Sound off with your experiences.
Most of my campaigns are short. The longest campaigns I've run last about a year. Some go for a few months. Jumping systems and settings doesn't help there.
I'm jealous of GMs who have run multi-year campaigns, and even used the same campaigns between different groups of players.
Longest I ever ran week after week without interruption was something like 6 to 9 months, I can't really remember. Unfortunately or fortunately, a lot of my player pool is active-duty military and sometimes they get reassigned or deployed elsewhere and I'd rather not move forward with the same campaign when 75% of the players are gone. I find it easier to start a new game. Also, I get bored after a while of the same game and like to try new things when I get a chance.
Edit: Also, I'm not a fan of "high level" games, so at a certain point I'd rather just wind things down and start something new. There are too many good games to play for me to just play one for years and years.
I would actually prefer a long term campaign; but my current group has Game ADD. My longest run with this group was a...2.5 year campaign of Pathfinder with weekly sessions. We usually get anywhere from 6-9 months, like Dumarest, before someone in the group gets a hankering for a new game system. That's if the new system actually catches interest. If not, 2-3 weeks.
Quote from: Michael Gray;975259I would actually prefer a long term campaign; but my current group has Game ADD. My longest run with this group was a...2.5 year campaign of Pathfinder with weekly sessions. We usually get anywhere from 6-9 months, like Dumarest, before someone in the group gets a hankering for a new game system. That's if the new system actually catches interest. If not, 2-3 weeks.
I think the longest I ran was just south of three years. 3e came out so we retired it to try the new edition.
I ran a multi-year Castles and Crusades game. We survived one player dropping out, one player who showed for only one game, and one player who moved to North Dakota with whom we now Skype the sessions. There's a total of five players with me GMing. It's on pause for now while one of the other players runs and AD&D2e game for us. He wanted to run a game where he could DM for his kids and I felt like there was no reason to deny him that.
Before that I ran a 3e game using the "Adventure Path" modules published by WotC (Long live Meepo!) for around a year or more. And, before that, I ran a AD&D2e campaign for my wife and her sister for over a year. Other than that, it was basically games with friends for months at a time here and there since I started playing B/X back when I was nine years old.
The definitions of short or long campaigns probably vary quite a bit.
The longest I have run lasted just short of 5 years. I have had half a dozen games last around a year - I consider that to be a long campaign. Because I get bored, I actually prefer short campaigns. Around 4-12 sessions is plenty to engage a setting, get plenty of depth, allow for character development and come to some resolution. My players generally say they want longer games, but I think it is just enthusiasm talking. Eventually players start to burn out, and so do I. I think it is better to wrap-up a campaign when enthusiasm and excitement is still high, and then start something new, rather than flog a dying horse for a year. But that's my take.
I am the kind of person who likes to try different games, a new rpg is like Christmas present to me, but there are two campaigns in my group that "refuse to die". A testament of how great games both are.
The first is Call of Cthulhu (10 years) and the second is WHFRP 2nd (12 years) Both campaigns we still play today although not as frequent due to real life responsibilities.
Call of Cthulhu I run 100% Chaosium published adventures, they are excellent no surprise here.
Warhammer campaign is created by myself and is set in Helmgart a border fortress-city of the Empire in the Grey Mountains.
I find that some people think that a short campaign is a failure and I think that's a mistake. If everyone has been enjoying it and it ends because it has reached a logical stopping point, then that is fine. Reasons not to extend it (because one can always come up with reasons to extend it) are, someone else wants a turn to GM, the GM wants to run a different system, the GM wants to run in a different setting with different characters or, one that is rarely admitted, the GM does not to run for characters that have achieved some very high level. None of those is invalid.
Several of my campaigns have lasted a long time, several years in a couple of cases, but others began and ended in four to eight sessions. The characters still had places they could go because I run a big world but the campaign was over and we moved on.
--
Bill Reich
https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/
I've had multiple campaigns go 2 years, and a few that pushed 3 years. (Not sure if we hit 3 or not, but it was close.)
