Question about published campaign lengths - how long do they take?

[Answulf]

So for those of you who have finished or gone through a large chunk of a published campaign like Princes of the Apocalypse or Out of the Abyss, about how long has it been taking?

Just trying to gauge what would be typical or average if you played say, weekly 3-hour sessions...

Thanks!

[spite]

How long is a piece of string? It all depends on how long you as a DM run, and how much your players want to diverge, and how much you want to railroad/gloss over long bits.
If you and your players love exploring towns and cities and getting off track at the slightest, they can take ages. We're at almost 30 sessions for Hoard of the Dragon Queen are only two chapters from the end, this is a LONG time. Some people can smash it out in 10ish sessions and be on to the next book. Our out of the Abyss was a bit quicker, and I've had another group do hoard at twice the clip my current one is doing.

What I am saying is, I can't help you answer your question and I shouldn't have replied :P

[Answulf]

Ha ha. Thanks for trying though and letting me know your own experience! I figured it can vary quite a bit, which is why I am hoping to get an idea of what the average would be...

[Zacchaeus]

It took my group about 3 months to get through HotDQ playing about 4 hours more or less every week. But as spite says it depends on how much you gloss over or how much detail you get into. My group likes to hit things with the biggest sticks they can find so anything that slows down that action tends to get glossed over with a few dice rolls.

[rob2e]

I do 4 hour sessions for PotA and this will be our 27th session. I'd say we're about 70% through. And I do my best to "keep things moving". But it really does depend on the players and DM. Every game is different.

Both playing and DMing LMoP was around the 30 hour mark.

[TheSlowestZombie]

I run 3 groups of Princes of the Apocalypse, with 5 players in each one. All seem to strike a pretty good, even balance between roleplay and combat and big tangents or time wasters have been rare. Player experience ranges from complete beginner to long-time veterans.

The longest running group is 70 hours in (around 7 hour sessions) and has 5 of 13 dungeons clear. We've done two side quests: the starting one for level 1-3, and one of the other shorter ones. We're 3/4 done if the party decides to declare things done without clearing every one, but they probably want to clear the whole thing so it's closer to 1/2 done. It's getting increasingly difficult for me to anticipate the pacing for each dungeon though.

The other two groups play weekly for 1.5 hours each. They started later and aren't nearly as far along. I'm specifically trying to push things forward since we have such limited play time and I'm more familiar with the campaign, but even then all three parties seem to keep a similar pace.

I'd look on Reddit or other forums and see what run lengths people report for using the pen and paper versions of the campaigns that interest you. Assume that playing in Fantasy Grounds will shave off a little time (5% maybe) in terms of rules lawyering, math, and setup/breakdown (especially for the 1.5 hour game we plan on a lunch break at work).

[Answulf]

Thanks Zombie, that was very helpful and somewhat close to rob2e's numbers.