Hey all,

So, who's running or playing in an extended campaign (no, I'm not going to define what I mean by that)? How's it going? Does your group generally do extended stuff? Any thoughts on what makes them work (or not) and helps keep them fresh?

We've just finished 527 in the Great Pendragon Campaign (the wiki is here), which is some of the best gaming of my entire gaming career. In part it's great because of the depth now of character history and player engagement. It's not of course open-ended, it's Arthurian myth and it'll end with the death of Arthur, but it's long enough that in many senses it might as well be.

Anyway, extended campaigns, who's in them and how's it going?

Envious. I've wanted to run the GPC since it came out.

I'm currently in the middle of the third year of a Cthulhu Myths campaign which started as a series of one-shots, but eventually grew into an ongoing thing. I'm currently leading the players up to the Stock Market Crash, which coincides with the final stages of a war between a cult devoted to Nyarlothotep and the Yezidic Cult of the Caananite god Moloch, both attempting to bring forth a physical incarnation of their deity, usher in the apocalypse, yadda yadda.

I've got an irregular Tribe 8 sandbox game that's been going on for two years.

Three sessions into the Enemy Within campaign for a new group. This will be maybe the fifth time I've gone through it. Thus, tweaking it to add in more Skaven and Fimir.

I count my Loudwater campaign as extended - http://frloudwater.blogspot.co.uk/ - started April 2011, it's fortnightly, it's had 46 sessions so far with #47 on Tuesday. It's intended as a 5-6 year 4e D&D campaign centred around the Forgotten Realms town of Loudwater, going from 1st level to 30th over something in the region of 120 3-4 hour game sessions. It's also intended to cover 30 game-world years, and hopefully some Pendragon style dynastic stuff will develop, though the 30-year period was chosen so that everyone can potentially keep their PCs throughout the campaign. It's a mix of regular D&D dungeon-delving with politics, nation-building, probably warfare, etc.
I'm finding that some of FR's usual flaws such as the uber-NPCs work really well for this game; I can GM for 30 levels in the same campaign world, and even same area, and not run out of threats. No need to move the campaign to the Planes etc as the PCs get to high level, though at least short jaunts outside the local area are expected. The impossibly high level NPCs who are so annoying in most games work fine here, because the players can reasonably expect to be their peers and superiors one day.

We can never seem to get a long-term campaign going.  We only meet twice a month and I usually GameMaster.  My attention drifts into other areas and I guess I suffer from gamer ADD.  I always start with the best intentions, but I always seem to wander.

Quote from: TristramEvans;671866Envious. I've wanted to run the GPC since it came out.

I'm currently in the middle of the third year of a Cthulhu Myths campaign which started as a series of one-shots, but eventually grew into an ongoing thing. I'm currently leading the players up to the Stock Market Crash, which coincides with the final stages of a war between a cult devoted to Nyarlothotep and the Yezidic Cult of the Caananite god Moloch, both attempting to bring forth a physical incarnation of their deity, usher in the apocalypse, yadda yadda.

I've got an irregular Tribe 8 sandbox game that's been going on for two years.

Three sessions into the Enemy Within campaign for a new group. This will be maybe the fifth time I've gone through it. Thus, tweaking it to add in more Skaven and Fimir.

Two years of Tribe 8 makes me very jealous!

Twice I started a Tribe 8 game and never got past the third session.

Love that setting.

Quote from: Bill;671942Two years of Tribe 8 makes me very jealous!

Twice I started a Tribe 8 game and never got past the third session.

Love that setting

As do I, and it took me a long time to find players. I think the luck I've had in BC with certain games I could never find a group for before has to do with stumbling upon a large number of girls who role playing. My Tribe 8 group is 3 girls  (gf being one), my Cthulhu group is 2 guys and 2 girls, and we're trying to convince the girl who GMs our Vampire game to join us in Warhammèr.

Alas, in BC, I've also been completely unable to find anyone for a supers game, which was always a constant for me up until this point.

Currently playing in a home-brew high fantasy world that's been going on for about 30 years, fairly steadily (if slowly). Started off as D&D (not the absence of an A at the front), converted to Hero maybe 20 years ago.

We've also got a Top Secret game that's been going on about as long, under a couple of gamemasters, in the same settings (if not the same characters). It's very on again/off again, though.

There is no secret formula to "keeping them fresh," I don't think. Pay attention, make note of things that cause reactions from the players (in character or not), and use it in future sessions.

One trick I learned from the GM who ran a 10+ year C&S campaign (and most of the Top Secret campaign) was eliciting playing contributiosn to the setting. He didn't keep a lot of records on anything. He'd make of point of making sure the players knew that if we wanted something to still matter in the future, we had to keep track of it. Relieved him of a lot of burden, and we're competitive enough between players that we keep each other honest. I've never really mastered that trick well.

