Poll: P&P role-players, how long can/should a play session last?

[Schadrach]

Heyas fellow escapists!
So when you & your friends are sitting around the table with books, dice & character sheets how long can the play session last before your attention starts to wander?
If there is combat in the play session, how long can the combat last before you grow tired of it?
Thanks in advance for all your replies!

Depends on the group. Convention slots are usually 4 hours, the last time I ran a Pathfinder campaign we played 6 hour sessions weekly, and I'm in a Shadowrun 5th game that runs 3-4 hour sessions every other week, with resuming said Pathfinder campaign possibly happening in the same time slot on the Shadowrun campaign's off weeks.

 

[Cette]

Four-ish hours of actual playtime with a hour at the start and end for bullshitting and waiting for everyone to actually show up and get their stuff together.

Or alternately until the DM becomes so intoxicated that he falls out of his chair and lays under the table laughing maniacally for 10 minutes and then requires help to get back upright.

How long a combat should last depends entirely on what percentage of it involves suplexing gargoyles into pits.

 

[Naeras]

I had two 15 hour Pathfinder-sessions in a row last weekend. It was.. exhausting. Our DM almost fell apart at the end.

4-6 hours is what I'd prefer tbh. You get stuff done, but you don't die a horrible death from exhaustion like we almost did in those 15-hour sessions.

 

[DoPo]

Played the first session of a Mage: The Awakening (nWoD) story last weekend and of course it's naturally light on combat but what there was flowed surprisingly well and the results seemed appropriate considering we were all minor mages fighting with whatever we had to hand. Really recommend it for the sheer lunacy it can devolve into when you start thinking outside the box with the different Arcana and combinations thereof. You know you win if the guy running the campaign has to reference multiple books every time a player makes an action, not because he's new but because the rules force you to think outside of your comfort zone.

Yeah, I also like a lot of the changes MtAw has. Though, technically, the effect levels are more in line with 1-2ed MtAs, but whatever. I think I personally like Revised MtAs Spheres the best mostly because the effects are REALLY easy to remember. But they also tend to be a bit...broken (aggravated damage at Prime 2, completely flip off physics with Forces 2-3 and so on) but the MtAw Arcana are a lot cleaner. And they do feel like new willworkers facing something bigger than themselves and not have a Son of Ether who can turn a werewolf's fur into silver without much hassle[footnote]not me - I guy I know said he managed to pull it off[/footnote]...or wipe out all Awakened life on the planet[footnote]a different guy I knew shared this one. He said he got bored with the game. Well, he didn't have a starting character but it was his first session. He had been given a Technocrat. In a lab. There had been an accident.[/footnote]

 

[DRTJR]

it depends the usual game that has all five of us there we play pathfinder 3-5 hours, otherwise it's a quick 2-4 session of the Savage world of My Little Pony. neither including leveling.

 

[Little Woodsman]

it depends the usual game that has all five of us there we play pathfinder 3-5 hours, otherwise it's a quick 2-4 session of the Savage world of My Little Pony. neither including leveling.

Aww man, one of my co-players stopped us all in the middle of a play session once and demanded to know "What kind of pony we would want to be". I thought "Cool, Jamie's gonna run an MLP campaign!"...but nothing ever came from it. I expect for the same reason the pokemon campaign she was running died in the water...her wife just doesn't care for those franchises and refuses to play in their worlds.
Really wanted an MLP campaign.....