whats the longest gaming session you've ever had?

[big teej]

what it says on the box.

what is the longest uninteruppted gaming session you've played in?

what was the occaision?

what system?

who fell asleep first?

when did it start?

when did it end?

where was it?

what were you playing?



for the record, potty/smoke/food breaks + up to 1 hours worth of 'non-gaming' is allowed for this.

this is one hour TOTAL, not 'one hour breaks'

I think that covers everything.

I'll get the ball rolling.
I wanna say 14 hour session (my math could be wrong, it's almost 3 am)


no special occaision, just wanted to powergame.

dnd 3.5 was the system.

nobody fell asleep, we called it when we were no longer coherent enough to keep track of my 'to hit'

it started at around 12 in the afternoon (possibly 10) and lasted till 3-4 in the morning...

now that I think about it.... we did have one start at 10 that lasted that long...

the DM's garage.
3rd level Human fighter, solo campaign.

[Allanimal]

We were nearly finished with Red Hand of Doom, and our DM was getting shipped off to Afghanistan. We wanted to finish it before he left, and we had one last day that everyone could get together before he left, so we powered through it. We started about 16:00 and finished somewhere around 4:00. We were supposed to start at 14:00, but the DM was late due to taking care of last minute deployming things.

The Scout/Ranger fell asleep first, around midnight. I lasted until 2:00-ish, and took cat naps between my action in the rounds after that.

I was playing a duskblade, a new character since my previous had died the session before. The DM kept forgetting I had a reach weapon, meaning I got an AOO nearly every round the first few hours.

Our group always meets at my apartment, which was good, because I was so tired when it was over, there is no way I could have gotten home safely. I offered up the guest room for other players, but nobody took me up on it. They all made it home safely...

So, it was a 12 hour session of almost 100% combat (the Battle of Brindol), though most of us were there and in the gaming mindset for 14 hours. The only major break was dinner. Our group takes turns preparing dinner for the rest of the group, and we have about an hour break to eat. It's a great system. The DM is exempt from cooking, and the host(s) only do it half as often as the rest of the group.

[Xefas]

2nd edition D&D over at a player's house. The DM (me), two fighters and a cleric. We assembled at 11am on a Saturday. We played until a little before 6pm on Sunday. I remember distinctly, because we were 13ish at the time, and our respective families wanted us home for dinner. :smallannoyed:

So, around 30 hours? This is D&D, though, of course, so that's like 2 fights. :smalltongue:

The sad thing, looking back on that, is that I'm not old yet, but there's no way in hell I could do something like that again. Especially because 13-year-old me probably ended up staying up until 2am playing Starcraft anyway, got 5 hours of sleep, and was fresh as a daisy for school in the morning.

[Morph Bark]

From... 11:30 PM 'til 6:30 AM, a Star Wars Saga Edition game and the first of only two sessions of that campaign I was part of. Kicked ass and chewed bubble gum and made some genius plans while helping the others shine as well. I felt like the most awesome player in the world. Kept trying hard to stay awake, luckily I didn't fall asleep. The others had little problem with that apparently...

[Yora]

Our sessions often go for 5 hours and more, so I guess the longest would be something between 6 and 8 hours.
Unless you count playing Neverwinter Nights Multiplayer on an open world server. I think we frequently topped the 12 hour mark.

[Tyger]

Our group went to one of the member's cabin for a weekend of gaming and beer. Started about 2:00 PM on Friday, finally went to be at about 5:00 AM Saturday, so about 17 hours straight. We took one break for dinner (Mmmmm... BBQ steaks at the cottage), and played hard. Was a great time.

We picked up again about eight hours later, and played another ten or so hours at that session.

[Callum]

74 hours - which was a world record at the time. :smallsmile: We were doing a sponsored marathon session for charity, and were allowed 5 minutes' break in every hour, which could be saved up for longer breaks. We were playing AD&D - the Temple of Elemental Evil.

[Tyndmyr]

3.5, about 14 hours. Nothing special, just for the hell of it. I've probably been close with 7th Sea and D20M.

I know a number of members of my group did D&D for 26 hrs straight, but I had to work. Tragic.

