Have you ever spent weeks (or longer) and a fortune getting ready for a new campaign, gotten so psyched you felt like a kid before Christmas only to have the whole thing collapse? Tell us your story, I bet most of us can relate and feel your pain.
I could relate many but I'll take first pitch with a brief but memorable one for sure.
I rarely, I mean RARELY get to play, Im always the GM.. so when a new guy in a nearby town offered to run a CoC campaign I was stoked. We talked about it over a few lunches, got together and made up characters and then sat down one evening to set everything up. (Background info, how the characters met etc.) It was particularly exciting to me as not only had I not been a player for many years but hadn't taken part in a game with more than 1 or 2 players in almost as long. We had 5 in the group and I couldn't wait to get started!
In the interim wait till launch night I wrote up an extensive history of my character (Think inquisitive spooky old professor type) I was permitted to begin the game with a bit of experience (as I was by far the oldest player there and had the most gaming experience) so I conjured up a few Lovecrafting tales of my exploits and sent them around. Some of the other did something similar. And then...
The GM passed away. Yeah, I wish it were just a CoC type story but it aint. The guy DIED! Massive coronary at the age of 41.
Thankfully he had no family (typical 40 y/o virgin type) and had plenty of health issues to explain it but it was still a tragedy. We didn't know him that well but went to the funeral, met his extended family etc. We did all the right things but I wont lie, I found myself thinking.. "SERIOUSLY!" most of the time.
There was a half-hearted attempt to keep the game going, we were even given his notes and stuff by his sister but we just couldn't do it. Strange but true.
OMG I have plenty of these...
[edit]
I had a big long post... and I realize that the more I wrote about these aborted games, mostly due to players not "getting it" it made me irritated. Fortunately I kept all the notes for these campaigns that I intend on revisiting later...
Yep, Ive got some notes from a few of those.... hanging on for ..oh Damn! Like 30 years in some cases! Laugh
I have an Amber game I can't get off the ground. Players intimidated by the freedom, time commitments etc. it's not a great story so I won't bore with the details. I am still hopeful.
But most games crash on take off. A buddy of mine said long ago, 'a campagin can run for three sessions, first one everyone make charcters so everyone is excited, second one, first game, everyone excited to try out their dudes, third one you have to hook them (and the players have to hook the DM) otherwise they will flake out and you will never play again.'
I have entire quite a few detailed worlds, cultures, long detailed histories, adventures, magic systems, planes of weirdness, etc, which have never seen the light of play, generally due to doing other things and not having time to devote to a regular play group, etc. None of them would I call "greatest campaign ever", because they d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ haven't had the opportunity to get played and find out how great they'd be.
Quote from: rgrove0172;919308Yep, Ive got some notes from a few of those.... hanging on for ..oh Damn! Like 30 years in some cases! Laugh
Hahaha pretty much, yeah.
I had a summer where we played every week, and every week we played a new system.
Quote from: Headless;919333I had a summer where we played every week, and every week we played a new system.
Were you sitting in with me?:-)
(I'm just the WORST system hopper, historically--cured now [fingers crossed]).
As a gamer who's also in the GM role about 95% of the time, I have gotten all fired-up about launching into something new many, many times, to no avail. I'll talk to the potential players and everybody nods and says,"Yes! Sounds great! Let's do it!" I spend several hours reading, writing, and mapping, but then everyone in the group does one of the following within a few weeks time:
1. Gets divorced
2. Changes jobs/schedules
3. Moves away
4. Has significant health problems
I had a couple players choose three out of four!
Kah-Blam! Game group is history.
My enthusiasm wanes for a few months and then the pattern repeats.
I've had just as many that started and crashed in short order - within two or three sessions. So I've learned to temper my enthusiasm and prep for one adventure. Chances are it will not go the distance into a full-blown campaign anyway.
Quote from: rgrove0172;919300Have you ever spent weeks (or longer) and a fortune getting ready for a new campaign, gotten so psyched you felt like a kid before Christmas only to have the whole thing collapse?
Not at that scale, but I regularly have campaigns fail to launch due to the inability of my players to devote the time to it or all get together at the same time. I've learned to minimize the amount of prep work I do upfront. Fortunately many of my games have similar requirements interms of dice and accessories so I'm not buying bits for games that never happen.
I started a campaign some time ago, a friend that used to play with us had just returned and we were all excited to get him back in our group. He was now married and his wife was going to play with us.
I had come up with a setting that explored aspects of the game we've never gotten into before. We made characters and started to play. We got to what felt like a real crescendo in the action but it was getting late so we stopped the game there.
One of the regulars in the group is also married. His wife doesn't like RPGs but always insists on playing if her husband is. After the game, she started making plans that her older more experienced characters may have been able to pull off but these new characters wouldn't. I called her on that, basically saying "how do you plan on actually doing that?" She got upset but that isn't really anything new between us.
