Quote from: Abyssal MawWRONG! Players are not playing to witness anyones portrayal of "fully realized and engaging NPCs." The value is in having met that NPC person at all. Whether the guy is fully realized or engaging or just bland doesn't make much of a difference-- gaming is not fine wine. Players need to know NPCs as resources first.

I don't think so AM. "Engaging NPCs" and "NPCs as resources" are not mutually exclusive. In your own actual play thread you wrote about an encounter between a lich who was a prisoner and a showdown with a fallen angel - npcs who I assume your players found engaging and were also resources. The fact is part of what makes a memorable campaign or setting, are the npcs players encounter. The evil villain, the priest who helps the party at great personal cost...the list is endless.  

QuoteOk, I don't normally correct spelling, but in this case, I feel I should because we may be talking about two different things. "Flimsy" not "filmsy". Flimsy as in "disposable". Not "filmsy" as in.. "like a .. film?" Hopefully we were actually talking about the same thing

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We are talking about the same thing. It was a spelling mistake on my part.

QuoteIn any case... I'm not talking about duration of a campaign in the past tense here. I'm talking about duration in the present tense. If you know a campaign will still be going on every week for the next year, players will have their characters act differently than if they know it's over with at the end of the evening. The difference is investment

I suppose this is your experience. My players act the way how they think their charcters would act...or react as is the case.  

QuoteAnd the whole thing about apathy is the reason for this exact post.

I don't know...you seem to think that short term play means apathy, it doesn't.
 

QuoteI have never had my campaign suffer from player apathy. I am not unique, either. Most long-term campaign GMs are like me. Our campaigns run for months and years. Our players show up on time or early, character sheets in hand. When we start a new campaign, we often have to turn away people.  There's a lady near me who had a several-years-long Fudge Deryni campaign that was so overcrowded, you could only join it if you played an existing NPC.

So you like long term campaigns. There are advantages to long term play just as there are advantages to short term play. I don't think apathy is one of them. If you are making disposable stories, charcaters etc you are doing something wrong, because to me disposable means the experience was disposable and believe me, long term campaigns can be disposable. Like I said earlier, the experience not the possible duration is what is valuable to players, or at least to my players.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: rcsampleI'm not sure I would have the time for weekly play also...Jeff, since you play biweekly?, how long do you play for?

Two and half to three hours or so.  It depends on when everyone shows up, but I make it a point to end at 10pm.  I run in the middle of the week and my group all have dayjobs, except for the guy on the night shift who gets Wednesday's off.

For my latest campaign I have taken to sending out a group email on the Wednesdays we don't meet.  The contents of the emails have varied widely so far, but the basic point is to keep the campaign and its ongoing issues fresh in the minds of the players.

Quote from: Abyssal MawBalbinus: My first suggestion is "three-hour sessions, arranged weekly, same time, same place".

Weekly is important. Anything longer than that and you will lose continuity.

I totally agree, and I regret it's no longer possible for me to do that. I'm reduced to monthly.

Re. campaign structure, I'd go even further and say that the ideal campaign is open-ended. No "story arc," where that term means pre-planned beginning, middle and end. An open-ended model can also accommodate changes in group personnel more easily. If one player drops out, fine, replace him--his PC wasn't the keystone to anything to begin with. The road goes ever on.

jrients= AHAH!, I just take that as more evidence that 1 week is the sweet spot for continuity.

DavidR= I never said "mutually exclusive". I said "as resources first." The engaging stuff is important, but it should be a secondary concern. NPCs are only important in so much as they directly relate to the players at the table. You can have a completely bland NPC that sells swords or tends the Inn, and as long as the PCs are interested in buying swords or getting clues at the Inn-- theyre going to keep going back to that guy again and again. That NPC will naturally develop and become engaging and interesting. But you don't need to run the guys astrological chart and choose his favorite color before play begins.

Maybe thats a good point for another post.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI totally agree, and I regret it's no longer possible for me to do that. I'm reduced to monthly.

Re. campaign structure, I'd go even further and say that the ideal campaign is open-ended. No "story arc," where that term means pre-planned beginning, middle and end. An open-ended model can also accommodate changes in group personnel more easily. If one player drops out, fine, replace him--his PC wasn't the keystone to anything to begin with. The road goes ever on.

Pierce: ABSOLUTELY open ended. I didn't know there was any other way to do it, really.

Quote from: Abyssal Mawjrients= AHAH!, I just take that as more evidence that 1 week is the sweet spot for continuity.

For continuity, yes.  For the mental health and marital peace of this DM, no.

Quote from: Abyssal MawEric Wujcik wrote a wonderful essay on this, entitled "Love your Character" (or something similar to that).

Hey, I wonder if you could dig that up. I've been thinking about writing an argument for the opposite, "Hate your character". Seriously.

Anyway, I broadly appreciate the points in favor of long-term play but I'm not ready to dismiss short-term either.