I would totally be down for record setting gaming, though.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I think between 12 and 14 hours I don't remember if we started at 16:00 pm or at 14:00 pm, and we keep playing till 4:00 am.

It was an Eberron campaign (D&D 3.5), I was playing a rogue/ninja spy/swordsage. Pretty cool I recieved extra XP cause I was the only one to escape the infuriated Druid group... (Darkstalker+maxed hide and move silently=WIN...even against Druids :smallsmile:)

Technically I was the first one to fall asleep; but that was because after finishing the session my friends started watching Heroes on the TV and since I didn't like Heroes and was dead tired I just went to sleep.

We were playing at the DM's house.

Man I want to do it again...

[Telonius]

I think it was 14 hours, fighting the final boss of Shackled City. We were around level 20, and the BBEG was also epic-level. Took place in my friend K's living room. My (then-girlfriend, now-wife) fell asleep first, but I'm not sure that counts. She was just there to observe a bunch of geeks in their natural environment. We started around noon, ended somewhere around 2AM when the DM declared himself unfit to roll another die. We finished the fight in the next session.

[Anxe]

D&D camping trip. 4 Days. It was D&D 3.0. It wasn't straight playing, but it was still pretty damn cool. I don't remember much of the session though. Just hanging out with everybody for 4 days was awesome. Now I wanna do it again. I'm gonna suggest it to my boys next session.

For my longest session more within the rules set out here: 5PM Dec 31st - 1PM Jan 1st. 20 hours. It was a New Years party obviously. Some of us took breaks for sleeping, but not everybody did meaning it was a continuous session. I can't remember what campaign of mine we were doing back then, but the system was D&D 3.0.

[Alleran]

what is the longest uninteruppted gaming session you've played in?
what was the occaision?
what system?
who fell asleep first?
when did it start?
when did it end?
where was it?
what were you playing?
In order:

A bit longer than 24 hours.
No real occasion. We just started and went until we decided that we couldn't keep on going.
D&D 3.5e.
We didn't fall asleep. I did go home and fall asleep afterwards, though.
About 11AM.
About lunchtime the next day.
At a friend's house.
We were going through a homebrew campaign.

[true_shinken]

14 hours for me as well. Looks like a common number!
DMing this was very very tiring.

[big teej]

74 hours - which was a world record at the time. :smallsmile: We were doing a sponsored marathon session for charity, and were allowed 5 minutes' break in every hour, which could be saved up for longer breaks. We were playing AD&D - the Temple of Elemental Evil.

how did you arrange for such a charity session?

I would love to set one up ^_^

[Cirrhosis]

there was a time for a few years where my group would meet on saturday around noon and play until sometime between 4AM and 7AM. 18 hour sessions interrupted only to shove food down our throats before resuming were not uncommon. these days we only run 8 or 10 hours on tuesday nights. needless to say, underemployment is and has been rampant in the group.

[panaikhan]

While I was still at school, I was part of two seperate 24-hour sponsored games.
No-one was allowed to sleep, and there were two DM's who swapped every 6 hours.
It was a homebrew campaign, a really wierd one as I remember.
Something about the Great Plate War.

It was D&D1e, and I enjoyed it immensely.

[arguskos]

what is the longest uninteruppted gaming session you've played in?
what was the occaision?
what system?
who fell asleep first?
when did it start?
when did it end?
where was it?
what were you playing?


72 hours.
We had a four-day weekend and nothing better to do with our time.
D&D 3.5
Uh... I don't remember. No one? We were all pretty cogent for that period of time.
Friday, noon.
Monday, noon.
Some dude's house.
Some random story I (as DM) came up with for the occasion.

To this day, I have the fuzziest memories of that day that I do of anything ever. I remember being there, I remember lots of laughter, food/drink being consumed, at least a few guys were on drugs for most of it (one guy was just high, another dude was on a mild trip for part of it), I had to take a cold shower sometime on Sunday to stay awake. The details though, or what the story was about? No idea.

