Thoughts on Campaign Length

[DocFlamingo]

A lot of people want to run a decades-long, real-time campaign and end up very disappointed when it doesn't pan-out. I have run/played in such a campaign (it lasted near 20 years on and off) and it was very satisfying but the fact is for every game we started that ran ten full sessions we started five or six that didn't last beyond the second or third session. We played a lot of games and like to experiment.

My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions. If holds everyone's interest and people want to keep using their characters, you can keep it going. If not you can try something else.

If you're running a sandbox style game this isn't so much an issue but start out with something relatively small and contained if you are going to use a more narrative setting.

If you have a grand story in mind have an introductory period where you are facing off a lieutenant of the world-crushing Dark Lord and if people are into it you can escalate it into something bigger.

Also, don't be afraid to run a few one-off adventures, perhaps with pre-made characters, to find your stride before you get into something much larger; especially when playing with a new group of people where you don't know if everyone is going to commit to a more involved campaign.

The whole point of the hobby is for everyone to have a good time and that includes the GM. Don't make yourself crazy.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

In general, I aim for 25-30 sessions, give or take. We game weekly, we usually stick to a campaign for about a year, and we usually miss several sessions, so that's about how it works out for us.

 

[arjunstc]

Yes, 12 is about the right number of sessions for an arc.

I kept to that vicinity and have not had a campaign that petered out. If we want to keep playing with the same characters or the same setting, we just play another campaign in between to cleanse the palate, and then run another season/arc again.

 

[sharps54]

My preference to to have a mix of a long, ongoing campaign and short games. That might be with the same group or two different ones. I’ve currently in two games that have been going for years, three considering an En Garde! PbP, and in a few other groups that run an adventure and rotate GMs. Most of these groups meet one or twice a month.

 

[sharps54]

Of the multi year games the only one that started with the goal of being a long running campaign was Wrath of the Righteous because the GM convinced us it would be fun and secretly we all wanted to say we finished a Pathfinder Adventure Path

 

[finarvyn]

Over the decades I have found that most of my sandbox campaigns run around 18-20 sessions or around 9 months before my players are itching to run new characters. Honestly, I have a lot of gaming material on my shelves and I get bored of running the same game for a long time, too. Right now I'm looking at running Dragonbane, 5E Lord of the Rings, and some sort of 50th anniversary OD&D so my attention is divided three ways away from the current campaign.

Linear adventures, such as a 5E hardback, are a bit different as there are a certain number of checkpoints in order to complete the whole thing. Those just last however long they need to last in order to complete the thing.

We had one Spelljammer campaign last a year-and-a-half, but it was almost 3 mini-campaigns. We adventured on a regular D&D planet for around 6 months before the Spelljammers took us into wildspace, then the remaining year was divided between two character groups. (We had one player with a rough schedule and would always play the "A team" characters when she could play, and "B team" when she couldn't.)

 

[E-Rocker]

My three most-favorite RPG experiences are the 4.5 year/85+ session Savage Worlds campaign I'm currently running, the 5.5 year/175+ session D&D 5e game I'm currently playing in, and a couple of Paranoia one-shots I played in at cons.

I've never gotten to play in a short campaign that was intended to be a short campaign, so I can't speak to how well that would work for me.

I have played in a few campaigns that were intended to be long-term but fell apart early due to boring real-life reasons, which was very disappointing. The one that was most disappointing was the one where it was clear the DM did have an overarching plot in mind, and it was cool, fun plot, but we never got to the climax and dénouement.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't think you can really plan for a long campaign. You can hope for it, you can may be even work toward it, but I think that at its root its more about luck than it is about anything else. You can't control other people's lives and interests.

 

[K_Peterson]

A lot of people want to run a decades-long, real-time campaign and end up very disappointed when it doesn't pan-out.

I wonder how popular that approach is in this day and age. Are there a lot of gamers on the RpgPub that are into that approach? To me, it seems like that's more of a niche of a niche thing.

It's not something I've encountered much out in the wild. Sure, I've met one or two groups that had the kind of dedication and had developed their campaigns over years. But the vast majority of my experiences with gaming groups has involved shifting campaigns, over 6 to 12 months cycles - rather than being married to a single, dedicated campaign and setting.

 

[DocFlamingo]

I wonder how popular that approach is in this day and age. Are there a lot of gamers on the RpgPub that are into that approach? To me, it seems like that's more of a niche of a niche thing.

It's not something I've encountered much out in the wild. Sure, I've met one or two groups that had the kind of dedication and had developed their campaigns over years. But the vast majority of my experiences with gaming groups has involved shifting campaigns, over 6 to 12 months cycles - rather than being married to a single, dedicated campaign and setting.

