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What's a reasonable amount of time to spend on an RPG campaign?
Personally, I find RPGs to be at their best when they are reasonably short - somewhere between 5 and 20 hours. Games like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound seem to come to mind. For more open-ended experiences like Fallout New Vegas or Skyrim I find that I generally lose interest after somewhere between 30-50 hours regardless of how addictive the gameplay is.
I haven't played tabletop RPGs so I don't have anything to say about them, but please feel free to chime in with them as well.
Heh, exact opposite for me. The vast majority of my all-time favorite RPGs all take 40-100+ hours to complete (BG1 + 2, Icewind Dale, Arcanum, NWN 1 + 2, SW:TOR, Fallout 1+2+3+NV+4, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, DA:Origins+Inquisition, Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity + Deadfire, Shadowrun: Returns+Boston+Dragonfall+Hong Kong, Divinity: Original Sin + OS2, Mass Effect 1+2+3, Witcher 1+2+3, etc). And even the two I played most recently, Baldur's Gate 3 and Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader, which I thoroughly enjoyed, both took me 100+ hours to complete as well.
Wanting or expecting every RPG to be 40-100+ hours isn't what I would consider "reasonable", but I still greatly prefer them over shorter RPG experiences.
I prefer the 3mo-2yr range, me, depending on whether I get to play once or twice in a week.
How many games do you bounce between during that time range? Are you able to stay engaged with the story and characters over that long of a period?
I play one RPG at a time, but I will probably also be playing action games with my kids and casual games on my phone during that period.
If a game doesn't have a good enough setting and writing to keep me interested for at least a couple months, I just don't play it. Life's too short to end up on the wrong side of Sturgeon's Law.
My current RPG is Enderal, and I've been playing for about six months. I do play shorter RPGs, too, (shout out to Night Stones and Stranded Sails) but I gravitate to ones with more depth and breath.
The sweet spot for me is around 40-50 hours, with the majority of side quests included. Of course, there are exceptions, but in most cases I find there's a wonderful honeymoon period from between 15-30 hours where the narrative is in full gear, you've got a comfortable handle on the main mechanics and everything is flowing along beautifully. After that, its time to wrap-up loose ends and focus on finishing the story.
Interesting question. I don't have a super prescribed length, personally, as long as it continues to be compelling and engaging. For a trite example, I was kind of over The Outer Worlds by the time I finished it (~30h), while I would easily have kept playing Baldurs' Gate 3 if the campaign had somehow kept going (~80h). So the length of both was about right for me, even though the length was very different and the games were different.
5 hours would be far too short for an RPG for me. I certainly don't mind 5 hour games, but I put that length more in the indie/cool concept space than the RPG space.
TTRPGs are such a different beast that I don't think you can directly compare them. A short campaign is still probably dozens of hours, while a long one could be literally thousand(s).
I know wanting 5 hour RPGs is weird, but I think that the reason why I end up noping out of a lot of RPGs - particularly those without particularly engaging combat mechanics - is that they are often padded with what tends to feel like busywork. I'm told that Omori is a masterwork. And it might be, but the length combined with a lost save (Steam didn't sync it for whatever reason) prevented me from ever really 'getting' it.
To each their own! I totally get your point re: busywork -- that's why I was so over the outer worlds.
I think there's open world games like Fallout, Grand Theft Auto and Horizon (Zero Dawn/Forbidden West), which you could postpone the story for side quests as much as you wanted and you'll get bored at some point.
Then there's Pokemon (I haven't play any games past Emerald) and Death Stranding, where it's an open world but they put unlocks (esp. new map area) on the main quest, so you'd just need to get to the levels you wanted (infrastructure built, in case of Death Stranding) and move on with the main quest.
Finally there are railroaded RPG like Shadowrun games (from Harebrained), Trails (I'm playing!), and I haven't played Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate but I'd assume they're in this category, where it's not a true open world game (you can't move to other areas freely or they may be void of content)
Personally, I play most of these games because they are narrative driven, and the story make you wonder what will happen next. The moment their narrative no longer interest me I immediately lose interest. This happen in Horizon Forbidden West (the middle part of the game feels like a filler), and Trails Beyond the Horizon's opening (The story starts picks up in Chapter 2)
As for the time, I suppose my play game in all these games are all about 60-100 hours so I suppose that is what the game studios target for. Like, there are too much times where I finish the game at exactly 60 hours...
I did 200 hours Oblivion run. Perfectly fine by me!
I did 2x 150 hours Witcher 3 runs. Perfectly fine by me!
I did 170 hours run of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Perfectly fine by me!
But it's because how I play those games. I started playing just one big game at a time at 2020. I want to fully enjoy the game and finish it so that I can lay it off, possibly forever.
I can definitely play short RPG games as well, say 20-40 hours. Actually thinbs like Chrono Trigger shouldn't in my opinion be as big as ie. Witcher 3. That kindnof games isn't often suitable to be draged around for long. But there may be exemptions from that.
I hate games that are considered AAA and then the playtime is 10-15 hours, say Mafia. I love the game, it has special place in.my heart (especially tbw original.one from 2002) but I wouldn't buy the new one for full.price. It looks great, story is great, characters are great, but it is just too short. If I buy Horizon Zero Dawn (or better yet, Forbidden West) for similar price, I would be getting five to ten times the playtime and I would get it in the same great story, great graphics, great characters etc.
My comment is theoretical though - playing one game at a time means 3-4 games a year. I have games to play for many years to come.
I completely agree with you on shorter games which is why I look for titles like Hylics.