How long is a Daggerheart campaign in real sessions?

My table has not played a Daggerheart campaign to the end yet, so I cannot give you a neat average. We are partway through a Motherboard campaign, my own version of the campaign frame, and I can tell you how many sessions each finished arc took and what made it run long. It is a small sample, so treat it as one table’s diary and not a rule. If you are planning a short campaign rather than measuring one, I cover that in a separate post on planning a short Daggerheart campaign.

What my table has finished so far

One-shots routinely land in a single night when the players use pregens or I cap character creation. Where those minutes go is in how long a Daggerheart one-shot actually runs.

The prologue of our Motherboard campaign took three sessions with five players at the table. The first night was the city turning, when green embers erupted from the Network towers, fell over the city like snow and burned like acid, and the bots went bad. The second was a siege at a scientist’s lab. The third ended on a rooftop, where the party chose where to go next. They chose Mother, the AI at the centre of the city, and the prologue ended with a level-up and a time jump.

Mother’s first job was a rescue from a remnant called the Collector. I planned it for three sessions, and it took four. The extra night went on a bridge fight I had made deliberately deadly, and on a slow evening of stripping scrap and talking to strangers before the party ever reached the Collector’s lair.

The job after that, a relief run to a besieged university town, was planned for two sessions and took two, because I cut every scene that did not push toward the town. By then two of our players had stepped away and two others had handed their characters to new players, so the table was down to three.

We are still playing, so I do not have a finished campaign with a tidy session total yet. When one ends, I will add the real count here with the date.

What ate sessions

Character creation at the table ate time whenever I skipped the ten-minute class pick. Travel ate nights that I should have covered in a montage. Boss weeks ran long when I built the fight on Battle Points and it turned out much harder than the total said, which is how the Collector’s lair took a whole session on its own. Social scenes wandered when the place had no impulses pushing on the table. The changes in who was playing cost us a night as well, because the new players needed a session to find their feet with characters they had not built.

How a campaign compares to one-shot clocks

A one-shot runs on one clock. A campaign runs on several, and Fear carries over between them. That is why I do not estimate a six-session arc by multiplying one-shot length. Rests, Fear carryover, and the players talking in character all add real nights.

What I would do tonight

Take my counts as “so far” and nothing more. Before session 1, write down the end condition for your first arc. After each arc, add the real session count to your own sticky note, because that number will be more use to you than any average. Planning a short Daggerheart campaign has its own post if you want the end condition in more detail.