My Worst Game Experience

Looking back through this blog, somehow I don't seem to have ever told this story...

A number of years ago I had a bright idea for a Shadowrun mini-campaign - six sessions (!) to tell a specific story in the vein of "Neuromancer" or some of the other cyberpunk greats. I was actually really proud of it.

So we dug out the Shadowrun 4th Edition books and started creating characters. And went on creating characters. And on. And on. And on.

Eventually, after about five hours we were finally ready to play! Huzzah!

The game rolled on, and into the very first combat, an introduction to the system and the setting, and the inciting event for the story...

Half an hour later and it was time to end the session. And I absolutely refuse to touch Shadowrun ever again.

The fundamental problem we twofold. Firstly, the combat system dragged to the point of being unbearable. Secondly, one of the characters was built so that his optimum approach was to simply ignore the ongoing firefight, walk straight across the room where it was all going on, and just punch out the bad guys - his character was literally unable to be wounded by a gunshot.

I've had some experiences with some sucky game masters, and some experiences with sucky games. I've also made a number of mistakes when gaming, some of which are pretty terrible. But of all my experiences while gaming, this was the absolute nadir.

Six Sessions?

Apparently, the average D&D campaign lasts all of six sessions, which I must say I find absolutely astonishing - even those campaigns of mine that have fizzled have typically lasted a good bit longer than that.

This means a number of things: it easily explains the finding that almost nobody plays at high level (since there's just no time to get there), and it also means that those huge campaign-in-a-book adventures that WotC and Paizo produce are very much more for reading than playing (again, six sessions means that there is just no time).

I do find myself wondering what that would mean for my current group - does that mean we should be aiming for 24 or so sessions (that being the equivalent of 6 'normal' sessions), or should I maybe be pitching for 6 hours of play.

It's certainly an interesting finding.