My preference is that a "campaign" run about 18-24 months, but I consider a level range part of what separates a campaign. My current D&D campaign will wind up when the characters hit about level 10, after 2-3 years. We probably will use the same setting, and the same characters, but it will be a new campaign as far as we are concerned. Might be some expanded options on characters, tweaks to house rules, that sort of thing. I'm loathe to change the parameters of what's in or out mid-campaign unless there is a real problem to solve.
My group meets twice/month on average, with the occasional break, so I tend to think in terms of "sessions" versus "months/years".
In the last eight years or so (since I started running regular RPG nights again), our longest campaigns (WFRP 1e, Call of Cthulhu, and D&D 4e) each went over 20 sessions.
The One Ring, Rogue Trader and B/X D&D all went about 15-20 sessions (the B/X taking a temporary break when the whole group got hypnotized).
My current Star Trek TOS campaign is around 12 sessions in, and I can feel myself wanting to switch games.
Putting that all done in text, I'm seeing a pattern around the number of sessions before I want to run something else. Data-driven DM'ing.
My campaigns are short. Like a two-and-half-hour movie.
My last campaign ran 255 sessions and just shy of 5 years in real time.
Quote from: Bren;975352My last campaign ran 255 sessions and just shy of 5 years in real time.
That's pretty darn impressive! What game and campaign? And, if you don't mind answering, how long is your average session?
Hmm, in looking back through my notes, it looks like the campaign I am currently playing in began on or about October 9, 2011. So, almost six years! However, the game itself has been active since the early 1980s. By that I mean my DM runs a persistent world in which each campaign influences the next campaign. For example, our PCs are currently trying to close a portal to the Abyss that was inadvertently opened by a different group of PCs back in the 1980s!
Quote from: Harlock;975263(Long live Meepo!)
Is that the stupid kobold "Dragon Trainer" in that one asinine module? My players promptly dubbed him "Jar Jar Binks." We got about halfway through "Sunless Citadel" when we decided en masse it was shit.
I run a lot of campaigns, I generally aim for 2-3 years fortnightly, which is actually around 35-50 sessions typically. My longest campaign Loudwater (http://frloudwater.blogspot.co.uk/) ran 5.5 years, 4e D&D from 1st to 29th level over 103 sessions. My current 5e Varisia (http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.co.uk/)campaign will be similar number of sessions (so far 53 with a couple side sessions) but is weekly so about half the time. My new 4e Nentir Vale game is planned to be fortnightly over about 50 sessions, 2-2.5 years. My week-old White Star game is a Play By Post so doesn't have sessions, but my previous PBEMs tended to run a couple years if successful, so similar sort of duration.
And my online Wilderlands text-chat game is an endless multi-group sandbox that's been running since early 2015 in its current 5e form, with hundreds of sessions. My Classic D&D Karameikos game ran a couple years weekly. Curse of the Crimson Throne (prequel to Varisia) using Pathfinder was 34 sessions fortnightly over about 21 months, and that was also typical for several 3e campaigns I ran ca 2000-2010.
I've also run some ca 12-13 session mini-campaigns, but not recently - I generally find RPGs are much more satisfying with longer term play, and it's worth taking the time to develop a campaign format that will support campaign play.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;975369Is that the stupid kobold "Dragon Trainer" in that one asinine module? My players promptly dubbed him "Jar Jar Binks." We got about halfway through "Sunless Citadel" when we decided en masse it was shit.
I'm running it now, about 1/3 through it. What did your group hate about it?
Recent gaming....
- a two year face-to-face AD&D campaign (28 sessions) from Sept. 2011 - Sept. 2013
- a six-month G+ AS&SH campaign (10 sessions) from Aug. 2014 - Feb. 2015
- from March 2016-current, 22 AS&SH convention games at Gary Con, NTPRG Con and GameHole
For me, the biggest difference between 2011 and now is that my son's almost six years old now, so I spend more time with him. Doesn't leave much time for committing to regular, frequent face-to-face gaming. I still enjoy the hobby though, so I run lots of games in March at Gary Con, June at NTRPG Con and November at GameHole. It's easier to find one whole weekend a few times a year than one whole day/evening every week. Once he's old enough to play, I'll probably resurrect my face-to-face efforts though.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;975369Is that the stupid kobold "Dragon Trainer" in that one asinine module? My players promptly dubbed him "Jar Jar Binks." We got about halfway through "Sunless Citadel" when we decided en masse it was shit.
