GM's Chair: Thirteen Hours

I don’t know how some people do it.

Our last session of Dungeons & Dragons ran for 13 gruelling hours. Well, I say gruelling. I actually mean quite pleasant given that I spent it with my partner, my two best friends and our Maine Coon; Eisen.

This was an experiment, a chance to test out a long held theory of mine and an opportunity to make some progress on Princes of the Apocalypse. So what did we do and what did we learn?

Breakfast Theory

I am most productive earlier in the day. Not first thing, it usually takes me about an hour or so to reach running speed on the day, maybe a little longer if I don’t shower, but once I’m there I will keep firing on all cylinders until mid-afternoon. When I get up early I feel good, I feel energised and I can get stuff done. The day feels longer and often I feel like I get more done in it, even if that’s not always true.

I wondered if it was just me, or if everyone was like that?

My partner, for example, is by her own admission; “Not a morning person, now go away.” Yet even she seems a little more sprightly when she gets an early start. Still, I hesitated to suggest one.

It was Ulfang who suggested it in the end.

I was perhaps a little surprised knowing his fondness for lie ins, but we had taken to grabbing breakfast when we were playing Rogue Trader at Tosscobble’s, albeit at 11ish. This seemed to be a logical solution.

There is something wonderful about eating together as a group, but I find it tends to break flow, either due to cooking time or due to passing round somebody’s phone as we all take turns to place our order. Breakfast was an entirely different proposition, with us brewing a strong pot of coffee and teasing Eisen as Eva made pancakes. We got most of our pre-game chatter out of the way by the time we ate at about 10am, and within half an hour, full of bacon-maple pancakes, we were ready to set off.

Everyone was energised and engaged and better focused, including myself, and hours began to fall away as we trekked through the adventure. It helps that they’re a good group, but despite this there were less asides, less rambling on old stories, more roleplaying.

As an unexpected side effect we were also a little more assiduous when it came to looking up rules, usually something I try to discourage, but with the early start had come a lack of time pressure and so I could relax my usual hustle in favour of a nice, gentle game flow.

The only downside was the lack of prep.

I’d not had enough prep time. I know the adventure, but not inside and out, and when the party strayed off course I was a little flustered. Also I was not as energetic as I had been previously, at least for most of the game, picking up towards the end despite a headache that rolled in around 9pm.

All in all though I’d call it a success, plenty of encounters and engaged players throughout. My one note is perhaps to make sure snacks and a dinner are prepared beforehand. We did ok with ordering dinner at 5-6ish without much disruption, but I’d much rather just have something in like stew that we can just pop on the hob and have at our leisure.

Low Energy DMing

As I’ve already mentioned I wasn’t exactly on my A game, though I did improve over time.

The first casualty of this was the more dramatic descriptions I’ve previously spoken of. They’re really nice icing on the cake, but when you’re not feeling your best don’t be worried if you end up defaulting to ‘The Orc attacks, take 8 damage’, as I had to. As a DM or GM you have got lots on your plate to begin with, not every battle needs to feel like Helm’s Deep.

… Although…

About 8.30pm the party finally reached a pitched battle, defending a locale from marauding monsters. Despite the start of a headache I was feeling significantly more energised than earlier in the day and ran it as a narrative battle, with the party members each defending a section.

In this battle I was much improved, still not firing on all cylinders, but energetic enough to have the characters pressed hard and directed by some of the funneling techniques I’d discussed. Hopefully with a little more rest I’ll be able to open with them and see how long I can maintain them for, and how this affects me.

Ending on a Bang

One of the advantages of the early start was we could finish at any point, rather than hitting a limit of fatigue or people’s (self imposed, we’re adults now) curfews. mAs such our pitched battle was the last encounter and an epic way to finish. That said we could have concluded earlier in the day, after any of a number of strong encounters.

What kept us going was the players and their enjoyment of the game, the true barometer of whether we should continue.

The reward was that it granted me time to get them, organically, to a point in the story where they could be rewarded with a truly heroic encounter. Whilst it wasn’t the most dramatic encounter of the day it was memorable and felt epic, and truly what more can you ask for out of a final encounter?

I do wonder however, if they’d have hit it earlier (which was very possible) would I have had the sense to call the session there?

Perhaps next time I will find out.

C’est fin?

If there’s one thing to be said for running a long session it’s that it does wonders for your sleep pattern. Sunday morning I awoke and felt more rested than I had in ages, but at the same time restless. There will be 5 weeks between this session and the next Princes of the Apocalypse day, but it has instilled in me a desire to run more long form stuff for longer and for more people.

If you’ve only ever run sessions for a few hours I heartily recommend giving an all day session a go. It is a lot of effort and logistically difficult, but well worth it.

Until next time, good hunting GMs!