The most valuable lesson I have learned from Dice, Camera, Action!
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, March 10th, 2018 at 06:03 (7260 Views)
Dice, Camera, Action! is a livestream of D&D's latest storylines run by Dungeon Master extraordinaire Chris Perkins. The show airs every Tuesday at 4 pm PT on the D&D Twitch channel and is also available on YouTube. Chris Perkins is an amazing DM, and the players really bring their characters to life, so check it out if you haven't already!
After more than 80 episodes, the show has served up a number of gems for mass consumption: colorful (if short-lived) NPCs, quirky pets, humorous catchphrases, thrilling cliffhangers, and compelling magic items, all painted against an ever-changing but always epic backdrop. But the one thing that I enjoy the most about the show is the two-hour format.
I have realized that among the many obstacles to gaming in my life, finding 4 consecutive hours on a regular basis to play a tabletop RPG is perhaps the most difficult to overcome. I suspect that the four-hour session arose as the (dare I say) default session length sometime during the live convention days of yore, but how reasonable is this block of time today when tools like Fantasy Grounds allow you to join a game without ever leaving your home? Even the sport of baseball, the king of leisurely pastimes, clocks in at 3 hours. Two hours, on the other hand, is a movie rental. I rent movies; I can do that.
But aside from being more friendly to the temporal constraints of real-life, the two-hour session has other advantages. It forces everyone at the table to play with a purpose and stay sharp for the entire game. Do you really want to spend several minutes debating the merits of sneaking past those ogres instead of trying to kill them? Did the DM really just leave in the middle of the game to drive his wife to work? (Yes, that has happened to me.) How engaged are you during that 4th hour of play? Nothing detracts from the immersion and excitement of a game more than a choppy, plodding pace. I enjoy tabletop RPGs for the shared storytelling experience above all, and if the story is not evolving, I am not having fun.
Along those lines, two-hour sessions allow the plot to unfold in a more thoughtful, fleshed-out manner. The DM has time to digest the latest turn of events and consider how the game world will respond after players (or the dice gods) inevitably derail the game you thought you were running next week. Improvisation can be fun, but a couple hours of that is stressful and challenging for most DMs to pull off. Players likewise have time to ponder their next move if the party finds themselves in the middle of a precarious situation at the end of the session, which I highly recommend.
DCA has totally convinced me of the value of a shorter game session, but what do you think? Is the four-hour session a relic of the past? Do you relish those moments in hour 3 when the conversation at the game table drifts off into utter obscurity? Post your comments below!