Hello everyone.

Our group played this game. A Victorian spy game I called Mycroft's Minions - Sherlock's older, wiser brother running a secret intelligence service in the early 1880's. It was without doubt our group's much loved favourite game.

And after 15 'episodes' of joy - the player's screwed up - big time. The whole organisation faced being crippled if not destroyed. The team pulled the irons from the fire, but one PC would have probably faced dismissal from the service or worse. We stopped playing Mycroft's Minions.

Two years almost to the day we last played it, I ran it again last Sunday. It was a blast! The PC who screwed up last time (since demoted and exiled to Madrid) played an absolute blinder and covered himself in glory.

We all got a real buzz off the game and loved playing the old characters. My only problem now is that I've got to fit new runs of Mycroft's Minions in around our new 2FT saga and various one-shots.

But my worry before the game was that it could have gone wrong and left us feeling deflated - sorry we'd ever tried to recapture the good times.

So - what are your experiences with trying again with campaigns that had ended badly?

Was it a pleasure to play old PCs and visit old haunts, or was it a drab or ghastly experience that pissed on the memory of great games of the past?

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;362608So - what are your experiences with trying again with campaigns that had ended badly?

Was it a pleasure to play old PCs and visit old haunts, or was it a drab or ghastly experience that pissed on the memory of great games of the past?

Welcome, dude.

I've had the occasion to play old PCs of mine again, and it's never actually been a bother. It's always good to come back to familiar surroundings, and if you're sharing the experience with other old-timers, it's even better, because the game's richer for it. The PCs background actually didn't take place in some sort of out-of-game negotiation between the players, but actually was part of the previous game, so there's a feel of authenticity that comes with it.

It's awesome.

I'm going to find out when the current AD&D game ends and we pick up the Giants run-through where we left off (agents of the Drow running the throne in Geoff from the shadows, the party insanely overpowered, etc.)

Perhaps I'll do some threadnecromancy and report back then.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;362608So - what are your experiences with trying again with campaigns that had ended badly?

Was it a pleasure to play old PCs and visit old haunts, or was it a drab or ghastly experience that pissed on the memory of great games of the past?

I tried it once and completely ruined the game that people remembered.  Not gonna lie, it was fucking horrible.  At that point I realized that I'm not the type of person that can get right back into the mindset or theme of what made the game fun in the first place and revisiting those games to try and relive some of the enjoyment would just result in ruin.

Quote from: Kinetic;362718I tried it once and completely ruined the game that people remembered.  Not gonna lie, it was fucking horrible.  At that point I realized that I'm not the type of person that can get right back into the mindset or theme of what made the game fun in the first place and revisiting those games to try and relive some of the enjoyment would just result in ruin.

Maybe you just screwed up this one time, though?
Doesn't mean you'd screw up each and every time you'd attempt it, now, does it?

I've found that most of the time, when I try to revisit an old campaign, it just doesn't end up happening. That said, the ones I think of trying to revisit tend to be the ones that were very successful, not the ones that ended badly.

Welcome to theRPGsite!

RPGPundit

Quote from: Benoist;362720Maybe you just screwed up this one time, though?
Doesn't mean you'd screw up each and every time you'd attempt it, now, does it?

Yeah it could have just been the one time.  Right now I'm running my Savage Worlds-powered Dark Champions game that was hiatus for quite a while and I picked it up like it was nothing, but the big difference is that not as much time had gone by and I hadn't really stopped working on the game in the downtime.  Maybe what I need to do is just keep those threads alive in a notepad or something, jot something down after the close that might be a good way to reintroduce the characters/situations/whatever.  I don't know.  

But that one time...  Man.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;362608Hello everyone.

Our group played this game. A Victorian spy game I called Mycroft's Minions - Sherlock's older, wiser brother running a secret intelligence service in the early 1880's. It was without doubt our group's much loved favourite game.

Outstanding.

Edit: I've never returned to a campaign but I have returned to specific settings. Once a campaign ends - well or badly - it's over but settings..... some places you can't let go.

Regards,
David R

One of the experiences I had with this was an unmitigated disaster. Strangely, that was mostly because of sentimentality on the DM's part.  He handled us with kid gloves, almost afraid to "ruin" our characters' comeback tour.  This disaster peaked after my character (the only one who'd been in the original campaign since the beginning) failed a save and died (thank you, AD&D) a horrible, choking death in a single round.  I remember being stunned and expressing it - at which point the DM took it back, and my character was alive again.  

That was pretty much the end for all of us. Really wrecked that caracter for me, too.  If he'd just died, well, that's the risk characters take when running around in dungeons provoking monsters. At least the character would've gone out with some style. Instead, mostly what I think about is all the previous accomplishments not really meaning anything, because he apparently couldn't have died, anyway. No doubt an unfair characterization, but still...

On the other hand, we re-started another campaign (with mostly new characters) after a near TPK (one character survived) in the 3rd or 4th session. We'd just had so much damn fun getting to the TPK that we didn't want it to end. Embarassingly, I made a character of the same type that I decided was the previous character's brother; I had just wanted to try out a particular archetype so much that I couldn't let it go. That second set of characters ended up developing in a fairly different direction from the first group, and the overall (second) campaign was a resounding success.

So, having said all that, I still think that games can be brought back from the dead, you just have to be careful.  Sometimes you can end up realising that it was the circumstances surrounding the game that made it great, not the content of the game itself.

And on re-reading David R's post and his later edit...

QuoteEdit: I've never returned to a campaign but I have returned to specific settings. Once a campaign ends - well or badly - it's over but settings..... some places you can't let go.

...I think that was one of the major differences between my two examples. One tried to recapture a specific set of circumstances, that other just made use of a great setting.