Quote from: Abyssal MawDavidR= I never said "mutually exclusive". I said "as resources first." The engaging stuff is important, but it should be a secondary concern. NPCs are only important in so much as they directly relate to the players at the table. You can have a completely bland NPC that sells swords or tends the Inn, and as long as the PCs are interested in buying swords or getting clues at the Inn-- theyre going to keep going back to that guy again and again. That NPC will naturally develop and become engaging and interesting. But you don't need to run the guys astrological chart and choose his favorite color before play begins.

Of course but this is not dependent on long term or short term play. As a GM you put in as much detail into the NPC in question depending on his/her role in the campaign. Some are more detailed than others, right?

QuoteMaybe thats a good point for another post.

Another rpg thread is always a good thing.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Abyssal MawPierce: ABSOLUTELY open ended. I didn't know there was any other way to do it, really.

Oh but there is, there is. Even Pundy does the story arc thing, IIRC.

An extreme case: Our 2300AD game, in which I'm a player not the GM, is scheduled to last three sessions, period. It's very interesting to me because for 25 years I used to be the open-ended type.

I'd call it the Mountain Witch paradigm. Everyone knows exactly how long the game will last, and that transforms the play experience. Pacing becomes self-conscious and highly structured as opposed to free-wheeling. You wouldn't *dream* of wandering off the map. Not because it's verboten but because it's inappropriate.

It's not railroading, strictly speaking. Railroading happens when there's a vast countryside left and right which you somehow can't reach because the GM doesn't permit it. But here, as in the Mountain Witch, the rail is all there is.

Quote from: Elliot WilenHey, I wonder if you could dig that up. I've been thinking about writing an argument for the opposite, "Hate your character". Seriously.

Anyway, I broadly appreciate the points in favor of long-term play but I'm not ready to dismiss short-term either.

I seem to recall it being in the Amber book. But hey, we have Eric Wujcik right here at ye olde RPGsite. Maybe he'll repost it.

Quote from: C.W.RichesonBoth long term and short term games have a variety of advantages and disadvantages.  Two things make me gravitate more towards short term games.

1. People are always getting new jobs, moving, having kids, and otherwise undergoing change such that it's tough to keep a group of five or so people together through a lengthy campaign.  Shorter games eliminate this problem.

2. Shorter games mean I get to play a greater variety of games.  This is very valuable to me and I love learning a new game and sharing it with my friends.

I'd agree with these.  I tend to play bi-weekly games with roughly 5-hour sessions, but we pretty commonly have periods when we do one-shots or short adventures.  I'd add two more for me:

3.  There is more room for a wider variety of characters since you don't have to assemble a group of PCs who will work together for years and years.  They don't have to be a "party".  So you can have a mystery scenario where one of the PCs is the murderer and one of the PCs is the victim's widow, for example.  One of my Buffy con scenarios had a Slayer split into two halves of her personality -- it wouldn't work as an ongoing episode because one player would clearly be the real half -- but as a con scenario it worked great.  

4. One-shots are good for meeting new people, rather than having the same faces all the time.  It can be really difficult to bring new people into an established campaign.  I've met a lot of new gamers through various one-shot games in my area, including some who joined my local group.  

I would agree that the characters and settings and plot are not as deeply developed as in a campaign game.  However, deeply-developed stuff isn't the sole criteria of role-playing.

Quote from: jhkimI would agree that the characters and settings and plot are not as deeply developed as in a campaign game.  However, deeply-developed stuff isn't the sole criteria of role-playing.

Like I said, roleplaying isn't fine wine. But i do think that the viability of roleplaying as a hobby is directly tied to regular play.

People (here and elsewhere) constantly seem to struggle against the question why D&D rules in an unchallenged way. They chalk it up to evil marketing theories and conspiracies.
 
You can argue against this long form campaign idea if you like, or argue for your favored form if you like...

but I'm suggesting this right here is one of the reasons D&D dominates as it does.

Quote from: Abyssal MawI seem to recall it being in the Amber book. But hey, we have Eric Wujcik right here at ye olde RPGsite. Maybe he'll repost it.

Thanks, I have Amber, but haven't looked at it closely yet. I'll look for it there.

My schedule says to me, it says, "You can game riiiiiiiiiight...NOW!  GO!  FAST!  C'MON C'MON C'MON GO GO GO G- oh, you're done."

So I place more value on complete, one- or two-session bursts, because I can actually finish them.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!My schedule says to me, it says, "You can game riiiiiiiiiight...NOW!  GO!  FAST!  C'MON C'MON C'MON GO GO GO G- oh, you're done."

So I place more value on complete, one- or two-session bursts, because I can actually finish them.

Same here but our preference is both cake and eating: we have continuity of setting and characters (both PC and NPC) but currently play in an episodic fashion that gets a story out of the way in one evening.