I do recall that we had a ritual where every time someone died, we burned their character sheet and had a moment of quiet remembrance. We had a lot of fire that weekend, since there were a lot of deaths. We also had a support staff of like three people who made the food and were spectators. Don't remember why.

[Telasi]

I ran a 12 hour session of Dark Heresy in the course of a normal campaign. No occasion, just gaming from a bit after noon until about 1:00 AM. All the players remained awake for the duration. I held the session in the lobby of my dorm.

Over the course of the session, the players investigated arms theft from Gunmetal City's shipments. The session culminated in a running battle aboard a land train that ended with an airstrike called in by the players.

[big teej]

While I was still at school, I was part of two seperate 24-hour sponsored games.
No-one was allowed to sleep, and there were two DM's who swapped every 6 hours.
It was a homebrew campaign, a really wierd one as I remember.
Something about the Great Plate War.

It was D&D1e, and I enjoyed it immensely.


again, how did you aquire said sponsors? :smallbiggrin:

I think it'd be really cool if I could get my school sold on a sponsored marathon session fundraiser thingy.

[aquaticrna]

something like 18 hours for me, we started really early one morning on a Saturday (like 8 or 9) because someone had something they had to do at like 1, but then their thing got canceled so we just kept playing until 2 or 3.

A friend of mine was DMing and we played in the common area of his dorm. DnD 3.5, don't remember who fell asleep, i think we eventually just called it because people were losing it

[Dsurion]

Well, I think the longest session I've ever had playing D&D 3.5 was a mere six ours. Not very much on it's own, but we had just come back from a marching band competition.

Woke up at 6:00 A.M.

Ten hours of drill.

Two hours bus ride to the stadium.

Four hour championship competition.

Two hour bus ride back home.

It was like -17 F outside.

Everyone was utterly exhausted, but we were too excited to sleep afterward, so my DM decided we'd play a game to occupy ourselves until someone dropped. No one fell asleep, but we stopped playing when the DM looked at my recliner and thought the green padding was a bunch of mold spores spreading into the air.

[Jinn Master]

Let's see.. 2pm until 10am the next morning. That's what, 20 hours?

It was Exalted- we had a full circle, and had just discovered a flying manse that we were trying to get operational. No one fell asleep, but we were so pumped that after everyone went home for their 8 hours, we got back together. And we played for about 12 hours then. So we played for about 32 hours out of a 48 hour period. IIRC, our Twilight was going back to med school. Sadly, I can't even really remember what we did. I just know it was a hell of a lot of fun.

[Feldarove]

WHen I was in college a friend of mine drove out to visit and DM'd a campaign from about 4pm saturday till 5 am. So only about 13 hrs (not as impressive as the above). It was only 2 players and a DM. We stopped bc both player's characters were dead and the DM started rambling about some crazy reason that we weren't dead and wasn't making any sense. So we just went to bed.

It was 3.5 homebrew campaign.

I was a gnome bard and my buddy was a gnome warrior. The campaign was very silly.

[Causality]

24 hours and 10 minutes. When I was in the navy. We were all senior watchstanders, and we all had a day off. There were 3 players and 1 DM who went the distance, but a couple other PC's were handled by a few different players who came and went over the full duration. I remember it was just over 24 hours because we started just after an early dinner, and we quit the next day so we could go to dinner before the mess closed. We all ate, and then went straight to our racks (that's "bed" for you non-navy types).

[Traveler]

15 hours.

The session wasn't supposed to be special. It just got around to be about 11 at night, there was a group of enemies on the other side of a wall of force and we could have called it done for the night for have the fight right now. We decided to fight, win, call it a night. That single fight lasted from 11 at night to 5 in the morning. For the record, we won but not by much.

AD&D

The first people to sleep were the people who died. I don't remember the order. Only that I died around 3am and didn't sleep. Might have dozed off once in a while though.

It started around 10 in the morning.

Ended around 5 the next morning.

And I don't remember the mod. I don't think I ever knew the mod. Goal, find magic item X that the bad guys have. Got my magic broom out of it thought. Just lost the broom recently to dragon fire.
I need another session like that again.

[Callum]

how did you arrange for such a charity session?

