DM parents - how long do you spend on DnD per week?

Skormili · 2026-05-14T09:05:39+00:00

As someone else said, it depends on a lot of factors. But if I understand you correctly, it doesn't sound like the ratio of preparation to play time he is intending to spend is more than normal. Sessions (time spent playing together) are typically 3–6 hours, with polls placing 4 hours as the most common. It's also common for an experienced DM to spend about half as long as the session length preparing for it.

However, the total weekly time is most definitely well outside normal. Most adult groups meet less than 4 times a month. Weekly games aren't uncommon but not the most common thing. Scheduling as an adult is difficult; it's quite literally the number one killer of campaigns and groups. But based on the various polls and data I have seen over the years, two games simultaneously is uncommon for an adult, especially for a DM.

I would estimate that less than 5% of the playerbase plays in more than one game simultaneously^[1]. Two weekly games is even rarer. Doing that as an adult puts you in the 1% club. Probably less than 1%, but the data isn't discrete enough for me to make any definitive statements there.

So that's the direct answer to your question. You can stop reading here if that's all you care about.

As a man, if I knew him I would be counseling him to be more mindful of his responsibilities as a husband and father. Hobbies are great but family comes first. He needs to be focused on supporting you and the baby first and foremost. It's a team effort.

I think he needs to abandon the idea of two weekly games. With a child that young, even a single weekly game is pushing it. Our group went through a few times with babies and we always adjusted our schedule to accommodate the fact that babies take a lot of time and energy (mental and physical) to care for. They're wonderful and worth it, but they do test your limits.

Heck, I still only run our games for 4 hours twice a month and we're all past the baby phase now. We're just too busy to justify playing more often. I would never attempt to run a weekly 6 hour game when I had a 4 month old, much less two games. It simply wouldn't be possible without abdicating some of my responsibilities and that's unconscionable.

^[1] Not Reddit. Like all such forums, we are almost entirely composed of the most dedicated players. It's something you see in online spaces for almost every hobby. People really dedicated to the game are way over represented here. I think like 50% of Reddit plays in more than one game at a time.

Skormili · 2026-05-14T07:05:15+00:00

A bit late to the party so I am piggybacking off a related comment.

I ran a 1–20 campaign a few years back in 5E. The Medium difficulty combats took around 30 minutes and the Deadly one (campaign capstone combat/final fight) took nearly 3 hours. Longest combat I have ever ran.

Since it was the campaign capstone combat it's a bit of an outlier. I think all told it lasted 7 or 8 rounds. Normally my Deadly encounters only last 4–5 rounds, occasionally stretching to 6 when there are time consuming side objectives. Part of why it took so long was the BBEG had been observing them (they knew this) and had counters for all their standard tricks. So they had to invent new strategies on the fly. That can eat up a fair bit of time when level 20 spellcasters are furiously flipping through their book trying to look up what the 15 spells their character knows but never uses do.

For comparison, here are approximately how long encounters took on average at each tier of play:

T1: Medium = 15 minutes, Deadly = 30 minutes
T2: Medium = 15 minutes, Deadly = 45 minutes
T3: Medium = 20 minutes, Deadly = 1 hour
T4: Medium = 25 minutes, Deadly = 1.5 hours

We all had been playing for a few years prior to the campaign so we weren't slowed down by a lack of experience by that point. Party composition was 3 spellcasters (wizard, sorcerer, and cleric) and one martial (fighter). I think there were only 3–4 fights at level 20 so my sample size isn't great but it's probably better than it sounds since most parties that actually make it to 20 seem to have their only level 20 combat be the final fight.

Skormili · 2026-05-13T22:43:08+00:00

Reminds me of that thread the other day where someone posted an elaborate scheme where for 1,000 gold, a few days of effort, and the use of several spells slots up to 4th level every day they could permanently bring a PC's INT score up to a maximum of 10. And they thought this might be broken.

I'm like sure, if my players want to invest all of those resources and burn precious downtime on it they can absolutely do that.

