The Ultimate Campaign

The longevity of my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign – eight years and counting, as of this post – often raises questions among those who've never participated in a RPG campaign that's lasted that long. One of the most common, believe it or not, is this: when do you think it will end? My answer is always the same, "I have no idea," which is absolutely true. Why that's the case is a topic deserving of its own post (and maybe I'll even write it), but my answer occasions a thought within myself, namely, whenever House of Worms ends, it'll probably be the last time I ever play Empire of the Petal Throne.

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, my thought has nothing to do with the late unpleasantness regarding Tékumel's creator. Rather, I think this way because, whenever and however House of Worms ends, I'm fairly certain that I will have so thoroughly scratched my EPT (and Tékumel) itch that I would find little point in ever returning to it for another campaign. That is, I'll have done everything I'll likely ever want to do with the game and its setting. The conclusion of House of Worms will be – for me anyway – the end of Tékumel as an active RPG setting.

To be clear: I don't see this as a bad thing. Indeed, from my perspective, the idea that I might be "done" with a game or a game setting represents not a lack of interest in them, let alone disappointment or disgust, but rather the opposite: the feeling that I have refereed an "ultimate" campaign. "Ultimate" in this case is simply shorthand for what I already stated above: achieving everything I'll likely ever want to achieve with a given game or game setting. It's the highest compliment I can imagine giving a game or a setting and one I've very rarely bestowed.

Over the years, I've had only a handful of ultimate campaigns, the most recent one prior to House of Worms being early this century, shortly after the release of the Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I refereed a terrific campaign set in the Planescape setting that lasted four years with the same group of five players. At the conclusion of that campaign, I had, in my opinion, so completely made use of the setting, exploring the questions it raised about its idiosyncratic take on AD&D's planar cosmology, not to mention ringing huge changes on it, that I simply cannot conceive of a circumstance where'd want to revisit it, let alone actually do so. What my friends and I did over those four years was, by some definition, perfect and I'd be doing our shared experiences a disservice by going back to it.

I imagine the notion of an "ultimate campaign" might seem strange, even ridiculous, to some readers. One of the promises of the roleplaying medium is that it's infinitely re-usable, which is to say, you can keep playing a given RPG over and over and never exhaust its possibilities. I agree with that and, in fact, consider it one of the greatest virtues of roleplaying games as a form of entertainment. Nevertheless, I also believe that roleplaying can and often does create such singular experiences that they leave those who participate in them unwilling and unable even to contemplate attempting to replicate them. Those experiences engender a recognition that a game or a game setting has now reached its pinnacle for them; it is, for lack of a better word, "done."

Fortunately, there are a more roleplaying games and settings available than any single person could ever use in multiple lifetimes, never mind just one. When House of Worms ends – not if, because nothing lasts forever – that means I'll now have the opportunity to play something else. Whatever it is, I'll make an earnest attempt to play that game through to its end as well, though the likelihood is that I won't quite hit the mark. As I said, ultimate campaigns are few and far between, but I know they exist and I think they are worth aiming for.