There is no correct answer, but there is a common one. In a 2019 Sly Flourish poll of 1,816 D&D players, 38% played about once a week and 17% more often than that. Another 24% played about twice a month, and 21% monthly or less. Polls like this reach the most engaged fans, so read them as the keen end of the hobby rather than the average.
How often matters less than whether you can keep it up. Pick the rhythm your table can hold for months, not the one it wishes it could.
Weekly
Weekly is the classic rhythm, and it has real advantages. Players remember what happened last time, the story keeps its momentum, and the game becomes a fixed point that people plan the rest of their week around. Josh Spies compares it, in a guide for Dice Dragons, to the episodic rhythm of a TV series. A missed session only costs a week.
The costs land mostly on the GM. A session a week means prep every week, and the same guide warns that playing too often can lead to burnout, for DMs as well as players. Weekly works best with shorter sessions. In another Sly Flourish poll, of 2,152 people in 2021, 89% said their games ran two to four hours, and a three-hour weeknight is far easier to sustain than a five-hour one.
Every other week
Every other week is a common compromise for adult groups with jobs, families and other hobbies, and about a quarter of the Sly Flourish poll played at roughly that rate. It halves the scheduling conflicts and gives the GM two weeks to prepare.
Gryphon Harvard's account of six years of remote D&D describes a group that began weekly, playing with whoever showed up. That stopped working once the story became tied to particular characters. They switched to every two weeks, at first as a temporary measure, because it was more manageable for most of the group. They finished the campaign.
The catch is that one missed session means a month between games, so recaps start to matter and so does protecting the slot. And say "every other week" in your group chat rather than "biweekly", which some people read as twice a week.
Monthly
Monthly is the easiest to schedule and the hardest to keep alive. It suits busy adults and long sessions, but the gaps are long enough that players forget names, plot threads and even their own spells. One cancellation turns a month into two.
It can work well with structure. In a D&D Beyond thread on scheduling, a DM who had run monthly games for working adults for years described the rules that kept them going: a fixed weeknight each month, 7 to 10pm, holiday dates agreed months in advance, and board games instead of a cancellation when too few could come. They reported 10 or 11 sessions a year.
If monthly is what your table can manage, lean into it:
- Plan shorter arcs that finish in a few sessions, so the story never has to survive a year of gaps.
- Open every game with a recap, from the GM or a player who volunteers.
- Play longer, so each session moves the story on noticeably.
- Book the next date before everyone leaves the table.
Fixed or flexible
The bigger decision is not how often but whether the slot is fixed. In a 2022 EN World poll, 72% of 83 voters played on a set schedule, such as every Saturday, every other Sunday or the third Friday of the month. Only 5% played whenever they could get enough people together.
A fixed slot means people plan around it, and nobody has to run a poll every time. A floating date bends around busy lives, but every session costs a round of scheduling first. If your group can agree on a fixed slot at any frequency, take it.
Choosing yours
- Start with the GM's prep time. If you can prepare a good session every two weeks, do not promise one every week.
- Plan around the busiest player's normal week, not their best one. The rhythm has to survive an ordinary month.
- Count the hours, not just the sessions. Three hours every week comes to about 13 hours a month. Four hours every other week is about nine.
- Give one person the calendar. Dice Dragons suggests the DM or a reliable player takes on scheduling, so dates do not fall through the cracks.
- Review it after two or three months. A rhythm you keep beats a faster one you keep cancelling.
Whatever you choose, agree it out loud when the group forms. It sets expectations for everyone, including the player who joins later.
Cadence in Roll Call
In Roll Call, the GM sets a campaign's cadence in weeks or months: weekly, every two weeks, monthly and so on. Weekly is the most often a campaign can meet. The Priority setting covers the fixed or flexible question. Schedule keeps the rhythm of your start date, with a session every cadence even when some players cannot make a given week. Attendance offers every week on or after the cadence, so a session can land later than the cadence when a later date suits the party better. It changes nothing on a weekly cadence, which already offers every week.