The Five Session Hump
Something I’ve noticed: it takes about five sessions to get a campaign going. That means five sessions, in a row, with everybody showing up, meeting at your weekly time.
This plays out across multiple levels.
Logistically, five sessions are enough that they’re starting to become a habit, an assumed default rather than an exception to carve out for. After five sessions, if somebody misses a session or you have to cancel, you aren’t at risk of the whole thing collapsing. (Five weeks is also about how long it takes to confirm a flake, and for self-aware potential flakes to realize they maybe shouldn’t commit.)
Mechanically, five sessions in is about when everybody’s learned all the rules, which dice to roll, and how their spells work. After five sessions, players start getting sneaky with their tactics, the wizards take the weird spells, and everyone starts getting excited about (rather than dreading) the next level-up.
Narratively, five sessions are the point where everybody’s characters start to solidify, and when everyone’s gotten familiar with the GM’s world. After five sessions, players want to start exploring the next new area, and GMs can start adding in new NPCs, factions, and paths forward.
And socially, five sessions are about how long it takes to start becoming real friends, when you start talking about stuff outside the game, when you invite each other to other events. After five sessions, D&D becomes a chance to hang out and socialize with people you like and care about, not merely just strictly game-time. It’s great!
With strangers, I think it takes an extra couple sessions over the hump; with players you’ve already played with, it takes maybe a session or two less. My sense is that for online games, it takes about double this time. For open tables and West Marches-style, where you’ve got players regularly moving in and out, I’ve found it takes about five weeks for it to sink into players’ heads that the game is happening. Then, it takes each individual player about five sessions to realize that they actually really enjoy this game and want to keep playing.
Of my campaigns that died early, nearly all were before the hump. Of my campaigns that worked, I started feeling much more confident (or much less, after some key realizations) in them—both in- and out-of-game—after those first five sessions.