When you hear the word 'campaign', what comes to mind? How long do you think a 'campaign' should last? Is it based on number of levels? Number of sessions? External time limits (college semester, tour of duty, etc.,)? Story arc? Or is a 'campaign' a timeless thing, lasting as long as it lasts?
For me, it's the latter. When I hear 'campaign' I think of a gaming group that lasts as long as it lasts. The roll call of players may change over time but the character world, story lines and plots are long lasting. My longest campaigns in D&d was six years. The longest Gamma World campaign (3rd edition with HEAVY house rules) lasted 3.5 years.
What does it mean for you?
Until we're bored with it. Somewhere between three and a hundred and seventeen sessions. Usually around eight.
A year at the minimum, preferably longer, in terms of weekly sessions.
Yes, a CAMPAIGN for me is something that lasts a minimum of six months of weekly play; anything shorter than that is, at best, a "mini-campaign".
RPGPundit
6 mo. to a year of about-weekly play. Our longest campaign was about 50 sessons, though claims are being made about beating that with our current campaign. We established our original yardstick for campaign length during university at 8 mo. or about the length of the school year.
I tend to think of something as a mini-campaign, and not just a rushed campaign or a campaign that fizzled out, when it's less than 10 sessions but more than 4, and has a beginning, middle and end within those.
For me, "campaign" is usually something without a definite duration, you know, it lasts while it lasts. Shorter than a few (4-6) months, maybe a story, or yeah, a "mini" thing (not to be confused with a "minis" thing), or an adventure. In my mind, a campaign is generally open ended.
For my group about 10 months seems to be the norm.
Depends who's talking.
With me GMing, it means 6-18 weekly sessions.
I talk to my best gamer friend, it means 5+ years of fortnightly sessions (not meant to be that long, it's just that the PCs have absolutely no direction and a munchkined-out PC keeps killing the NPCs who are meant to help them along in the plot).
I talk to others who say "oh wow I really want to play/GM you tell me the time and place and I'll be there!" or "I want to play but it must be Game X at Time Y and my place over here in the sticks," and it means exactly zero sessions.
So it depends who's talking.
I did a survey a while back on rpg.net and the most common (not average, but most common) campaign length, not including zero or one-session fizzles, was about 8 sessions. Usually after around that many sessions they'd completed an adventure and wanted something new, or the group imploded, or some player drifted away, or the GM lost interest, or whatever.
[I went a-googling for the survey but it seems rpg.net has deleted lots of old rpg discussion threads.]
Personally, I consider a campaign to be a series of sessions run by a single group (obviously, some variation in membership and attendance will be present), each picking up where the previous one ended, its length typically measured in half-years or years, occuring in a single "setting", with the same DM (with some rare exceptions). It may or may not undergo hiatuses, for example when the group plays another game (or another campaign), possibly with a different DM.
For specific examples, one campaign I'm playing in has been running for some two and a half years now on a fortnightly/triweekly basis, and it's the sole campaign being played by that group. Another group has me and another guy alternating in DM duties, with both of us running our own, separate campaign for a few months, then playing in the other.
I've always taken it as a particular GM's game with some commonality of players that lasts as long as it lasts, usually theoretically open-ended but often ending for real world time commitment reasons.
I've come to think there's something to story arcs or chapters or mini-campaigns, whatever you want to call them. Even keeping the same world and overall plot as GM, being realistic about commitments lets both the players and GM reach some milestone, without counting on the years' long campaign of legend.
Ideally? I'd still be playing it in the home.
Rather than spam up the forum with a short but related thread, I'm going to gatecrash poor Tetsubo's.
How many "generations" of characters have you had out of the one campaign?
I've only ever gone to second-gen, using 3E. The new characters were employees of the privateering company established by the original, high-level PCs.
Quote from: Hairfoot;319613How many "generations" of characters have you had out of the one campaign?
I've run a son-of-a-hero campaign and, maybe more interesting, I've re-run the same campaign with the same character. Then run his son. All were fun and interesting.
Quote from: Halfjack;319395Until we're bored with it.
This and I'll add: or until it dies because the players aren't around anymore. Could be a few months. Could be a good number of years. It does mean playing at least once a month, and with a regular schedule.
For me, 3 months weekly play (10-12 sessions) is the divide between mini-campaign and campaign, unless there is a metaplot system resolved in less (IE: BE - complete the phase, and it's a campaign, even if only 6 sessions; if you take a second phase, it's still only one campaign.)
Mini-campaign is at least 3 sessions.
I mostly understand "campaign" in terms of referential in time and space. That is, it's a succession of games taking place in the same setting or multiverse on the same in-game time line/time frame. A break in the cast of the game (i.e. a TPK, the retirement of an entire group of characters, etc) generally leads to a new part of the Campaign, but it's still the same campaign, because it takes place in the same world, and what the previous players/characters did actually exists, will exist or existed in the same multiverse and/or time frame.
I know it's rather nebulous, as a definition.
Quote from: Benoist;319643I know it's rather nebulous, as a definition.
This threadbreak is sponsored by the word "nebulous", one of my favorite words ever.
Now back to your regularly scheduled thread...