Campaign friendly, shorter session high fantasy RPG

[kingcheesepants]

As an adult with a full time job, wife and young kid, I don't really have the kind of time I used to for regular 3+ hours a week DnD games. But If I'm in a DnD game shorter than 2.5 hours it feels kinda rushed or incomplete. But a lot of the other games I've played that make for shorter sessions tend to be a handful of games at most before they're done. Do you guys have any recommendations for games that run shorter sessions but can be played weekly for a long campaign?

[gbaji]

I do pretty much agree that ~3hrs is about the shortest you can play a session and feel like you actually got something done (2.5hrs is close enough, though really really short). There's a certain amount of time overhead just starting and stopping a session, so the shorter it is, the less "meat" you get in your game relative to that overhead time (and let's not forget travel time for crazy people who like to play in person).

To be honest though, you should be able to play any long running campaign with shorter sessions if you want. I'm not sure why number of sesssions should matter with regard to length of individual sessions. We've been playing an ongoing campaign setting for decades, and our sessions run in the 3-4 hour length, once per week. If anything, I find that shorter session durations tend to work better with longer campaigns. I would find it very difficult to impossible to run a one-shot adventure in 3 hours, for example. But I can run a very long adventure in 3hr chunks for as many sessions as it takes.

I think it's less about session duration as getting a group of people to commit to a longer term campaign in the first place. Again though, if anything, a shorter session time per week might be a selling point for a long campaign game. I can certainly spend 5-6 hours (or even all day) at a gaming table, once in a while, but not regularly. And this is true of most people, doubly so with work, family, and a host of other social activities/obligations going on.

I'm also not sure if any specific game system works better for this than others. I don't personally find that one RPG takes significantly longer to set up for a session than any others. Not sure though. Some games may function better in terms of slicing up time than others though. Honestly, pretty standard D&D style games should be easy to break up into pieces if needed. I can't really think of any off the top of my head that wouldn't work in this format. Maybe others can?

[kingcheesepants]

The games that I had in mind which can be finished quickly while still not feeling rushed or incomplete are the various 1 page RPGs. If you aren't familiar with them, they're a type of humorous game where you roll some dice to quickly generate a scenario and then run through it with some very simplified (typically a single dice roll) way of adjudicating success or failure. Most of them can be finished in less than 2 hours and they don't really lend themselves to campaigns.

But I guess I was more wondering if something with less crunchy rules like Dungeon World or Cypher system might be played in a shorter time (2 hours or less) while not feeling incomplete or being done after that one (or small handful) of session(s). I know that I've played Blades in the Dark and that can be done pretty quickly. But that one, while fun isn't really the type of classic dungeon crawler setting I'm looking for.

[gbaji]

Ok. Now I'm confused. It seemed from your OP that you were specifically not asking for "short games that can be completed in one short session", but asking for "long campaigns that can be played out over the course of an arbitrarily large number of short sessions". You even seemed to lament that games that worked well in short session format only lasted a few sessions.

It also feels like you are looking for pre-written scenarios rather than game systems? Is that correct? Because, honestly, my best answer would be to pick any RPG system you like, pick a setting (or home brew one), and write your own scenarios, and then just keep playing more of them in the same setting. That's kinda what makes it a campaign. There's a fair bit of overhead to this process, but once you get going, you can do this more or less endlessly.

If you are actually just looking for one-shot games that can be played start to finish in under 3 hours, I don't really have any info for you. I don't tend to play a lot of those (and one the rare occasions I do, it's always someone else running stuff like that, so I have no clue). Honestly? I'm not that huge a fan of short one-shot RPGs like that. It's a lot of work and investment in creating/building characters, to more or less throw them away after a session or two.

I'd personally prefer to play any of a number of boardgames that provide simlar experiences (Talisman, Arkam Horror, etc) or... Order of the Stick! Although, to be fair, I'm not sure those can usually be played in under 3 hours either.

[kingcheesepants]

Sorry for the confusion, I think the way I phrased things wasn't too clear. I meant to say that I like DnD but it doesn't really work because the games take 3+ hours and getting them shorter than that makes things feel rushed or incomplete. I know of some games (mostly 1 page RPGs) that can be done in less time but don't really work well for campaigns. What I would like to find is a game system where the games take 2 hours or less but can be continued week after week.
DnD doesn't really work for that because the individual games are too long and have a hard time being shortened and the 1 page games don't really work cause they can't be continued properly. Perhaps something like Dungeon World would be okay since it's rules are simpler but I'm not sure as I've not played it.

[catagent101]

I do think you're on the right track, in my experience combat does take longer in 5e than in like OSR games in part due to how combat is just simpler, and I have had some pretty satisfying 2 hour or so sessions with this.

A trickier part of it though is that part of it is that characters are more disposable so there is less indecision and people take action more which makes a session more eventful. For a campaign with a consistent cast, maybe just make it so that characters don't die, but they can be captured or sustain serious injuries that take time to recover (a lot of rpgs already do this though I don't think a lot D&D-likes do).

[Vyke]

This is kind of a cop out answer, so please free to take it as such.

I'm not sure the game system matters as much as player mindset.

The truth is.... I don't believe a 2.5 hour session is the same as a 3+ hour one and it isn't going to be. No matter the system.

But that doesn't mean it can't be a good experience or a fulfilling one... just not the same. I think looking at expectations is important.

That said there are definitely things you can look at. You've mentioned 1 page games.... I've not played many but I think Malifaux did quite a few that seemed quite fun ideas. $ed did Dungeon Delves, 3 encounter games with a simple introduction encounter, a complication encounter and a key enemy encounter. And those ideas are absolutely where to start for any planning because they follow a very simple, quite formulaic structure which will help a lot with planning with limited time. And I'm not using formulaic negatively here either.

I think the key things to focus on are:

1) What do players want most? Whatever it is, be it combat, exploration, puzzle solving, whatever, the game needs to be that. Because you don't have the minutes to waste on boring stuff. Ditch random encounters and extended travel times.
2) Make the most of each table minute. People should not be doing at the table what they could do elsewhere. Chatting about work, eating their dinner.... once the game starts it's game time. Same with paperwork. Level up between games. Have the GM send out world building docs between games so they don't have to give that info once the game has started.
3) Keep it simple. The game should take 2.5 hours with a clear, defined goal. Every week. If that means the adventure needs to be wrapped up in 3 encounters, that's what the GM has. It doesn't have to be the campaign or even short term goal. If your goal is to forge Hittystick the Sword of Awesomeness, once session might be clearing out a hobgoblin camp from the mine that has the only metal that will do. The next game is to save Bishop Holyfolk from a demon terrorising their abbey so they can do the ritual to bless the metal. Small incremental goals. You're thinking a TV series rather than a movie. Things should be in a good place at the end of the episode and have moved forwards but with the promise of more to come.
4) Make sure everyone is on board. If you have a player who agonises over every choice every turn.... the wizard is a bad fit or the GM needs to say "you default to Dodge, next...."
5) Accept it for what it is. It's the only game time you've got. It's not your ideal. You can fixate on that or you can throw yourself in to what you've got. And maybe, occasionally, very occasionally you can keep your eye out for the two days a year that you can all put aside the time for a "feature length episode" where you can go to town on a major antagonist or resolve some major goal.

I'd be interested in hearing if there are any systems though for fantasy. By pure chance I'm running a short, 1 shot game of Yellow King tonight but that's very supernatural investigation heavy.