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Today is another quick weekender: Longest Game Session Played. By necessity of age and responsibilities, answers to this question are going to skew heavily towards adolescence and college years, I should think.

For me, the answer is a simple one — I’ve really only done one marathon, back in the misty prehistory of 1983. A bunch of us got together in the summer at my friend John Cochrane’s house, in the late morning, and we played TOP SECRET and DUNGEONS & DRAGONS until the next morning. We took time for eating, and for sleep, but all told it was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 hours of play.

Mostly, though, I keep sessions to a much more reasonable 4-5 hours at most.

Dave Chapman, however, puts my numbers to shame, in his video entry, with special guest Lynne Hardy of Modiphius:

Today’s topic is a quick one (as befits a weekend entry), Longest RPG Campaign.

As a designer, I don’t get a chance to do much long-term playing: Playtests aren’t usually long-term affairs. Plus, in the past couple of years, I haven’t had a local group for recreational RPGing, so I have to go back to my college years for the answer to this one, and, to be honest, depending on how you measure it, I have two answers.

The longest game in actual play sessions was a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign that I ran from the year of it’s release, 1991, until around 1994 or so, with basically weekly play (while school was in session — we took breaks between semesters).

The other longest game was a one-on-one game of James Bond 007, where a friend and I would play once every 6 to 8 weeks with a “new movie” (completely with an original soundtrack, composed by my friend — I’d give him the title of the next “film”, and he’d come up with a title theme, an action sequence theme, and either a sneaking-around or a romance theme). Eventually the time between films got longer, especially after he moved, but we kept it going during visits, making the adventures of Richard Deming, 001, last from around 1992 to around 1996.

So there’s my answer. Or rather, answers. Let’s check in with Dave Chapman, and today’s special guest, Robin D. Laws:

Today’s topic is Favorite RPG Accessory, which, apparently, is supposed to mean “something for RPG use which isn’t the game or its supplements.” Now, I suppose that I could use this entry to expound upon my love of tie-in-fiction (something I love so much I’ve released some for my own games, like Tales of the Far West, for example). Or I could geek out about soundtracks, which I use during play, and some companies have also released for RPG use (Pinnacle did music for Deadlands, for example, and we’ve done for Far West as well). But rather than do that, I think I’ll go with cards.

Back in the 1980s, a small company called Lion Rampant released a product called Whimsy Cards, which were a game play aid that allowed players to affect the story being told through play, by playing cards like “Unexpected Aid” or “Bad Tidings.” It was one of the first products that allowed players to step into the previously-walled-off role of the Game Master, and I loved them. When Lion Rampant evolved into White Wolf, the cards were expanded and rereleased in 1990 as Storypath Cards, coming in two decks: The Path of Intrigue and The Path of Horror, with cards thematically appropriate to those genres.

Sadly, both the Whimsy Cards and the Storypath Cards are long out of print. However, Pinnacle produces something similar: the Adventure Deck, which is sold as part of a two-pack with their Action Deck. The Action Deck is a standard 54-card poker-suite deck with jokers, for use in Savage Worlds‘ card-based initiative system, but The Adventure Deck is a whimsy/storycard-esque deck allowing players to affect the story. Savage Worlds licensees have even released their own Action Decks, thematically appropriate to their published campaigns — and Adamant is no exception — we released a pulp-based Thrilling Tales Adventure Deck, cards from which are illustrated below (click for detail).

So yeah — cards which allow players to affect the story. That’s my favorite RPG Accessory.

It seems that Dave Chapman likes cards as well, as you’ll see in today’s video entry: