It seems it's time to change my signature.

One of my girls told me today that she's not motivated to go on with our Vikings campaign. She would like some modern game, so we asked the rest of the crew and everywhere was OK with taking a break. So next Sunday we meet and discuss, Trail of Cthulhu has a lot of possibilities to be chosen.

How do you deal with that kind of situations? Do they arouse?

Most of our "campaigns" are very short, to the extent that calling them campaigns is misleading. If it's not the players who lose interest, it's the GM who does, or both.  Other causes of permature campaign death include prolonged breaks due to real life stuff or on occasion a the game just sucks. We are mostly GMs in my regular group so there is very little point sticking with a "meh" game when someone else could be running something more fun for everyone involved.

How to handle it? Just move on to with the next game. If the game sucked it's worth figuring out why it sucked to avoid same mistakes in the future. If it's just system or genre fatigue, just shelf that game for a while.

I recall after a longish D&D campaign I was playing in a couple years ago which on balance was pretty okay but sort of outlived it's welcome by the end. Eventually I called for fantasy embargo because I had enough of the whole elves and orcs thing, just could not face it any more. So, we played a wole bunch of other roleplaying games, no big deal. Just recently I started playing a D&D game again with (mostly) another group. It's a pretty awful, totally unoriginal campaign to be perfectly honest  but at least I'm fresh.

It's more of a genre fatigue for this player, really. We have not played so much, but well, sometimes things click and sometimes they don't.

Quote from: Soylent Green;304501Most of our "campaigns" are very short, to the extent that calling them campaigns is misleading. If it's not the players who lose interest, it's the GM who does, or both.  Other causes of permature campaign death include prolonged breaks due to real life stuff or on occasion a the game just sucks. We are mostly GMs in my regular group so there is very little point sticking with a "meh" game when someone else could be running something more fun for everyone involved.

How to handle it? Just move on to with the next game. If the game sucked it's worth figuring out why it sucked to avoid same mistakes in the future. If it's just system or genre fatigue, just shelf that game for a while.

I recall after a longish D&D campaign I was playing in a couple years ago which on balance was pretty okay but sort of outlived it's welcome by the end. Eventually I called for fantasy embargo because I had enough of the whole elves and orcs thing, just could not face it any more. So, we played a wole bunch of other roleplaying games, no big deal. Just recently I started playing a D&D game again with (mostly) another group. It's a pretty awful, totally unoriginal campaign to be perfectly honest  but at least I'm fresh.

My ideal would be to have 3-6 month campaign arcs then move on to something for a while, and maybe coming back to it later with a new arc taking place a few months or years down the road for the characters.  Similar to how seasons work on TV shows (or particularly, cable TV shows where you only have like 13 episodes).

Unfortunately, most of my group wants "the neverending story", where we stick with a single campaign for so long that I want to drive a drill through my brain by the end of it (I avert this by deciding I want to end things after a couple of years).

My group plays full campaigns with definite beginning, middles, and ends.  We define the campaign length before we even discuss characters.  Usually they last 3-6 months.

I would never even begin a game with a "never-ending" premise.  I have way too many games to play...

Quote from: Imperator;304500Do they arouse?

Why yes, they do. That's why I implemented a dress code

But my method is exactly like Joe's. I never run a game without everyone knowing there's an "ending". Sometimes the players choose to the end games at specific points. An example of this would be a one year long IHW campaign I ran. The players decided to end the game even though they were about five or six sessions left.

I also run a couple of campaigns at the same time and this cuts down on fatigue of any kind. Currently for the first two weeks of the month I'm running C&C and for the next two, Star Trek.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: jgants;304522Unfortunately, most of my group wants "the neverending story", where we stick with a single campaign for so long that I want to drive a drill through my brain by the end of it.

Man, I've been there!

Incidentally, it's why I created Dreamwalker a long time ago, so I could switch genres without making all new characters.  OP, you might try something like that, something cross genre like Dreamwalker or Sliders or a time travel RPG that allows you to play different genres every session if you want.  That way if you see a pirate movie you can play pirates; a WWII flick comes on and you can drop your players into Normandy, etc.

Pete

Quote from: David R;304537Why yes, they do. That's why I implemented a dress code

My bad My English seems to get more broken these days.

QuoteBut my method is exactly like Joe's. I never run a game without everyone knowing there's an "ending". Sometimes the players choose to the end games at specific points. An example of this would be a one year long IHW campaign I ran. The players decided to end the game even though they were about five or six sessions left.

We don't have a stablished way of doing things. If I'm running a commercial campaign, for example, then the ending is pretty clear. In the case of Vikings, though, we wanted to play an extended saga, for as long as we wanted.

I personally prefer to have a clear goal in mind. If people wants more, you can always create another arc.

One of the advantages to having open-minded players is that you can have multiple arcs going simultaneously.  For example, my regular group used to have a 3E and d20 Modern campaign running simultaneously.  When one ended, we would either start another one, or try something like Star Wars d20.  

What this let us do was play one arc until we felt we needed a break, and then jump into an existing campaign for a change of pace.  We'd resume each adventure as we felt like it.  

This really helped keep everyone from getting fried on one game or another over the long haul.