I think it was likely more of a thing in the early days when there were a lot fewer choices out there and there were a lot more groups married to a single system.

 

[K_Peterson]

I don't think you can really plan for a long campaign. You can hope for it, you can may be even work toward it, but I think that at its root its more about luck than it is about anything else. You can't control other people's lives and interests.

I've wondered if some of these long campaigns have endured because they've been "excised" from the lives and interests of other people. Kind of like a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms framework, where the GM has created their "living" campaign and setting but it is not restricted to "one group of adventurers, tied together at the hands and feet". The gaming group may shift in membership over time, or perhaps get rebooted, but the backdrop is the same, and the world evolves. Or the GM has multiple groups of players adventuring in the setting, each exploring its mysteries and perhaps influencing it societies, politics, and power struggles.

To me, it seems like you'd have to take this approach to keep this kind of monolithic campaign rolling for decades. The players make an impact on the world, but the world (/campaign's) survival is not dependent on them.

 

[sharps54]

I've wondered if some of these long campaigns have endured because they've been "excised" from the lives and interests of other people. Kind of like a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms framework, where the GM has created their "living" campaign and setting but it is not restricted to "one group of adventurers, tied together at the hands and feet". The gaming group may shift in membership over time, or perhaps get rebooted, but the backdrop is the same, and the world evolves. Or the GM has multiple groups of players adventuring in the setting, each exploring its mysteries and perhaps influencing it societies, politics, and power struggles.

To me, it seems like you'd have to take this approach to keep this kind of monolithic campaign rolling for decades. The players make an impact on the world, but the world (/campaign's) survival is not dependent on them.

I have a buddy who’s world is like this, he runs duets with this wife, ongoing PbP and FtF RPGs with various size groups, wargames, and even convention games all in his single world and has done so for many years.

I’m glad he is out there proving it can be done and a shining example because I do believe he is the exception to the norm.

 

[sharps54]

I think the sheer number of games and the pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” (aka FOMO) definitely disencourages long campaigns and ongoing campaign worlds.

 

[DocFlamingo]

I've wondered if some of these long campaigns have endured because they've been "excised" from the lives and interests of other people. Kind of like a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms framework, where the GM has created their "living" campaign and setting but it is not restricted to "one group of adventurers, tied together at the hands and feet". The gaming group may shift in membership over time, or perhaps get rebooted, but the backdrop is the same, and the world evolves. Or the GM has multiple groups of players adventuring in the setting, each exploring its mysteries and perhaps influencing it societies, politics, and power struggles.

To me, it seems like you'd have to take this approach to keep this kind of monolithic campaign rolling for decades. The players make an impact on the world, but the world (/campaign's) survival is not dependent on them.

My campaign that went the long haul was generational. We'd run with a group of characters for a few years, take a break to play other games, then come back and advance the timeline by a few years to decades and start with new characters though one in a while old PCs would come back for a special appearance or would become important NPCs having settled down into a more permanent vocation.

 

[sharps54]

That said even in the 80’s we played a variety of games.

 

[K_Peterson]

I think the sheer number of games and the pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” (aka FOMO) definitely disencourages long campaigns and ongoing campaign worlds.

Yeah, I think an "embarrassment of riches" can definitely play a part in deterring gamers from running long campaigns. There is always something new and exciting being released, and new Bundles of Holding to draw attention to other games - settings, and systems.

 

[sharps54]

Yeah, I think an "embarrassment of riches" can definitely play a part in deterring gamers from running long campaigns. There is always something new and exciting being released, and new Bundles of Holding to draw attention to other games - settings, and systems.

True but I will make an exception for Bundles of Holding, they are a guilty pleasure I don’t want to go away

 

[DocFlamingo]

True but I will make an exception for Bundles of Holding, they are a guilty pleasure I don’t want to go away

I've been hearing the term,; what exactly is a "bundle of holding?"

 

[sharps54]

KNOCK! Magazine Bundle

Knock knock, adventurer! This all-new KNOCK! Magazine Bundle presents three digital issues of KNOCK!, the Merry Mushmen's magazine for old-school tabletop fantasy roleplaying games. Dubbed "an Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac and a Compendium of Miscellanea for Old School RPGs," KNOCK! showcases...

bundleofholding.com

 

[sharps54]

A discount bundle of PDFs that are DRM free

 

[DocFlamingo]

Ah.

 

[bleys21]

I pretty much agree with the OP. In the past, there was always this...onus? That a successful game had to be this giant, years long campaign. And, at least in my early groups and where we lived, there was a definite lack of other games, so that encouraged the long campaign idea, since we were all stuck with TSR stuff, mainly D&D.