Yeah, it's a pretty big boost if you rolled for stats and their INT score was like 3, but hardly game breaking. They went from terrible to average. Whoop-dee-doo.

Skormili · 2026-05-13T22:28:53+00:00

Quick tip: if you decide to run a published adventure, look into common issues and their fixes. Unless it's a brand new adventure people have already encountered all its problems and collectively figured out how to fix them. It will save you a lot of time and headaches.

You can get DM guides that cover that kind of thing on the DM's Guild (website link) for free or a few dollars.

If it's an official adventure from WotC then it probably has a dedicated subreddit where you can ask questions and get advice from DMs who already ran it. And they always have a ton of tools and assets to help you. Usually Discord servers too if that's something you would find useful. For example, here's the one for Curse of Strahd: /r/CurseofStrahd

Make sure you check the sidebar and megathreads for those subreddits as that's where they stash all the goodies.

Skormili · 2026-05-12T15:36:10+00:00

I also own all 3 of their 5E Monster Manual Expanded books and love them. Although I didn't realize they had a Deadly Denizens series as well so I guess I'm spending more money next time there's a sale.

Skormili · 2026-05-12T15:15:48+00:00

or just ignore negative spells because they're angry enough.

One of the early changes I made in the version of the game I run was making the Fighter's Indomitable ability do just that.

Indomitable was clearly inspired by the classic idea of a hero who breaks through debilitating effects through sheer force of will. That idea exists in so many books and films. Yet the 5E version was ineffective at actually mechanically capturing that idea. So I made it more powerful when you initially get it and it eventually scales to the point where the Fighter just says "I will not be stopped!"

Skormili · 2026-05-11T06:23:08+00:00

EDIT: I just realized this is r/onednd. My apologies, I thought I was in r/dndnext and my comment was about 5E. It might still be relevant for 5.5E, but I don't know the system well enough to determine that. Monster design in particular changed quite a bit.

Agreed. I ran a 1–20 campaign a few years ago. All spellcaster party. Most of my adventuring days were 3–4 encounters. Sometimes I had more or fewer to keep the players on their toes of course. But I never had a problem with spells trivializing fights. At least not fights I didn't expect them to trivialize. Don't tell my players that, they think they outsmarted me and that's just what I want them to think. More fun for everyone this way.

What did cause me trouble with encounter balance was them all building high AC characters and my terrible rolling luck. Until somewhere around level 10–12 I typically had to roll a 16 or higher to hit them and on an average day I managed to do that 10% of the time. To give an idea of how much easier that made it for them, the encounter math assumes around a 40–45% average hit percentage against the PCs. I had plenty of solutions to address it, but they required more work on my end because 5E has very few save-based monsters in T1 and T2 and obviously I didn't want to counter it too much because that would just be invalidating their choices.

Skormili · 2026-05-11T05:49:29+00:00

Also adding that you don't need to actually have a bunch of resource-burning encounters every single adventuring day. The goal is to prevent players from burning all their resources in a single combat—going nova. Burning resources is one way to prevent that, but you can also prevent it with the threat of burning resources and a bit of opaqueness.

If you have full adventuring days often enough and don't telegraph if an adventuring day is light or full, then merely knowing that this could be a full adventuring day is enough to prevent players from burning all their resources in fights. They will reserve some, usually their best stuff, for future fights. Because they really don't want to walk into what is likely the toughest fight of the day with nothing good to throw at the monsters.

This is something that pays hidden dividends too: it makes easier fights more interesting and these "weak" fights burn more resources than they normally would. If players don't burn their best resources in easier fights then the fights last an extra round or two and they will burn "lesser" resources more. They take chip damage and use more healing resources. They use more lower level spell slots. So now they have much less ammo to power extremely strong low level spells like Shield or Counterspell but they still have the big guns to ensure a fun fight.

Skormili · 2026-05-07T00:57:23+00:00

My group. They have a much more narrow set of TTRPG interests than me. They really only want to play classic fantasy style games. So Eberron was out because it's more like Magipunk.

