So, Judd Karlman how long would you spend making pre-gens?

Because that can, depending again on how you cut it, count as “setting up outside of play.”

In fact, if you put lonely fun — and not just at the table situation creation — into the mix, how does that change it for everyone?

And whose time in setup are we talking about? Just the group at the table? The GM before and after? The scenario writer, when using pre-builts? The designer?

Like, most Danish Freeform Scenarios have fairly light setup. And most of that is more like warmups and workshops to get into character than it is anything about actually setting up a situation. So you’ll usually spend like 30 minutes warming up, then several solid hours in character.

But most of those scenarios took tens to hundreds of hours to write. So there’s still a question there of time into vs time out of.

Or at Krista-Cons, how many hours to the organizers spend making characters, countdown clocks, checking for interactions and crossovers between them, etc? (Or just stealing them out of the Marvel book and calling it a day…)

… though I suppose in that kind of situation the time in is “designer time” which most people won’t count. I shudder to think how many hours Jason murdered doing Night Witches, or Luke on Burning Wheel.