GM GUIDES · ARCHIVIST RESEARCH
One-Shots vs. Campaigns
30.6% of Archivist campaigns are one-shots. Compared to a continuing campaign’s first session, a one-shot builds more of the world, more NPCs, locations, and factions, and is more likely to happen on a weekend.
Published September 17, 2026 · 8 min read
By Greg H. & Greg W., co-founders of Archivist
← Back to GM GuidesThe Short Version
- 30.6% of D&D campaigns never make it past their first session.
- One-shots lean on D&D 5e even harder than ongoing campaigns do.
- A one-shot’s single session ends up with more NPCs, locations, and factions than a continuing campaign has by session two.
- We suspected a one-shot would run longer. It doesn’t: the two are effectively the same length.
- One-shots skew toward the weekend more than a continuing campaign’s session one does.
What Percentage of D&D Campaigns Are One-Shots?
30.6% of D&D campaigns in the Archivist archive are one-shots: they log exactly one session and never return for a second. 69.4% come back at least once, and among those, the typical campaign runs 6 sessions. That gap, between session one and session two, is what the rest of this page measures.
For the full campaign-length curve, from one session to fifty-plus, see Campaign Lifespan in The Data Behind D&D.
What We Consider a One-Shot
We can’t tell why any single one-shot didn’t come back: a module built to run once and a group that scattered after a scheduling conflict look identical in the data. Instead of guessing intent, we set a cutoff. A session counts as a one-shot here only once it’s sat alone for 90 days, about eight times Archivist’s own 11-day average gap between sessions (see How Often Do TTRPG Groups Play in the parent report). Every comparison below matches that single session against session one specifically of a campaign that continued, not its later sessions or lifetime average.
Does the System Predict Whether a Campaign Continues?
We suspected one-shots would skew away from D&D 5e, not toward it: a one-off game is where a group tries something new, homebrew, an unfamiliar system, before committing to it for the long haul. That’s not what happens.
SYSTEM MIX: ONE-SHOT VS. CONTINUING SESSION ONE
Untagged campaigns default to D&D 5e in our data, the same caveat that applies to every system-mix figure in The Data Behind D&D. Delta is the one-shot share minus the continuing share, in percentage points.
D&D 5e makes up 72.4% of one-shot sessions and only 55.7% of campaigns that continued, a 16.7-point gap in the direction nobody guesses. D&D 2024 and Pathfinder 2e both point the other way, holding 15.5% and 7.8% of continuing session ones against 7.8% and 3.4% of one-shots. Homebrew breaks that pattern too: it runs higher among one-shots (5.2%) than continuing campaigns (2.2%), on a base thin enough that one table either way would move it.
Some of 5e’s lead is bookkeeping, not table choice. Archivist’s own create-campaign form pre-fills D&D 5e before a GM types anything, and a GM who deliberately keeps it submits the same record as one who never opens the dropdown. There is no field anywhere that tells the two apart.
Do One-Shots Have Different Group Sizes Than Longer Campaigns?
Pickup games have a reputation for drawing a bigger, looser group than a standing campaign’s core party. The data doesn’t back that up: the mean one-shot runs 4.5 people including the GM, against 4.6 for a continuing campaign’s session one. Cast size doesn’t predict which one is which.
Both sit well under the parent report’s 5.5 mean for a campaign’s full run, since tables add players after night one instead of showing up full. It’s not a backfill artifact either: session-one cast size holds flat whether the campaign went on for 2 sessions or 50.
Mean cast size, GM included, counting every seat with a speaking part in that session.
Does a One-Shot GM Build a Smaller World?
A one-shot has no next week to lean on, so every NPC, location, and faction the story needs has to exist by the final scene. A continuing campaign can build that out slower, across two sessions instead of one. Every category ends up higher for the one-shot.
COMPENDIUM SIZE, ONE-SHOT VS. BEFORE SESSION TWO
Median NPCs, locations, factions, and items. These are medians, not sums: a one-shot's number is its full total, a continuing campaign's is everything logged before its second session began.
Anonymized and aggregated. Individual campaign data is never shared.
Does a One-Shot Run Longer or Shorter?