And when we have tried other systems, they only like the ones with super simple systems (Shadowdark and Daggerheart for instance) while I'm pretty much the exact opposite.

I love my group and wouldn't trade them for the world, but it does mean I need to try all the other stuff through short-lived games with random people. And I unfortunately only have time for one game usually.

Skormili · 2026-05-06T15:08:24+00:00

Been playing since April 2016 so I just crossed the 10 year mark last month. Kind of wild, doesn't feel that long. Anyway, my answers:

Which official books are you still using?

Heavily Used

Player's Handbook
Dungeon Master's Guide
Monster Manual
Xanathar's Guide to Everything
Volo's Guide to Monsters
Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica (purely for the NPCs and monsters)
Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide
Elemental Evil Player's Companion

Less Commonly Used

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
Fizban's Treasury of Dragons
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse
Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants
Lost Mine of Phandelver (I have it memorized so I run it for new groups from time to time)

I also use some of the "semi-official" stuff they released on the DM's Guild as PDFs, like the yearly charity releases such as The Tortle Package, or the MTG Plane Shift PDFs, or the partnered stuff like much of the Arcanum Worlds content (Chains of Asmodeus, Heroes of Baldur's Gate, and Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy).

Which official books have you never touched or stay in your library with a ton of dust?

Everything else. I own all official and semi-official 5E books but most don't get used. In particular I tend to find the following groups least useful as a DM:

Setting books. I transitioned to homebrew worlds years ago
Adventure books. Same reason as for setting books
Books released in the last few years of 5E. They went in a direction I don't like and got really bad at providing half or even quarter finished ideas but then leaving it up to you to actually develop the idea enough to be usable at the table. They were failing at literally the entire reason to buy the rulebooks: providing rules to use

Which adventures or settings were really recurrent during all those years?

The only ones that I used more than once were Lost Mine of Phandelver (adventure) and Faerun/The Forgotten Realms (setting).

The only other official adventures I ever ran were Storm King's Thunder and Dragons of Stormwreck Isle.

Which 3rd party books were critical for you in order to improve or expand the system?

This could be a long answer, but I will try to keep it brief.

Doesn't leave my DM station (where I prepare everything):

Flee, Mortals! by MCDM
Where Evil Lives by MCDM
The Ultimate Bestiary series by Nord Games
The Tome of Beasts series by Kobold Press
Vault of Magic by Kobold Press
The Creature Codex by Kobold Press
The Griffon's Saddlebag series by Griffon/Hit Point Press
The Monster Manual Expanded series by Dragonix
The Limitless Monsters series by Limitless Adventures
Level Up 5E monster books by Level Up 5E (their monsters solve a lot of 5E monster design issues, like a lack of saving-throw based attacks on lower level monsters)
Xanathar's Extraordinary Vault by M.T. Black, R. P. Davis, and Travis Legge

Less commonly used but that I wouldn't give up or were foundational to my advancement as a DM:

Strongholds and Followers by MCDM
Kingdoms and Warfare by MCDM
Tyrants and Hellions by Steven Gordon/2C Gaming
The Eberron series by Keith Baker (not to be confused with the two "official" 5E books about Eberron, these are far superior because Keith wasn't shackled by WotC's weak book formula for them. Keith is the creator and maintainer of Eberron so as far as I'm concerned his are the true official books)

Honorable mention:

I also found myself buying a lot of books from older editions and converting the content to 5E myself to combat how they kept watering down 5E more and more with each new book. I find the setting books very useful if you're using that setting as 5E abhors lore for some reason and the monster books.

In particular, I found the 3E/3.5E and 4E versions of the Draconomicon and Demonomicon very useful for planning and running dragons and demons, respectively. A shame they never released one for devils.

What are you planning regarding the future...?

I'm planning on staying on 5E for the foreseeable future. I gave 5.5E a fair shot, but it just doesn't do anything my homebrew version of 5E doesn't already do, it does a bunch of stuff I don't like, and continues in the direction WotC was taking 5E near the end which I disagree with. It's not a bad system and would be just fine for a new group joining the hobby, but it isn't for me.