Yip. That's the one. Later in the series there's an encounter where a demon or devil, heck if I can remember which, that was made to run away in order for the plot to continue. Pretty bad writing as my party kicked that thing's ass. I ran the whole series as I was working 75 hour weeks at the time and didn't have time to sleep and eat, much less write a campaign.
In theory I prefer long-term campaigns and campaigns set in a long-standing world. I've run campaign worlds for 10+ years, longest active playing character about 9 years. However I have been chosing to work on other projects. If pen & paper RPG was still my main gaming groove, I'd be running long-term games mostly, I think. I really like the long-term continuity of world, even if players and PCs come and go. Also I've played in several multi-year campaigns (up to about 7 years) run by friends.
I've run several shorter campaigns, and played in many shorter campaigns, that last a year or less. I think they're interesting to create and run, and to test out ideas that I'm not sure I want in the larger/longer campaigns. But for me they tend not to be so satisfying one way or another. Either I don't develop them to my own satisfaction, or I develop them too much for something that's not getting much use, or I or the players don't end up wanting to play it for very long, or we'd rather shift to the long-term game, or whatever.
I also run shorter experiments, single or a few sessions, to try stuff out, for a change, etc. That seems to work better than the shorter campaigns for me, because I know there's no point in me devoting too much effort, or being disappointed in the level of effort.
Shorter campaigns due to everyone's limited time. One offs can be tremendous fun, particularly in a system like CoC.
One of my best campaigns only ran about three or four months because half the players were in the Coast Guard and got reassigned to the East Coast. It was a really fun FASA Star Trek game using 2nd edition rules and a starship combat variant we found online. It was set during and after the 3rd season of Star Trek but they never interacted with anyone from.the show as the U.S.S. I-Forget-The-Name was exploring in a whole other direction. We packed a lot of fun into that time.
I've also run a few one-shot Ghostbusters games just for laughs and fun and that's just as satisfying for me.
Short can be fun, but I much much prefer long form.
Players, characters, they come and go, so to me, campaign means setting, not a particular story/adventure arc. I'm happy to say that I've hosted a couple of three year runs in my setting. I joined a new game last year and after just under 20 sessions, I feel like we're just getting started.
I've also been playing in my brother's game off and on for 30 years. One city has a map that he drew up in 1983. A LOT has gone down there over the years. It's been a great investment of our time.
Nearly every game I've been in was planned as a long campaign but got cut short for all the reasons games get cut short.
I think that my Roman Call of Cthulhu campaign ran for a year and a half, every other week, and might have continued except that the players balked unexpectedly at a couple of story threads and left me rather perplexed.
In the case of a Call of Cthulhu campaign, it can go on as long as there is a fortean story to tell, which may take one, two or many episodes. I was definitely working to a plan, at least hypothesizing that the bad guys had a plan, which the players could intercept at many points.
The campaigns I run (if they don't fizzle after a few sessions) usually last around 50 or 60 sessions before they reach a natural conclusion.
Quote from: wombat1;975813I think that my Roman Call of Cthulhu campaign ran for a year and a half, every other week, and might have continued except that the players balked unexpectedly at a couple of story threads and left me rather perplexed.
In the case of a Call of Cthulhu campaign, it can go on as long as there is a fortean story to tell, which may take one, two or many episodes. I was definitely working to a plan, at least hypothesizing that the bad guys had a plan, which the players could intercept at many points.
So what did they balk at? I'm very curious.
I've always wanted to play Call of Cthulhu but never found anyone else into it.