She started talking to our returned friend's wife after that and suddenly he wasn't available to game anymore. They wouldn't say no, but they wouldn't commit to play. That campaign died there.
Im a low prep sort so I rarely lose much. But one of my players is a VERY high prep sort and hes had at least two campaigns fizzle that I know of.
Another player I know has a historical themed campaign she runs but she has some atrocious bad luck with players dropping out after one session. Or not even showing up after showing interest or arranging themselves a good meet time.
I recall years ago starting with a couple new players and in the first couple of sessions spending easily an hour or more listening to them joke around, chit chat and basically just hang out while I waited and prodded to get playing. We only had about a 3 hour window in each session so after even a month of playing we hadn't gotten anywhere.
When I finally breached the subject one of them got offended and reminded me we were getting together to 'have fun' and they were. It didn't matter what we were really doing, did it?
I told him sure but that the game was the priority really, we could get together and hangout anytime and anywhere, we met on these nights for gaming. He didn't like this and it pretty much ruined the night. When it came up again he made a comment about the people being the most important part of getting together, friend came before games. I responded (pretty ticked actually and probably not thinking straight) that I would rather play a fun game with assholes than sit there bored while my so called friends bullshitted.
That ended that campaign. Ill take the blame for that one.
I was in a Champions game that lasted two sessions. Everyone was excited about it, but the GM just kind of decided he didn't want to do it anymore before the third session started.
Quote from: rgrove0172;919393That ended that campaign. Ill take the blame for that one.
No. That sounds like a valid complaint. The players were treating the meeting to game as more like a mini bar night to socialize instead of the gaming night they apparently agreed to.
In all fairness, "people > snacks > setting > system" is a pretty common rubric around here (or used to be). As is "don't play with gamers, teach your friends to play your games". How seriously everyone takes the game is definitely a part of the social contract that tends to get glossed over too much. I know if I invite a bunch of people over to play Project Ninja Panda Taco and they play it with Puppetland's meta-rules, I'm not going to be too happy either.
You know, I've had a couple of games that were prepared for considerably and ended up collapsing after one or two sessions, but I can't say I've ever had one that was definitely planned for and ended up collapsing before even starting.
A friend of mine got us all hot and bothered with this worldbuilding he was doing that involved giant insects that people could get into and control like vehicles (pulling nerves and what not). Then it never materialized because he got disappointed with it. It didn't matter how cool we thought it was, he came to hate this creation of his, so we never got to experience it.
This same friend also went cold like that in the middle of a campaign just when it was getting interesting for us, and dropped it. We were pretty bummed about it, but you can't force a person to game if they don't feel it. I have a feeling he just got burned out with gaming in general. Too bad because he was a good GM.
I inherited a Mage the Ascension game when the GM crashed and burned (and moved across the country) after his girlfriend dumped him. That game lasted 3 years real time.
since then I've had a Call of Cthulhu game flop out 2 sessions in, been in 2 Champions games that failed, a Mutants and Masterminds game that bombed when the GM told us that while, yes we were leveling up, and facing tougher foes, no we wouldn't be getting XP, and an Earthdawn game that 2 players walked out of when the GM told them they were playing their characters wrong in the first session.
I was so stoked after the first LotR film came out, because folks in my group were finally in the mood to play some Middle-earth RPG.
I ended up dropping almost $500 to buy the entire wave of FotR minis from Games Workshop, as well as dropping cash on all the Decipher RPG stuff as it came out, and picked up a bunch of old MERP modules. Spent countless hours figuring out the campaign arc, too. It was going to be set after the Battle of the Five Armies, and be a generational campaign spanning 75 years and detailing the reign of King Bard and his descendants. It was going to end with the "Second Battle of Dale", which took place during the War of the Ring.
And then during the third session, and unrelated to the game at all, simmering tension between a couple of the players finally came to a head, and the group imploded. I was so discouraged I ended up selling off all the unpainted minis and books.
I still have all my notes, though. Maybe someday I'll run that game.
Quote from: Headless;919333I had a summer where we played every week, and every week we played a new system.
Quote from: cranebump;919336Were you sitting in with me?:-)
(I'm just the WORST system hopper, historically--cured now [fingers crossed]).
You two, are you from my last group:)?
Also, I don't have any such stories that I remember at the moment. Most campaigns I wanted to start saw at least a couple sessions of play, though sometimes they didn't last past that;).
Quote from: Herne's Son;922451...
And then during the third session, and unrelated to the game at all, simmering tension between a couple of the players finally came to a head, and the group imploded. I was so discouraged I ended up selling off all the unpainted minis and books.
I still have all my notes, though. Maybe someday I'll run that game.
Was it a lame implosion, or an interesting in-character one? If interesting enough, you might add it to the lore and start the next run in its aftermath.
Oh wait, I remembered a game that never started. We heard about Scion. We actually contacted friends that love mythology as much as we do, and persuaded them to play in a campaign. We had appointed a GM, too.
Then we bought the rulebook from Drivethru.
That game never started.