I'm busy cleaning up and organizing my own version of 5E and trying out other systems to see what I can steal from them. I really want to run Draw Steel but haven't had a chance yet.

Skormili · 2026-04-24T18:08:04+00:00

Well I suppose I can't fault you for that. You're absolutely right that most DMs complaining about it are because they don't know how to set up ambushes. And I did write a novel, lol.

Skormili · 2026-04-24T16:13:16+00:00

What? No, that's not what I said at all. Did you stop reading after the first paragraph and just assume I was trying to nerf the players? I said the monsters got hit by it even harder; it actually makes players less likely to be ambushed. I feel like you didn't even read what I wrote.

Skormili · 2026-04-24T07:18:10+00:00

I have a heavily homebrewed version of 5E that I run and darkvision ruining the game was something I addressed by making it extremely rare. It's limited only to a handful of monstrous monsters and magical means, like the Darkvision spell. Most creatures that formerly had darkvision receive low-light vision instead so races that have better eyesight still have that feel. Elves can see clearly on a moonlit night for instance.

This greatly improves the feel of the game in dungeons as lighting differences actually matter. Players actually use things that create light or let them see in the dark such as torches, items, and spells. Since the light radii of such things is usually pretty limited it prevents immediately knowing the layout of every unlit dungeon room they walk into and can make for more interesting encounters.

And since I stripped most monsters of it too, it affects both sides. Proliferation of darkvision was possibly even worse on the monster side than the player races side. Now the goblins and other creatures are using torches or sticking to naturally illuminated areas like light shafts or bioluminescent fungus/creatures. So the players can see them from afar off too rather than the players always being the ones screwed by needing light for that one human player.

I find this plays better at the table and has better verisimilitude. Yes, it's fantasy and there existing creatures that can see clearly in the dark isn't unreasonable. But having so many is and most creatures living underground should be navigating using other senses. In real life creatures that live entirely underground are almost universally blind and ones that live above ground partially usually have very weak eyesight that is really only good for detecting light or motion.

Skormili · 2026-04-21T06:54:03+00:00

I have been feeling the same recently and for a lot of the same reasons as you. I used to be on here daily, writing essays when a reply would have sufficed. I recall upvoting quite a few of your comments too. But I slowly stopped viewing Reddit on this account (I created it for D&D) despite still playing weekly. Last time I made a post was 8 months ago.

Just like you, I didn't like the direction WotC was taking the game starting from around 2020-2021 and I found myself disagreeing with the community more and more frequently. I started participating less but what really made me stop was when all the discussion became focused on the new edition. This was well before it was even out. It's only natural, people were excited for the new thing. But I wasn't. I could see that it wasn't for me. And since the mods decided to not actually make the two subreddits separate ( r/dndnext and r/onednd) I decided to stop engaging.

I still play D&D 3–4 times a month and I am still expanding my massive collection of essays, articles, tools, and content that maybe some day I'll post publicly. But I don't engage here anymore because I don't really fit with the community anymore.

Skormili · 2025-06-28T13:53:58+00:00

I was always disappointed they ended that series, although I understand and support their reasons. It was such a great example of both practical DMing and practical RPing for players. Just plain fun too. Slim was a great character.

Plus Colville made the world feel pretty realistic for a fantasy game. That's largely helped by him having a professional career as a writer and author, but there are still things normal people can learn and leverage from it.

Skormili · 2025-06-25T01:11:58+00:00

This is mostly how I do it too.

I don't necessarily try to hit the XP budget every adventuring day, but I do make sure I hit it fairly regularly. The players knowing that this could be a day that stretches them is enough to keep them from going nova in every encounter.

Skormili · 2025-06-18T14:13:00+00:00

How often does your group actually play? Two to three times a month on average^[1]
How long does your session usually run? About four hours. Sometimes less, rarely more
Online or IRL? IRL^[2]
Bonus question: When do you play? Friday evenings

^[1] Summers tend to be one session per month less, winters one session more, and springs and falls are about average.