I've been in a Spelljammer campaign over 8 years now. A 5e campaign about 3 or so. And another 5e one thats been going since January.
Before that were a long Star Frontiers campaign I GMed and a long Spelljammer one.
My longest has been a Champions campaign that lasted 5 years of weekly sessions set in a 22-year old campaign world.
Most of my campaigns last a couple years each. Campaigns that last less than a year I usually consider to be unsuccessful.
I have the benefit of having a group that has been mostly the same for 31 years.
I'd say my experience over the past 30 years has been campaigns seem to last 12-24 sessions. I don't think I've ever GM'd or played in a campaign longer than that.
Our current Gloranthan Pavis campaign is 12 years old and still going. It has morphed slightly and has gone from being members of a Pavic street gang, becoming Sun County militiamen, becoming River Voices, resurrecting long lost gods, fighting in the Hero Wars, bringing back Orlanth, bringing back Genert and now being major players in the Hero Wars. We play every week, for around 3 hours and only really miss sessions when the GM is ill/on holiday or when multiple players are ill/on holiday.
Before that, I ran a HeroQuest campaign, the Lightbringer Quest, for an established group, that took about a year.
Before that, I ran an on-off campaign based around Dorastor and Balazar, which was around 6 years long, played every month or so.
I don't mind short campaigns, as long as they are designed to be short and to have an end point built in to the campaign.
I tend to run longer multi-years campaigns, but they're alternated with series of one-shots in different systems.
My main group generally doesn't want the campaigns to end, if possible. When they run, unless something comes up to cut them short, campaigns could easily last years.
Quote from: Dumarest;975838So what did they balk at? I'm very curious.
I've always wanted to play Call of Cthulhu but never found anyone else into it.
Second bit first--one can of course give a "Mythos twist" to nearly any scenario and that might help accustom folks to it.
As for the first bit, the club I belong to has members that are equally at home with miniature wargames, and roleplaying, and there are extensive collections of miniatures that I could take advantage of, and wanted to. So, I came up with a story arc that involved some investigation in Rome, some investigation in frontier provinces (role playing) the bad guys agitating the German tribes over the frontier (off screen unless the players went after it), a Germanic/bad guy incursion over the frontier (miniature wargaming battle) and a confrontation at "Bad Guy Central." (final bit of roleplaying, with another story in mind if the players wanted more.)
The players took this and handled the first two parts brilliantly, noted the bad guys agitating over the frontier, and, when the invasion came to pass, handled it brilliantly as a wargaming battle, in this case using an "oversized" D.B.A. battle for the barbarian vs. Roman business. In the roleplaying story, one of the Roman legion commanders, an NPC, was in league with the bad guys, and so while most of the good guy commands were handled by the players, I handed that command off to one of the non-roleplaying wargame club members with some instructions, making him, in effect, a deputy GM--he was simply to pull his punch and let the auxiliary and German allies do the work, and if they won, they won and he could help clean up, but if they lost, he was to help the bad guys mop up.
The good guys won easily, as I said, and the players, still having no idea that their extra was anything other than an honest broker, now reverted back to their player character roles, declined to go after "Bad Guy Central." The conversation went something along the lines of "There are still an awful lot of fugitives there and the Roman troops are going back home. We think we want a better opportunity to get after the villains."
GM grumbles and goes off to write some.
So, I try again, throw in some one-offs while I figure out what I am going to do with the main story-line, and write another wargaming situation, since the game itself was well-received, in which the Roman legion commander rebels, and takes about half of the troops in the province with him; the players have to pull it together for the other half, which they do. And then, at the moment they can finish it off, and have the final confrontation, they elect to stand on the defensive.
So, somewhere in alternate reality, there is a civil war on hold and two discredited prophets wondering what the devil happened.
The default mode for my campaigns is "as long as we want to keep playing" which usually ends up being several years. Sometimes campaigns don't end they just go on hiatus, usually due to real-life of the players, then we switch to something else, and pick up the old campaign later.
