In a perfect world — one where you have as much time as you need to prep for your games, no one in your group ever has scheduling conflicts and you don’t have to worry about gaming getting in the way of work, school or other concerns — how often would you GM games?
Twice a month?
Once a week?
Five nights a week?
Back when I was a clueless GM, I ran a solo AD&D campaign for my best friend at least once a week — and sometimes two or three times in any given week. It was relaxed, stress-free and lots of fun, and while nostalgia certainly plays its part when I look back on those years, I think I’d have to say that’s my ideal: one to three times a week, worry-free.
How about you?
I’d really like to run a game two times a week. I think that gives plenty of game time while still leaving time for planning between sessions and doesn’t feel like too much.
I’d love to GM weekly or more, but the demands of work and family make game prep a bit difficult to scratch out. Twice a month is just about right for me. Plenty of cool-down time between sessions, another player in the group can run a game on the off weeks, without the kind of attention drift that will happen if you put too big of a gap between sessions.
Once a week, for about a six to seven hour session, with a break in the middle.
While we’re on ideals, the group size would be 5-6, depending on how detail-oriented we get. We’d also play in a consistent and dedicated gaming space.
Daily.
Ok, that’s a bit ridiculous. Five days a week, at eight to ten hour stretches, with time for a meal in there. And while we’re dreaming about perfect worlds, I want to be paid to do it as well. But, hell, I’m not greedy. I’d settle for $30k per year.
– Brian
Once a week, alternating between two seperate campaigns.
I may actually get to do this on a bi-weekly basis next year!
Ideally, if I had plenty of prep time and never got writers block… Once a week.
Twice weekly for me. I’d be doing it with my current group if they didn’t have other games and so forth.
One weekly game on a weeknight, with shorter sessions, like 3 hours; and a bi-weekly or monthly saturday game, with 4-5 hours.
One session every other week would rock.
weekly is just fine with me. I run two different games each twice a month. More would make it difficult to plan properly.
Once every two weeks, like we try to do right now. I do a lot of pre-game thinking and prep work, so I need one week to plan it in my head and another to put the critical parts on paper.
Twice a week, or three times if I have two groups. Talking ideals sure makes me sad it’ll never happen, though.
I’d probably love to game twice a week in semi-short (4 to 6 hour) sessions. The more important thing to me is how much you get done in a gaming session. A 3 hour session with lots of stuff going on would be perfect.
Once a week. 4-6 hours with a pizza thrown in for good measure.
And as long as I’m wishing, I’d actually like to play once a week too. Playing in a great campaign always inspires me with my own DMing.
Probably no more than once a week. Nothing quite like game night, near the end of the work week, with its crappy, frozen pizza feasting.
Twice a week, assuming that I’d be running games in different genres.
I wouldn’t mind playing in a weekly game either.
If there were no other considerations on my time, I would GM two games at the same time, running them every other week, playing between 5-6 hours.
I think if I ran a single campaign weekly, I would burn through the story so fast, that I would get bored. By running two games one after the other, I could GM weekly, but slow down both campaigns at the same time.
Based on the responses so far, we as GMs are all over the map. I’m lucky enough to be in a weekly group (although real life often means “weekly” is a misnomer), which is a lot less than the ideal for some folks and more than the ideal for others.
I wonder what the response would be if the same question was put to our players (or, for those GMs playing right now, to your fellow players)?
Weekly is my pick. My favorite games in high school were weekly. Ideally, though, I’d be running one weekly game, and playing in two other weekly games. This happened for about two months when I was in college, and was awesome.
Right now I GM once a week. It’s enough for me. However, my only gripe is that our session is 5 hours which means we really only get about 4 hours of real play time in. A full six hours would be nice.
I currently GM two games. One on a weekly basis and the other is every other week. I do get a break from the weekly game because we rotate GM’s. If I could play and GM more, I would, but life does get in the way.
Beldar
Once a week would be my preferred, but as it stands I usually DM once every 2 weeks.
Weekly simply runs afoul of commitments too frequently to work out for me. Twice a month is my big goal for the current campaign.
Once a week, alternating between an ongoing campaign and a series of one-shots or shorter adventures.
This way I can work at building something large with my players, and feed my need to try new and different games.
I’ve lived the daily dream; my friends and I were otherwise minimally employed and lived within spitting distance so for something that feels like two years we ran numerous games on a daily basis. There was no set GM so play took on a sort of troupe-style. There was also no set game; we picked up where we had left of with whatever game we felt like playing.
Except for the last nine months or so, when I ran a time-travel game that eclipsed all the others to the point we played in exclusively. We went through several years-worth of prep and I burnt out about a month after what I’d intended to be the final scenario. The game was the best I’ve ever run and I’ve often dreamed of reprising the setting for a new group of players.
After my burn out disappointment set in; everyone else wanted to continue with it but I couldn’t bring myself to run it and nobody else wanted to ‘ruin’ it by taking over the GM seat. Disappointment set in, first harsh words and then blows were exchanged. I took the opportunity of a job offer in a distant city and moved away.
These days I might run separate games once a week each. We’re currently planning to have an extra get together once a month. I like 8 hour sessions but we rarely have time. So it’s either 3 or 6 hours instead.
Twice a week would be excellent, as opposed to the current once a week I’m able to do now. On the other hand, having to plan for two sessions a week would reduce the number of one-nighters I’m able to do, which are also fun.