I would love to set one up ^_^
Nothing special, really, we just did it all ourselves. We made some sponsorship forms that showed our chosen charity and had lines for people to fill in with their name, address, and how much they would donate per hour we played. We then took these round our friends and family and got them to sign up. Nowadays you can do this a lot more easily online.

Because we were going for the world record, we also had to have observers who took turns watching us and signing a log book, but they've stopped authorising endurance events these days, so that wouldn't apply.

Then we just arranged a time and a place to play - a room in a local school or college during the holidays is a good option here. You'll need to have access to toilets, obviously, and also some way of getting food and drink. It's important to factor in break time - 5 minutes per hour is a good rule of thumb, and you can save that up for longer breaks by playing through (we saved up an hour once). I wouldn't recommend sleeping, though, even if you save up a long break. Taking a shower (if you have that option) is a much better way of revitalising yourself, or just getting outside and walking around.

Have a plan for what you're going to play, and what to do if a character dies (like having pre-generated replacement characters prepared). It's a good idea to swap GMing duties around at various points, if you can, as running a game is more mentally draining.

If you're thinking of playing for a really long time (two days or more), be prepared for people to start behaving oddly towards the end! Sleep deprivation can do funny things to people. And have a plan for what to do if people want to drop out - obviously you should allow anyone to leave at any time, but perhaps you'll stop the whole thing if you fall below a certain number of players.

Other than that, just remember to have fun!

[big teej]

Nothing special, really, we just did it all ourselves. We made some sponsorship forms that showed our chosen charity and had lines for people to fill in with their name, address, and how much they would donate per hour we played. We then took these round our friends and family and got them to sign up. Nowadays you can do this a lot more easily online.

Because we were going for the world record, we also had to have observers who took turns watching us and signing a log book, but they've stopped authorising endurance events these days, so that wouldn't apply.

Then we just arranged a time and a place to play - a room in a local school or college during the holidays is a good option here. You'll need to have access to toilets, obviously, and also some way of getting food and drink. It's important to factor in break time - 5 minutes per hour is a good rule of thumb, and you can save that up for longer breaks by playing through (we saved up an hour once). I wouldn't recommend sleeping, though, even if you save up a long break. Taking a shower (if you have that option) is a much better way of revitalising yourself, or just getting outside and walking around.

Have a plan for what you're going to play, and what to do if a character dies (like having pre-generated replacement characters prepared). It's a good idea to swap GMing duties around at various points, if you can, as running a game is more mentally draining.

If you're thinking of playing for a really long time (two days or more), be prepared for people to start behaving oddly towards the end! Sleep deprivation can do funny things to people. And have a plan for what to do if people want to drop out - obviously you should allow anyone to leave at any time, but perhaps you'll stop the whole thing if you fall below a certain number of players.

Other than that, just remember to have fun!

are you cool with me essentialy copy-pasting this into an email to my group members?

[Callum]

are you cool with me essentialy copy-pasting this into an email to my group members?
Absolutely. Just let us know how it goes!

[Canarr]

Close to 40 hours, roundabout; started Friday night at 8 and ran until Sunday at around noon. Must have been years ago, when we were all still studying (and much younger); we were 4 or 5 players plus me as the GM. It was at my parents' house, and we played Shadowrun (2nd edition).

There was no real reason for the long run; it was planned as an ordinary game through the night, but everybody had so much fun that we kept adding a few more hours to the game. There were no regular meal breaks, because we had enough junk food to last for a week; but to be fair, the last 8-10 hours, the game pretty much degenerated into sillyness. None of us had slept since Friday morning, and we had filled ourselves to the brim with sugar and caffeine; even I don't remember how that session ended...

[Eldan]

Five, maybe six hours, would be my guess. Back when I still played with an actual RL group, we all had to be home for dinner, or vacate my friend's house around that time. :smalltongue:

[big teej]

Absolutely. Just let us know how it goes!

I sent a message out to the group to gauge interest, if I get enough "cool, lets do it" from the group I'm going to message every player I know about it.

I figure if we can have a rotating player base, teej gets to play the game will last longer.

