Shout Out

First thing first, I would never ever have attempted a work lunch D&D game if it wasn’t for my good friend, Dan (The voice of Kinien in our live-play podcast Roll With Advantage). Dan started the lunch time D&D at work as a way to practice DM’ing to prepare for running some sessions at home. I leaped at the idea after Dan was done DM’ing. He proved to me that one hour is more than enough time, you just have to learn how to use that time. Thank you, Dan. It is also important to mention that this one-hour format is able to be used in not just a workplace lunch setting, but where ever you want to use it.

Lunch Sessions from the Player Perspective

When Dan approached me with this lunch game idea, I immediately was skeptical that we could get anything done in an hour. When we are recording Roll with Advantage, we usually have about 10-20 minutes of just “Hey how are you’s” and for an hour long session, that is just too much out of character talk. I was excited though, as I don’t usually get to sit in the player’s seat. “It would be a nice change of pace,” I thought and I was interested in using these as a “proof of concept.”

From the player's perspective, what you can expect is fast play. After a few one hour sessions, you will get proficient at your character and the rules because, if you don't, it runs down the clock. What I like about these one-hour sessions is that I don't have time to think about how I am going to play my character, and instead, I am forced to play my character. What this means is I have learned how to slip into character fast, because there is no “warm up time.” This may not sound ideal, but after you have played like this three or four times, it becomes easy.

Hour Sessions as a DM

The long and short of it, hour long sessions are hard. As a Dungeon Master, one of the hardest things you can do is to try and make a story fit into a one hour block and on top of that make sure that each player has the time to feel like they accomplished something. Because it is difficult, I have learned how to think creatively on the fly and have learned to pace all out of necessity. These tools are fantastic for transferring to a longer session format. I have learned methods that work for me for preparing sessions, again out of necessity. If I, as a DM, am not prepared then it is a wash because there just isn’t enough time to read from your notes or a book. After DM’ing about three one-hour sessions each week for a few weeks, I noticed that when we would record Roll with Advantage, a four-ish hour production each week, we started getting though more and more story each time. It is absolutely fantastic, in my opinion.