Quote from: wombat1;975967Second bit first--one can of course give a "Mythos twist" to nearly any scenario and that might help accustom folks to it.
It's the "mythos" that turns people off in my experience. They think they need to know it and have read the stories. I've barely read any myself as I find them largely boring, at least the ones I've read, but the background seems really cool for a game.
Quote from: wombat1;975967As for the first bit, the club I belong to has members that are equally at home with miniature wargames, and roleplaying, and there are extensive collections of miniatures that I could take advantage of, and wanted to. So, I came up with a story arc that involved some investigation in Rome, some investigation in frontier provinces (role playing) the bad guys agitating the German tribes over the frontier (off screen unless the players went after it), a Germanic/bad guy incursion over the frontier (miniature wargaming battle) and a confrontation at "Bad Guy Central." (final bit of roleplaying, with another story in mind if the players wanted more.)
The players took this and handled the first two parts brilliantly, noted the bad guys agitating over the frontier, and, when the invasion came to pass, handled it brilliantly as a wargaming battle, in this case using an "oversized" D.B.A. battle for the barbarian vs. Roman business. In the roleplaying story, one of the Roman legion commanders, an NPC, was in league with the bad guys, and so while most of the good guy commands were handled by the players, I handed that command off to one of the non-roleplaying wargame club members with some instructions, making him, in effect, a deputy GM--he was simply to pull his punch and let the auxiliary and German allies do the work, and if they won, they won and he could help clean up, but if they lost, he was to help the bad guys mop up.
The good guys won easily, as I said, and the players, still having no idea that their extra was anything other than an honest broker, now reverted back to their player character roles, declined to go after "Bad Guy Central." The conversation went something along the lines of "There are still an awful lot of fugitives there and the Roman troops are going back home. We think we want a better opportunity to get after the villains."
GM grumbles and goes off to write some.
So, I try again, throw in some one-offs while I figure out what I am going to do with the main story-line, and write another wargaming situation, since the game itself was well-received, in which the Roman legion commander rebels, and takes about half of the troops in the province with him; the players have to pull it together for the other half, which they do. And then, at the moment they can finish it off, and have the final confrontation, they elect to stand on the defensive.
So, somewhere in alternate reality, there is a civil war on hold and two discredited prophets wondering what the devil happened.
That's the problem with players: they seldom do what we plan for and expect. Well, the guys (and gal) I play with don't, but at least I can depend upon them coming up with a "cunning plan" that results in the PCs winding up in the hoosegow or the grave.
Quote from: Dumarest;975970It's the "mythos" that turns people off in my experience. They think they need to know it and have read the stories. I've barely read any myself as I find them largely boring, at least the ones I've read, but the background seems really cool for a game.
There's no need to know anything about the Lovecraft Mythos to play CoC. I've read all of Lovecraft's stories and it doesn't add up to more than 'Evil Monsters are the Real God and want to destroy us.' It is purposefully all left vague and mysteryious. Really the less the players know the better because they're closer to the state of the Investigators who usually start with very little knowledge of the Mythos.
Just tell everyone that the adventures are really deadly, the mere sight of a monster can cause insanity and it is okay to run away rather than fight and play a short adventure like Dead Man Stomp.
I find people take to CoC pretty easily as the system is straight forward, it doesn't rely on combat to solve things and there is a strong black humour element in the character's death, disfigurement and insanity.
Quote from: wombat1;975967The good guys won easily, as I said, and the players, still having no idea that their extra was anything other than an honest broker, now reverted back to their player character roles, declined to go after "Bad Guy Central." The conversation went something along the lines of "There are still an awful lot of fugitives there and the Roman troops are going back home. We think we want a better opportunity to get after the villains."
GM grumbles and goes off to write some.
So, I try again, throw in some one-offs while I figure out what I am going to do with the main story-line, and write another wargaming situation, since the game itself was well-received, in which the Roman legion commander rebels, and takes about half of the troops in the province with him; the players have to pull it together for the other half, which they do. And then, at the moment they can finish it off, and have the final confrontation, they elect to stand on the defensive.
