Forum > Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion
Closed-ended campaigns
JimBob:
Over on the thread on rpg.net where we're spruiking the site, Nick expressed better than I've been able to why we might have closed-ended campaigns, and shuffle around from campaign to campaign - which is why we need the gamecircle.org site.
--- Quote ---I think Kyle was referring to X-Files and B5 DVDs. We all know that the X-Files ended. I guess the point is that knowing that it has an end point hasn't stopped people from buying the DVDs
And yet, with RPGs, it seems that stating right from the start that the game will end seems to be an anathema to some.
I'll go back to your example of Buffy, which I think is a good one.
Consider each season to be a campaign. You might describe the end of the season as a "soft" cap, but it could also be a "hard" cap for some players. Afterall, characters in Buffy come and go each season.
In the game circle, there is nothing to stop a game finishing it's "run", and the GM pitching for the next season. Some players will jump on board, and (to continue the analogy) their characters carry over to the next season. Some choose not to. Their characters leave the series - maybe even die in a spectacular season finale! They might even bow out for a season and then come back the next one. Perhaps left to be a GM-controlled NPC. Like Angel going "bad" during Buffy (season 2 or 3, I forget).
The point still remains the same. The game has a break point where players can, if they want, jump off and reconsider their participation. Other players can jump on. Whether you call that a "soft" break or a "hard" break doesn't really matter.
IME, a lot of games don't have any breaks. Except for when the heroic adventurers return to the inn for some healing. But the game goes on immediately afterwards. Great stories have structure - a begining, a middle and an end. Sure, there may be a sequel, but the story still ends somewhere.
Personally, I got enamoured with the idea because I had come from a D&D campaign where some of the players had been playing the same characters for 15 years. And some of the group didn't really like the game, but felt awkward about complaining because they didn't want to be critical of their friends. Here on RPG.net, you'll always get the advice that "no gaming is better than bad gaming"... usually followed by the recommendation to find another group.
So people either stick to their existing group and feel miserable, or dumped their group and feel disloyal. Maybe a better answer is to match players with games on a campaign-by-campaign basis in a guilt free environment. I can turn to my group and say "D&D again? Not for me guys... let me know when you want to pitch something else." The difference is, under the game circle model, my "group" is 20-30 players and if 4-5 of them want to play D&D then there will be at least 20 left over to try something else.
It don't want to get too fluffy here, but it seems to me that there is some interesting thought being developed over roleplaying theory. Places like The Forge are pushing people to rethink the paradigms of how we play our games. But we are not thinking quite so deeply about the organisational dynamics that get us together in the first place. Maybe there are alternative models?
--- End quote ---
Thoughts?
RPGPundit:
I've done both types of campaigns (open and closed), and both work well. Most of my campaigns do have a fixed lifespan, though in some cases it can be a huge length of time, and in many cases I don't particularly announce it. I wrote a blog entry about this once.
As of right now, my games have lifespans as follows:
OD&D campaign: Was to max level (36), and will actually likely end next week. We were going to try to play the immortality quests, but basically everyone is too burnt out on the campaign (after 18 months of weekly gaming) to do it. The "lifespan" of the game was not fixed to a particular game-time or real-time, but to the goal of reaching maximum levels
Traveller: Had a fixed timeline (5 game years) from the start. Currently the game has less that two years to go.
Wilderlands/Forward... To Adventure!: meant to be run as a playtest campaign. Will be played until I'm satisfied that the game is do-able at the campaign level.
Roman Immortal Campaign: has the rather high goal of running from the birth of the roman empire (23 bce) to the end of the western roman empire (476ce). The game is currently in the year 63 ad.
RPGPundit
Paka:
I found that describing a game like a TV show really helped.
For the Riddle of Steel via brutal medieval vampires, The Riddle of Blood mini-campaign (available here for free download; check the files section), I said to my players, "I'd like to give this a shot and see how it goes. If we like the first few games, consider them the pilot episodes, then we'll renew for another season."
And in play, you could really see where the seasons would be cut off. It was fun thinking of a series of games as a set of DVD's and it helped every think about how long the campaign would play on.
Sobek:
I've not run a closed campaign before. A few have had a point where everyone said, "Well, that looks like a wrap," but most just petered out. The latter was rather unsatifying.
My current campaign has a definite end-point, but I think I may have tried to stretch it out too far (30th level).
I'm starting to come of the opinion that it'd be nice to come up with a story I wanted to tell/explore and create characters appropriate to that. Then, run the game, and when it's over, the group can decide whether a sequel or spin-off is in order. In all likelyhood, that'll be my approach to my next campaign. Unless, that is, I decide (or am encouraged) to go pure beer-and-pretzels dungeon delve.
Dr_Avalanche:
I've been drifting more and more towards close-ended campaigns as my experience with open-ended has generally been unsatisfying (though it took a while before I started to see the pattern). At the same time, I don't like the finality of saying "that's it, for next time, make new characters", so I'm quite open to sequels, or new seasons of the tv show if you like that parallell.
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