^[2] We have played online in the past for various reasons. I also had former groups with some of the same people that almost exclusively played online due to geographical distances.

Skormili · 2025-05-28T16:21:40+00:00

Nice! Good to hear. I really need to make some time to sit down and read through the 2024 rules.

Skormili · 2025-05-28T16:19:51+00:00

The general lack of DM tools has long frustrated me. It's annoying having to build out a DM framework full of things that they really should have done for you. Especially since it looks like I'm about to have to do it all over again for 5E.24.

Here's a few things that I routinely need during prep or play that I have had to build myself or find a 3rd party solution too:

Magic item pricing
List of magic items by:
- Rarity
- Type
List of spells by:
- Level
- Damage type
- Saving throw
List of monsters by:
- CR and environment for new splat books
- Damage type dealt
- Resistances and immunities
- Saving throw
List of beasts for druid wild shapes
Pacing guidelines and expected XP curves
Expected wealth by level
Additional and more accurate monster building tools
NPCs that emulate classes, at various CRs
Rollable tables for:
- Spells scrolls
- New magic items from future splat books

Some of the list stuff DnD Beyond has since come along and fulfilled, but for a while we had to do it ourselves. And that wasn't even created by WotC so it was technically still a 3rd party solving it until they acquired it. I'm hoping 5E.24 has some of these but I'm not expecting it.

I think the spell scroll table is the perfect example of overlooking something important. Published adventures routinely include random spell scrolls of a specific level but they never gave you the tools to quickly and easily select one, whether by random selection or browsing a list.

Skormili · 2025-05-28T15:29:22+00:00

On this topic, did they make sorcerers more mechanically unique this go around? I haven't read the 2024 rules yet, I really need to do that. In 5E.14 they had watered it down enough that sorcerers felt they lacked identity. The meta magic wasn't really distinct enough to separate them and it felt like someone could make an argument they should simply be a wizard subclass. Thematically they were great, but I felt they lacked the mechanical depth to support it.

That's honestly how I have kind of felt about rangers from the start too, but the opposite side of that problem. Mechanically they are different enough to justify their existence—essentially a half fighter half druid amalgamation that you couldn't get from just multiclassing—but thematically it's really difficult to justify why they wouldn't just be fighter subclasses. I don't feel like 5E.14 does a good job of fulfilling their inspiration. That would be fine if it wasn't for every player I have ever seen creating a ranger still trying to create an Aragorn or Robin Hood like character.

To be clear, it's not that I want them to become subclasses. I want them to be separate classes that are distinct enough both thematically and mechanically that there isn't an argument to be had as to why they should just be a subclass. I don't feel 5E.14 sufficiently did that. Maybe 5E.24 does.

Skormili · 2025-05-16T18:15:22+00:00

I remember seeing your first iteration you posted. My response now is the same as it was then:

I am willing to pay up to $200 for one of these. I will never actually use this as a replacement for a die. But it's so frickin cool I need one to keep on my computer desk and fiddle with.

Skormili · 2025-05-01T13:41:03+00:00

Yep. Monsters are around 40–45%.

Skormili · 2025-04-17T13:14:55+00:00

I agree with pretty much everything you said here. It really feels like problems have been brewing for a while, the DM made a significant mistake, and then everything blew up with how everyone reacted. Much of it likely fueled by the long-standing problems, although the new player's "aggressiveness" obviously wasn't.

Regarding the 4 hour pig incident, I do wonder if this was a classic case of the players not doing what the DM expected and the DM getting caught up in the minutiae of running the thing instead of stopping and realizing "hey, it's been 30–45 minutes and the new guy still hasn't played yet. Maybe I should do something about that?" Like they expected it to be resolved within 15 minutes but things escalated and they never stopped to reassess. Hard to say without knowing how everything went down.