He also had a tendency (which I have largely mastered) is to listen in on player discussion of what's going on (especially useful in Top Secret), and let them give me ideas. I find I can run Top Secret by coming up with some bizzarre event to throw down in front of the characters, without any idea of what's going on myself, and let them try to figure it out. Things are always "fresh" when you've got five or six other people tossing ideas out at random.

Been running my current campaign for about a year and a half - mostly online, some in person, and a con session.  I've lost track of how many sessions, unfortunately - we try to play weekly, but sometimes we miss a week, and other times we double up.  I do know we've had over seventy different characters and about sixty different players come through the campaign so far (it's an open table, essentially).

Of course, this is going by the earlier definition of campaign, ie "whenever I run this setting, with everything affecting everything else", as opposed to the later definition of "same group of players most of the time" etc.

I ran a 2.5 year "Apocalypse High school" game set in a far-future aftermath world. It was epic, and I really need to finish off that thread I was doing...

I'm currently running a "Ghost Stories" game that's sort-of-kind based on Scooby-Doo where the characters are insurance investigators for an AIG clone, but with actual ghosts. I've been running that since February, so it's only about 5 months old, but we've done a lot of good gaming.

I like longer games -- I think they give a better sense of character and world and give everything time to develop into something really excellent. I'll think about what helps make these things work, and I'd say that -- for me -- prep helps. I spend a decent amount of time each week preparing for the game, and that means our time is well spent and I'm on top of my game.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: D-503;671863Hey all,

So, who's running or playing in an extended campaign (no, I'm not going to define what I mean by that)? How's it going? Does your group generally do extended stuff? Any thoughts on what makes them work (or not) and helps keep them fresh?

We've just finished 527 in the Great Pendragon Campaign (the wiki is here), which is some of the best gaming of my entire gaming career. In part it's great because of the depth now of character history and player engagement. It's not of course open-ended, it's Arthurian myth and it'll end with the death of Arthur, but it's long enough that in many senses it might as well be.

Anyway, extended campaigns, who's in them and how's it going?

Reposted from earlier...

Well, I can speak to this to some level. My two live groups play every three and every four weeks. We're older now.
The Older of the two of them was a weekly session for about 6 years first, before it went into once a month mode. The younger one started bi-weekly and went to every three weeks after a few years
Sessions are normally 5-7 hours.

The youngsters, the Igbarian Campaign, started in 2003, just passed the 10 year mark. We're up to 114 sessions in that one.
The Older group, the Mistonians, started in 1995, and this one counts as my longest. As mentioned, they played a lot more early on, but family and corporate life are realities. Just short of 260 sessions in 18 years, as there have been a number of hiatuses. And they still have 2 of the original characters.

They play in the same campaign setting, though far apart. The Setting and system started in the end of 83. This is germane, since they use the same system, and it was developed and adjusted to accommodate this.

I don't want to pull too far away from the OP, but I had run a few longer class based games, and the power ramp up and issues made it less fun after a point. I also wanted to have a game where skills other than combat had more of an equal say. I also like grittier, deadlier games. Miston allows each player to control 1-2 characters, but they have lost some 11 PCs. Igbar has lost more like 20.

SO the first thing is that IO don't believe most systems have it in them to go long term.  A granular, small growth, gritty game can go longer because of the slowness of growth.

Heavy social gaming makes it go longer, in that the PCs can't just adventure, they have to have a real reason to adventure, investing themselves in their setting.  The GM must make sure the details of each session get woven into the setting notes, so that everything matters.

One of the players in my online fantasy campaign mentioned recently that it had been going for 5 years.

5 years?!  It's never that long!  I mean, ok, when the campaign began I'd not even started going out with the woman to whom I am now married, and we've gone through 3 separate 'editions' of the homebrew system I'm using but still, I mean...

Well, damn.

I'm running Rise of the Runelords, and had no idea how long it would be. I kinda thought we could knock it out over the summer.  As it turns out, we may not finish chapter 2, and we've only missed one week.

My current regular campaigns are both still relatively young, they're each about 2 years old.  The longest campaign I ever ran went for about 10 years.  I've had quite a few go for 5 or 6.

RPGPundit

Well it is funny
A good amount of people have old settings
But old continuous campaigns is a different kettle of fish

But....often, old settings help make detailed, thus sometimes more compelling campaigns.

We find that campaigns only REALLY start to profoundly take on a life of their own, with deep immersion and very real characters and NPCs after at least a year or two of regular play.