A one-shot has no session two to spread its story across, so the obvious guess is that it runs longer. It doesn’t. The median one-shot runs 2 hr 46 min, against 2 hr 48 min for a continuing campaign’s session one, a two-minute gap. Length comes from transcript timestamps, and most sessions never get a full Cast Analysis pass, so this combines two sources: a Cast Analysis timing read where one exists, and a lighter duration-only backfill (same transcript timestamps, no full analysis) everywhere else. Sessions under 15 minutes or with fewer than 20 timestamped utterances are excluded either way, matching the parent report’s rule.
MEDIAN SESSION LENGTH
One-shot: n=89 sessions with usable timestamps (5 from Cast Analysis, 84 from the duration-only backfill). Continuing: n=776 (59 Cast Analysis, 717 backfill).
Are One-Shots a Weekend Thing?
A pickup one-shot is a lower-commitment plan than a standing weekly game, which points toward more of them landing on whatever weekend happens to be free rather than a group’s usual slot. That holds up: one-shots run on a Saturday or Sunday noticeably more often than a continuing campaign’s session one does.
WEEKEND VS. WEEKDAY
Discord voice sessions only, dated by when the session was recorded. Audio uploads are excluded, the same restriction the parent report uses, because the file date can still be the upload day until the GM corrects it.
52.1% of one-shots land on a Saturday or Sunday, against 40% of continuing campaigns’ session ones. One-shots really are more of a weekend thing.
Methodology and Questions
What counts as a one-shot in this data?
A campaign that logged exactly one session and never logged a second, with that one session at least 90 days old as of the snapshot date. The cutoff matters: a campaign whose only session happened three weeks ago just hasn't had time for session two yet. We can't read intent from the data either, so a module built to run once and a campaign that stopped cold end up in the same group here.
How is this different from the campaign-lifespan numbers in The Data Behind D&D?
The parent report gives the one-shot rate (30.6%) and excludes one-shots from everything else, the same way this page excludes them from its own comparisons. This page picks up where that exclusion starts. It asks what a one-shot's single session actually looked like, measured against session one specifically of a campaign that kept going.
Can you tell in session one whether a campaign will continue?
Not from any single signal we found. Cast size and session length are both close to a tie (mean cast size 4.5 against 4.6, median length 2 hr 46 min against 2 hr 48 min), and a one-shot session builds if anything more of a world than a continuing campaign has logged by the time session two starts. System choice moves the needle (D&D 5e runs 72.4% of one-shots against 55.7% of continuing campaigns), but not by enough to call it a predictor on its own.
Does Archivist share individual campaign or session data?
No. Everything here is anonymized and aggregated, the same policy as every Archivist data report. We do not publish campaign counts, user counts, or anything that would identify a table.
Can I cite these figures or request a breakdown?
Yes. Suggested citation: Archivist, "One-Shots vs. Campaigns," September 2026, myarchivist.ai. For a cut we haven't published, email contact@myarchivist.ai.
Questions, Commentary, and Citing This Data
Every figure on this page comes from one database snapshot taken on August 28, 2026. If you are writing about the hobby and want a cut we have not published, ask. We can run it.
One population note: 30.6% is the parent report’s published rate across every account. The system, cast size, and world-building comparisons are restricted to accounts past their free trial, on top of the 90-day maturity cutoff described above. A fresh trial signup is dominated by a single test session that was never going to become a real campaign, and including those would measure “did this person finish evaluating the product” rather than what a one-shot actually looks like. The restriction moved one finding: cast size, which looked meaningfully smaller for one-shots on the full account base, is close to a tie once trial accounts are excluded. System mix and world-building barely moved either way. Day of week is the one exception: it is not restricted to non-trial accounts, since a trial signup’s test session still happened on a real calendar day, and dropping the restriction is what makes that comparison big enough to publish.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTARY
Email contact@myarchivist.ai with methodology questions, corrections, or a request for a specific breakdown. Journalists and researchers can pull logos, screenshots and background from the Archivist press kit.
CITING THESE FIGURES
Quote and republish anything here with attribution and a link back. Suggested citation: Archivist, “One-Shots vs. Campaigns,” September 2026, myarchivist.ai.
Find Out What Your Table Looks Like
Record your next session with Archivist and see your own session length, cast balance, and GM talk share, whether it turns into a one-shot or a fifty-session campaign.
Archivist data is anonymized and aggregated. Individual campaign data is never shared or attributed. External statistics are cited with source and methodology notes.