12 hour DnD session!

[Lawless III]

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]

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]

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]

We hit 11 hours once ( though that was for a Warhammer game)

[Kaiyanwang]

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]

My record is 16 hours.

[BigBadBugbear]

Our longest session was 26 hours...

[PersonMan]

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]

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]

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. Ah, good times...

[Kurrel]

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]

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

[Blackfang108]

My group once hit ~12 hours in LFR doing SPEC 1-1. We hadn't finished, either.

[Traveler]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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__]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Chongo longo, those are some long game sessions!

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]

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]

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.

[Seatbelt]

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]

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!! 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...

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


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]

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.