[nedz]

12-14 hours is fairly routine for my group, since we tend to play long weekends.
An hour or two on the Friday as we turn up; Saturday from 12 to between 2 and 4 am, repeat on the Sunday; and Monday until about 6 pm.
We have done a couple of week long games, where we did this most days of the week. The coolest one was where we hired a castle in wales (albeit only a small keep).

[Tyndmyr]

Nothing special, really, we just did it all ourselves. We made some sponsorship forms that showed our chosen charity and had lines for people to fill in with their name, address, and how much they would donate per hour we played. We then took these round our friends and family and got them to sign up. Nowadays you can do this a lot more easily online.

Because we were going for the world record, we also had to have observers who took turns watching us and signing a log book, but they've stopped authorising endurance events these days, so that wouldn't apply.

Who did it, out of curiosity, Guinness world book of records?

[The Cat Goddess]

Longest gaming session...

Players gathered at noon on Saturday. There were 5 of us, including the GM. The game system was a home-brewed Sci-Fi game based on aspects of Traveller & Other Suns. We'd spent most of the previous weekend building characters, creating backgrounds and getting the party together.

Standard goofing around, finishing lunch, talking about the week, etc.: 2 hours.

Dinner was ordered (pizza delivery) around 9pm. One guy left at 11pm because he had to work the next morning. I left with my Cousin at 3am, because he was my ride and he was afraid of getting too tired to drive.

The last player & the GM continued dealing with political intrigue until the player glanced up and said "hey, is that the sun coming up?" They proceeded to walk to the nearby fast-food place for breakfast, still continuing the game. When my cousin and I arrived at 11am, they were still going... so we quickly got brought up to speed on what our characters would know (and how much the other guy was willing to reveal) and continued.

Around 6pm we quit because the GM "couldn't focus enough to read the dice anymore".

So... 28 hours?

[Wyverian]

My longest session started at 7pm Friday night and ended 6am the next morning, so about 11 hours. My group usually only run from 7pm-12am, that was so long I had actually ran out of material and had to make stuff up. It was my first time ever DMing too, and I had only been given a week to figure out a campaign so I didn't have much experience or story planed at the time. lol

[Etrivar]

This may or may not count, due to its informality, but...

We were on a hiking trip, and the terrain had gotten very familiar, so it was getting a little boring, so we started doing an informal, verbal game of 3.5. it started first thing in the morning when we got up, and ended when we went to bed, and lasted through all the hiking (with some admitted breaks during the really steep climbs). It was a blast, and we all had a lot of fun with it.

We got up at 0500, and went to bed at 2200, so it was a 17 hour session.

[big teej]

one last question about the charity games.

did you have corporate type sponsors? or just run around going "hey will you pledge xxxx to our charity event per hour?"

[Thurbane]

In our younger days, we'd routinely do a Sunday session from around midday to 8pm. Thesedays, sadly, our Monday session usually start around 8pm and finish about midnight...

Longest I can recall is a one off a couple of years back, on a Saturday. We started about 10am, and went through until about 10pm, so around 12 hours. We were having a few beers during that time, so I was a little drunk by the end. Lucky we were getting the train home. :smallbiggrin:

[Callum]

Who did it, out of curiosity, Guinness world book of records?

Yes, it was Guinness, but I believe they've stopped authorising those sorts of endurance events now.


one last question about the charity games.

did you have corporate type sponsors? or just run around going "hey will you pledge xxxx to our charity event per hour?"

We didn't have any corporate sponsors - we just pestered as many people as we could to pledge!

[OrganicGolem]

I once started playing early Saturday (like 9-10 am-ish) and played till 2 pm on Sunday. It was a infinite level sandbox homebrew game, and only the GM kept falling asleep (while we were thinking).
The reason we played so long into the day is because the party had gotten to this tomb of the most powerful mortal in the world who was buried with all his possessions, and getting into it required solving 6 riddles in succession (failing one meant starting over) and on top of solving riddles there had to be a d20 roll of 8+ even if we did get it right.
Needless to say it took hours and hours and hours to get in, but we did it.. and the loots were well worth it.