
Like any good campaign, start with “Session 0”. If you’re already running an ongoing game, you may be able to skip parts of this, but you may want to make some adjustments based on the advice below to make things work smoothly in the one-hour format. Like any game of Dungeons and Dragons, you’ll need to do some amount of prep work before you play.

Could this be done? Is it practical? What would it really take? What would it cost? Would it be fun? Since reading that post nearly a decade ago, the idea of a one-hour D&D session has haunted my thoughts.

(The archived version of the D&D site is borderline unusable, but Mearls’ post is still accessible via the Web Archive).

I can’t usually dedicate an entire afternoon to playing D&D, and I’m sure many of you fine folks reading this have found yourselves in similar situation where your desire to play dramatically exceeds your capacity to schedule play time.Įarly in the days of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition’s design process, Mike Mearls published a post on WotC’s D&D blog about running a Dungeons and Dragons session in one hour. But my schedule isn’t as flexible as it used to be. I, like many players, look forward to game sessions which can often run 4-6 hours, and that is the amount of play time to which I’ve become accustomed.