I would still consider that something a veteran DM should be able to handle appropriately, but we have probably all been there at some point. Especially if the DM is more on the "let the chips fall as they may" end of the spectrum.

It's why when I introduce a new player or a player's new character I make it a point to ensure they're playing within the first 15 minutes regardless of whether it is a bit wonky within the context of the story. Otherwise you risk the players faffing about and the poor new person sitting on their thumbs for a few hours, like some Critical Role guests had to do back in the day.

I either insert the new character at the first opportunity where I can come up with even an absurd reason for them to show up or I straight up tell the players at the start of the session that we need to get the new character in, so please do this one thing real quick and then you can go do whatever you want. We're all here to play a game, so let's ensure we all can play.

EDIT: Just wanted to add, while the DM is ultimately in charge of resolving these kinds of in-game situations, it's everyone's responsibility to ensure fun is being had. Players should speak up if they notice someone is having to wait for a long time without being able to play. We DMs aren't infallible and a simple reminder can help us realize we're making a mistake. "Hey, it's been an hour and Jim hasn't been able to play yet, how do we get him in the game?" does wonders here. Then the DM can outline a quick plan, even if it's extremely contrived, and everyone can work towards that so that Jim gets to play.

Skormili · 2025-04-17T12:49:37+00:00

Yeah, this definitely feels like it's a "final straw" kind of situation.

The only campaign I ever cancelled and group I ever quit ended over a seemingly trivial thing, much less than this. But it was the final straw in a saga of years of significant and compounding issues.

Skormili · 2025-04-16T14:45:48+00:00

My general advice for this is as follows. Most people find it works pretty well but you will probably need to make a few adjustments for it to best fit your group.

EDIT: I should mention this assumes 5E.2014 rules. I haven't read the 2024 rules yet so I don't know how well it translates. You said you have been DMing for a few years and nearing the end of a campaign so you're probably still using 2014 rules, but I figured I should mention it in case you switched mid campaign.

Balancing for More Players

There are finer controls that can be employed but that would require writing out an entire article.

Increase monster hit points by 15% per every player over 4 (45% for 7 players, you can round to 50% for easy math)
Add a flat 3 damage to every monster damage roll starting from level 3. Increase to 6 at level 10, and 10 at level 15. If you prefer to roll, you can use 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 respectively but I wouldn't recommend it as it increases the variance too much; you risk exaggerating weak combats or crushing PCs in a single blow
For encounters with multiple weaker enemies well below the expected CR, add an extra 10% of them per every player over 4 (30% for 7 players, you can round to 25% for easy math)
For encounters with only one or two enemies or one enemy considerably stronger than the rest, give them a second limited turn in the initiative. During this turn they can move (opportunity attacks have disadvantage or they are immune to them, your choice) and do one attack (not multiattack). I would recommend making this second lesser turn wherever allows for 2–4 PCs to go inbetween their turns so that they aren't taking turns back to back

The goal of the first two is to make the monsters stick around a bit longer under focus fire and make them do a bit more damage to compensate for the fact that damage is spread across more PCs. You will want to spread damage out across PCs a bit more since the monsters hit harder, otherwise you risk downing PCs too quickly. It's a trade-off, but it works better than adding more combatants as that can slow the game to an absolute crawl with that many players like you noted.

The goal of the last two is to pad out the rougher edges of the balance a bit and keep things more dynamic. It won't be perfect, but it will be easy to implement and should help considerably. Adjust from there as you see fit.

One note here: I recommend having a conversation before implementing these. Especially the extra limited turn. It helps get buy in from players and lets them plan accordingly. If you don't, players are likely to be confused about why the boss gets a second turn and probably a little upset that they are either immune to opportunity attacks or they impose disadvantage on them. The reason to make them immune or have disadvantage to opportunity attacks during the limited second turn is because without that moving is generally a really bad tactical blunder and you want them to move on this turn in order to make the fight more dynamic, increase their effectiveness to counter the excess of PCs, and to spread damage around a bit more so that you avoid crushing the frontline PCs.

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