So, somewhere in alternate reality, there is a civil war on hold and two discredited prophets wondering what the devil happened.
I'd call that the mark of excellent players:D!
The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.
I am deleting my content.
I recommend you do the same.
In response to several posts, in no particular order:
1 ) I never deny my players' excellence--they are scary good, and very hard to keep up with or find anything new for.
2 ) They are astonishingly timid, though, which eventually leads to a deadlock in Call of Cthulhu, where neither player nor keeper can ever fall in love with the 'capital equipment,' i.e. the characters, as they tend to depreciate rapidly.
3 ) So their cunning plans, and oh boy are they cunning, are designed to wind up with the characters in neither the hoosegow nor the grave but in the retirement home, safe and sane, many years after the events of the campaign have ended.
4 ) I agree with Justin Alexander; the less the players know about the adversary for as long as possible, the better--the game is described as a 'horror' game which is something of a misnomer. A better description would be 'mystery' or 'suspense' game. The satisfaction for me comes from feeding out clues a bit at a time, and then having one of the players exclaim, "My God, so that's what happened," and then either figure it out or, better still, draw a slightly wrong conclusion.
5 ) The older Mythos stories can be a bit of a slog, I agree, but that doesn't invalidate the idea that one can try to craft a role playing scenario in that vein.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;975369Is that the stupid kobold "Dragon Trainer" in that one asinine module? My players promptly dubbed him "Jar Jar Binks." We got about halfway through "Sunless Citadel" when we decided en masse it was shit.
hah-hah! I did better than that. As a player we were apparently in that module and we met Meepo and... well... I kinda got the kobold killed... oops. :cool:
Never knew it was a module or that that was the character that gets mentioned so often until many a year later. We got fairly far into the module before two of the players moved out of state. But I am pretty sure we made a total shambles of the module due to not knowing. We had a mission and that probably kept us on kinda track. Which is how it should be rather than some of the chain gang railroads.
I think we suffer from GM burnout (and family responsibilities), which means the campaigns have become increasingly shorter over time and the gaps between sessions have become longer, which also adds to the disconnect on campaigns (i.e., what were we doing and why?). My gaming group has also done a fair number of one-shots/three-shots just to check out the new hotness and board games (e.g., Spartacus, XCOM, Bloodrage, Time Stories, X-Wing and the GMT COIN series) have come to take an increasing large place on our table for longer periods of time. I posted in another topic earlier today, but we had a 3 year campaign back in the day which was one of our longer ones (i.e., Midnight Setting).
Midnight 1e, 2e (essentially DnD 3.5): 36+ months
Eberron+Red Hand of Doom (Dnd 3.5): 20 months
4th Edition Campaign Arc 1st - 20th: 24 months
Dark Sun DnD 4th Edition: 12 months
Star Wars FFG: 5 months
Current: 5e DnD Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Right now we are trying out a 3-4 session arc per GM to avoid burnout, where the GM has a PC in the background as something of a higher functioning retainer, but not driving the action. More for color and then the GM can hand over the reins to the next player while having some connection to the story.
Quote from: Harlock;975353That's pretty darn impressive! What game and campaign? And, if you don't mind answering, how long is your average session?
Thanks. Honor+Intrigue was set in 1620s France (and Europe). Average session length was 3.5-4.0 hours.
Quote from: CRKrueger;975969Sometimes campaigns don't end they just go on hiatus, usually due to real-life of the players, then we switch to something else, and pick up the old campaign later.
That is my usual modus operandi. The H+I campaign was unusual in that I did an intentional ending and wrap up.
Almost all our campaigns have been relatively short term - 6 to 12 months. Various levels, not higher than 10, mostly 1-7.
In high school we had a game that ran about 3 years (got to about 13th), awesome fun, and also 4e which ran about 3 years (got to about 18th).
Overall I prefer the 12 mth campaigns.
Let me put it this way: In between the end of one regular-length campaign of mine and another, I like to run some game for a "short campaign". Those short campaigns usually last a year of real time.