#cm22

If we’re talking purely mechanics based gameplay, and I really do mean PURELY mechanics, the player would have to make an attack vs. the AC of the slab, which would delineate into a combat situation. 

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition tried hard to give inanimate objects a whole statline, including their own abilities to use in combat. Things like “Whirling Blade Trap”. Older editions had a hardness table at the very least.

Short answer, a campaign needs to be as long as it needs to be to tell one story completely.

Long answer, a campaign that goes on for long enough will never feel too long, and always wraps up every point right before it ends. 

When I’m planning out a campaign, I always struggle with myself to add less. Give less ideas, focus more on what I have. The more things introduced, the more time I need to spend to complete everything. The more time I spend, the less interesting each concept becomes.

Down to the grit, I think four hours is the perfect session length. That can be four hours total, or four hours of “actual play”, where the players are all intently focused. Once a week. Biweekly games would be ideally six hours, once a month games would be eight.

The four hour mark keeps things from lagging, it breaks up the paces, and it really structures the sessions to feel more “episodic” in that they end with everyone still remembering how they started.

Six hours for bi-weekly to really get the experience of playing a game inside, and telling a “session story” that will last longer in the player’s minds from week to week.

Eight hours for a monthly game, as it’s the only time they get to experience playing a game for the next (roughly) thirty days, and they’ll need big events for each player to really feel hooked.