I think one of the best things to happen in my later gaming years is the idea of the "Arc": a indeterminate number of sessions that comprises one main story. After which, the game can continue (if everyone wants that), be paused for another game(I do this a lot to avoid burnout/boredom) or just ended.

 

[finarvyn]

The length of the campaign is usually a function of the length of time that the game group stays together.

I started playing OD&D in 1975, while in middle school. My core group stayed together through high school, and mostly through college. (College in our home town, most of us stayed around.) So, my first game group was around from 75 to 85, roughly 10 years. Our early campaigns were years in length. Towards the end they were shorter, as others have noted we had more options. We had three main DMs who rotated.

Not a consistent gaming group until 1997 or so, but that group lasted another 15 years until Real Life (TM) and kids messed up with things. In that decade it was pretty much only me as DM, but we did play (and playtest) a number of game systems along the way. Hoping to reconnect with a few of those guys when we retire and put the band back together.

My third wave has been from 2016 and is still around today. Mostly family so I anticipate this group lasting for a long time unless one of the kids gets the urge to move to a new city. Again, three DMs so we each can take a break and not have burnout. Sadly, this group so far is pretty much 5E only in spite of my attempts to educate them with other systems.

So, as the groups of players shift around so does the campaign. Longer early, shorter recent.

 

[Akrasia]

In recent years, most of the campaigns that I've been involved with (either as a player or GM) have lasted 1-3 years (ranging from about 20 sessions at the low end to about 80 or 90 sessions for the longer ones).

I've also run shorter campaigns in the past. E.g., a couple of Call of Cthulhu "episodic" campaigns, that were about 9-12 sessions in total (so roughly 3 or 4 adventures each).

In addition, I've played more than a few "one shots" and multi-session adventures (2-4) that aren't meant to be campaigns, but are either "play tests" for new material (usually for Mythras) or explorations of new systems. Some involve scenarios deliberately designed as "one shots" (e.g., Trail of Cthulhu).

I'm currently developing my own world ("Ukrasia") for one of my Against the Darkmaster campaigns. I anticipate that the current campaign will take 2-3 years to complete, but I hope to keep the world going for future use (so the events of the current campaign will be incorporated into the setting's timeline and inform future campaigns).

 

[StonesThree]

Are we just too fussy about our games these days? Whenever I hear older gamers talk about their campaigns back in the 70s/early 80s they never seem to talk about “plots” or carefully balanced combat scenes. It’s all just random stuff that happened. Dave’s campaign ran for 5 years because nobody else wanted to run the game kind of deals. Also it was old timey DnD and they only got to level 6 that one time. And Dave didn’t really have to prep anything as they spent most evenings just arguing with each other while he occasionally rolled on the random harlot table.

 

[DocFlamingo]

Are we just too fussy about our games these days? Whenever I hear older gamers talk about their campaigns back in the 70s/early 80s they never seem to talk about “plots” or carefully balanced combat scenes. It’s all just random stuff that happened. Dave’s campaign ran for 5 years because nobody else wanted to run the game kind of deals. Also it was old timey DnD and they only got to level 6 that one time. And Dave didn’t really have to prep anything as they spent most evenings just arguing with each other while he occasionally rolled on the random harlot table.

Yes and no. Everyone was winging it to a large degree because it was all a new concepts. That said some campaigns most definitely did have complex themes to them--was in a few. As to levels, in early AD&D you got killed--like, a LOT, lol. Hell, in Traveller you could literally die during character creation.

Also, in general, people were more relaxed and laid back in those days and people weren't trying to "outdo" other groups.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It all depends on the game and lots of other circumstances. Some campaigns are meant to be short, some are meant to be longer. There’s no right or wrong answer, and neither is better than the other.

 

[carpocratian]

I like to do open-ended sandbox campaigns that run until everyone is ready to start something new. The most recent long one was a little over 5 years, with attempts at weekly sessions. If I had to guess, we probably did around 100 - 125 actual sessions of that campaign, since we had some shorter ones interspersed it (a couple of the players wanted to learn to GM).

 

[ffilz]

I wonder how popular that approach is in this day and age. Are there a lot of gamers on the RpgPub that are into that approach? To me, it seems like that's more of a niche of a niche thing.

It's not something I've encountered much out in the wild. Sure, I've met one or two groups that had the kind of dedication and had developed their campaigns over years. But the vast majority of my experiences with gaming groups has involved shifting campaigns, over 6 to 12 months cycles - rather than being married to a single, dedicated campaign and setting.

I haven't hit decades long, but I am at years long.

