How long time have passed - if the OOTS was a game session

[BaronOfHell]

So assuming the comic was a game session, mr. Burlew as GM, a bunch of players as the order and the rest are NPC's.

How long time would have passed from the first strip to this one in real time, had it been the case? A couple of hours? Days? Months?

I am not a D&D gamer myself, but I had this thought and hope experienced gamers will give their input.

[NerfTW]

Depends on how long you'd consider a session, and how often they'd meet.

But there's also the issue that there aren't players. This is just a world where the characters follow the D&D rules as the natural order of things. So straight off the bat, this would be a terrible, terrible game for a lot of the players. Roy's player would have been out of the loop for multiple sessions, Durkon rarely gets to do anything, and there's whole sub plots involving other NPCs with no interaction with the PCs.


I would say this would be a LOT of sessions, lasting many hours each. But again, there's really no good way to declare what is and isn't a session due to the fact that the story isn't being written around one. For instance, were the several montage strips a few seconds, or a series of die rolls + extensive roleplaying?

[Bibliomancer]

If it were a campaign, the comic would be simply the illustrated aftermath of a highly elaborate play-by-post with a varying roster of players that began as soon as this site was established.

Why else would there be inexplicable variances in comic production and changes of perspective to interesting but minor characters?

If you PM Rich, you might get a chance to play a new NPC.

[Ancalagon]

Let's set 8 hours per session as baseline (without getting food, people going to smoke, people being late, etc).

[Bibliomancer]

A fairly easy way to estimate it would be to take the Darths and Droids baseline. For them, 25 strips is roughly a session. This isn't really accurate for OoTS as there are lots of NPC arcs that might or might not happen 'in-session' but it would be a place to start.

It you took the above and said that they met once every two weeks (meaning they try to meet once a week and don't manage it), the 'game' would have been running for...a year and two or three months, assuming to hiatuses.

[SPoD]

For instance, were the several montage strips a few seconds, or a series of die rolls + extensive roleplaying?

We can use this strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0155.html) to help us determine that, though. If this were a game (which I know it is not), then anytime the strip cuts away, skips time, or montages, the players are getting the scene narrated to them or making a few rolls: "You wait until nightfall," or, "You search the desert for a week, but find nothing."

[Ancalagon]

I'd also assume a couple of months of weekly meeting, minus a skipped session here and there. Throw in some extra time for stuff not shown on the comic (RP between comics etc) - if we said "nearly a year of nearly weekly sessions", we'd be nearly there. A bit too long as estimate, but I guess not that bad.

Or we could estimate it differently: So far, they made seven levels (8 to 15). If we assume they got a level every four sessions (sometimes every 3, then it might take 6 to get another one), we'd looking at like 28 weeks of pure playing (8 hours each). Throw in a few skipped sessions or ones that simply "did not run that smoothly" and we have like 7 to 9 months of playing.

This does not sound too far off. A group that spends lots of doing other stuff besides playing or roleplays much more than was shown in the comic could hit a year. But I doubt it'd be longer than that.

[xelliea]

Well it all depends on how fast, how many sessions and how much description the DM had put in, it could be hours-weeks.

[Tjarnet]

I think that the end of every story arc can be considered the reasonable stopping point of every session. That means there are 5 sessions-The Dungeon Crawling Fools session, the No Cure for the Paladin Blues session, the War and XPs session, the Don't Split up the Party session, and the current one. The Start of Darkness and the Origin arcs can be added as back story. So, I would guess somewhere around 5 sessions at maybe 8-10 hours for each one.

[Ancalagon]

I think you underestimate the players' tendency to take longer for stuff than you expect. I recommend more GMing. ;)

There is no way you can do one arc per session. Take only the time you need to READ it in the book, that alone should make clear you have no chance in hell to get through all this in one roleplaying session of 8 to 10 hours. Also consider the book does not show us everything that does happen in the game/story (and this already neglects things that the comic officially "skipped").

[King of Nowhere]

Depends much on the group.

With my old group, we tried to meet weekly but ended up meeting monthly. And they didn't knew much the rules, so I needed some longer time to explain, and most figths took at least half an hour even if they finished in a couple of rounds.
Then we would spend a lot of time trying to dissuade the barbarian to do something stupid (generally trying to separate from the party and solo what were suppposed to be challenges for the whoel group), and every time they had a chance at deciding something they would spend hours arguing...
So, with them, if I started in 2003, we would still be in dorukan's dungeon by now.

But I agree, with a regular group it would take more or less an year. Most of the npc action would just be reassumed as background.

[Gift Jeraff]

Take only the time you need to READ it in the book, that alone should make clear you have no chance in hell to get through all this in one roleplaying session of 8 to 10 hours.
While I agree with everything else you said, the books can easily be read in 1-3 hours, I think.

Maybe every chapter as a session works better. That would make, prior to the current arc, 31 sessions, though you can take out like 8 for being really short and maybe split the Battle for Azure City into 2, making 24.

Also, clearly the DM and/or Elan's player were injured for a while (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0198.html) so they skipped several weeks worth of sessions.

[Dr.Epic]

Depends...

Some players like to goof around or strategize which can add a lot of time onto gaming sessions.

This thread is kind of like asking "If you were to travel a mile on foot, how long would it take?" Differs for each person and we all go at different paces.

[veti]

I think this campaign would have been going since, approximately, July/August 2003.

The group would meet once every couple of months, and the strips we get reflect a condensed version of the last session's gameplay. (Episodes like 'Roy in Celestia', or cutting away to Team Evil, are holidays.)

Rich is on record as saying that he likes his D&D 'over the top (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10722208#post10722208)'. In my experience, that takes time. A lot of time. Players joke back and forth, bounce ideas around and see which ones gain traction, and they spend a whole lot more time talking about things that have nothing to do with the game at all.

[Valley]

So assuming the comic was a game session, mr. Burlew as GM, a bunch of players as the order and the rest are NPC's.

How long time would have passed from the first strip to this one in real time, had it been the case? A couple of hours? Days? Months?

I am not a D&D gamer myself, but I had this thought and hope experienced gamers will give their input.

Good Buddha....between jobs, real life, marriages...could take years!

[Ancalagon]

While I agree with everything else you said, the books can easily be read in 1-3 hours, I think.

Yes, that is correct. Now translate "you need 1 to 3 hours to read them" into "gamesessions".

I usually need 2 to 10 minutes to read my notes for a game-session - or sometimes two. This does not translate welll as the comic is more detailed and my notes are pretty abstract, but there is no way in hell you can squeeze a plan that takes an hour to read into single session. While I consider it possible, I think it's unlikely in 80% of cases that a plan that takes an hour to read fits in a month (four sessions)*.

* This does not include notes of super-nitpicky GMs who spell out every single detail. I bet that note takes two hours to read but is completely invalidated in 10 minutes of actual gaming. :smallbiggrin: