DM was leaving Ft. Campbell and we figured if we were going to have a "last game" we were going to go as long as we could. I remember drinking 9 medium cups of black coffee my brain was "fried" at the 24 hour mark. That was the longest game I ever attended.

IonDragon
2010-05-27, 04:43 AM
Once, just once 2 friends and I played all night. I think we started about 4 or so, rolled new characters and just went. It was a dark fantasy game using homebrew rules but it felt a lot like Silent Hill. Let me tell you, when you're starved for sleep these things start to get REAL. We eventually stopped when the GM had to crash, then we went to IHop as the sun was coming up and then went home to sleep. So that would be... call it 5-6? Only 13 hours, so not as impressive as some numbers.

kenjigoku
2010-05-27, 05:25 AM
48 hours less a few for food, and about 3 hours of sleep each night so, uhm about 40 hours. Never offering to do DnD for a birthday present ever again.