I've wondered if some of these long campaigns have endured because they've been "excised" from the lives and interests of other people. Kind of like a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms framework, where the GM has created their "living" campaign and setting but it is not restricted to "one group of adventurers, tied together at the hands and feet". The gaming group may shift in membership over time, or perhaps get rebooted, but the backdrop is the same, and the world evolves. Or the GM has multiple groups of players adventuring in the setting, each exploring its mysteries and perhaps influencing it societies, politics, and power struggles.

To me, it seems like you'd have to take this approach to keep this kind of monolithic campaign rolling for decades. The players make an impact on the world, but the world (/campaign's) survival is not dependent on them.

My campaigns do have a rolling set of players, however, two of the RQ players have been at it for several years, one of them was player 5 who joined during the first adventure (3 of those first 5 players only lasted a session or two).

 

[arjunstc]

Are we just too fussy about our games these days? Whenever I hear older gamers talk about their campaigns back in the 70s/early 80s they never seem to talk about “plots” or carefully balanced combat scenes.

I boast about having been GMing for more than 30 years, bit it's probably only from 8 years or so ago that my campaigns are planned. Before that I just stringed Dungeon magazine modules which I found interesting together.

And I think planned campaigns are better. Especially if you are playing with grown ups who have other commitments in life. People are more willing to sign on to a 3 month campaign than a vague "we'll end when we are bored" thing. And at the end of the 3 months, you take stock and see if you want to renew for another season.

 

[AsenRG]

In general, I aim for 25-30 sessions, give or take. We game weekly, we usually stick to a campaign for about a year, and we usually miss several sessions, so that's about how it works out for us.

That's more or less my take on it as well, with "sessions" being 4-6 hrs of play.
And well, if it holds everyone's interest past that, you can usually keep going, especially if it wasn't one of those "planned with beginning, middle and end" kind of affairs.

 

[K_Peterson]

Are we just too fussy about our games these days? Whenever I hear older gamers talk about their campaigns back in the 70s/early 80s they never seem to talk about “plots” or carefully balanced combat scenes. It’s all just random stuff that happened. Dave’s campaign ran for 5 years because nobody else wanted to run the game kind of deals. Also it was old timey DnD and they only got to level 6 that one time. And Dave didn’t really have to prep anything as they spent most evenings just arguing with each other while he occasionally rolled on the random harlot table.

I don't really see it as "fussiness" but different playstyles, and the gradual evolution of gaming over the decades.

Back in my early days of Rpging with BD&D, AD&D, and Star Frontiers, I don't remember any mention of "plots" - in Rpg books or spoken by DMs/GMs. The "story" equivalent was the length of time that it took to complete a published module, or complete Bob's campaign. These authorial perspectives came later, as Rpgs in the later 80s, and (definitely) the 90s, introduced them. Now, they're a pretty common part of the gaming vernacular (though not used universally by gaming groups).

"Balanced" combat took the form of dungeon levels. The first level of a dungeon, for example, was stocked with threats that a 1st level party would have the resources to overcome. (If the players played intelligently and tactically and were mindful of their resources - and didn't rush into battle against every threat). As the party descended deeper in the dungeon, they'd encounter threats intended for a higher-level party. And woe be it to the party that descended deeper than their capabilities. (And God help you if you encountered an elevator room, and ended up confused, lost, and potentially facing threats that you'd have little chance of overcoming).

Carefully balanced combat scenes, from my memory, is an invention within the past 25 years. WotC, in particular, developed this kind of opposition construction, and emphasis on balanced play.

 

[K_Peterson]

It all depends on the game and lots of other circumstances. Some campaigns are meant to be short, some are meant to be longer. There’s no right or wrong answer, and neither is better than the other.

Expanding on this: it can definitely depend on the type of game you're running. The focus of gameplay, and the genre (fantasy, scifi, superhero, horror, etc., etc.

When I imagine a decades- (or many, many years-) long campaign, I automatically think of a fantasy campaign with a focus on exploration and zero-to-hero development. Or a Traveller campaign with a lot of planet-hopping and taking on any opportunity to bring in the credits, to make your starship's monthly payment.

I'm not even sure how the hell I'd run a decades-long Call of Cthulhu campaign. I mean, there are approaches you could take to add some longevity to a horror campaign: sandboxing it so that the campaign focuses on a specific region; stripping out overt, handcuffing plots, and introducing generational play to have a steady line of investigator "succession". But investigator attrition, and repeated, near-overwhelming threats could easily lead to some burnout, I think.

 

[Bourbonjack]

Three years has been about my limit for a campaign where we played weekly or biweekly. It seems that in that period of time it becomes very difficult to maintain enough interest and newness that you can keep the group together. And I mean the actual group of people not the party.