How Common Were Long Campaigns?

A topic that I think is worthy of further discussion is the extent to which the contemporary "old school" RPG scene is characterized by varying degrees of hyper-correction to the real and imagined excesses of the subsequent (post-1990 or thereabouts) hobby. For the moment, I want to focus on one area where this hyper-correction might exist: long campaigns. I say "might," because I honestly don't know the extent to which lengthy, multi-year campaigns were all that commonplace in the past, even among the founders of the hobby. Certainly, if you read things like the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, such campaigns were clearly the ideal, at least in some quarters, but what about the reality? Just how common were long campaigns of the sort that I've been extolling for the last few years on this blog?

By most accounts, the earliest version of what would come to be called the Blackmoor campaign appeared sometime in late 1970 or early 1971. Over the course of the next four to five years, Dave Arneson continued to referee adventures set in Blackmoor, with a rotating roster of players (and characters), though there seems to have been a significant amount of continuity during that time period. Gary Gygax's Greyhawk campaign began sometime in 1972 and continued to be played, off and on, throughout the remainder of the decade, again with a rotating roster of players. Then there's Greg Stafford's Dragon Pass campaign and Steve Perrin's one in Prax, not to mention whatever Marc Miller and the GDW crew were doing in the Spinward Marches.

How many of the foregoing were "long" campaigns in the way we've been talking about them lately? Much depends, I suppose, on how you define both terms. For myself, a "campaign" is a continuous series of adventures/sessions in a fictional setting with a regular, if not necessarily static, set of players. I'm sure people could quibble with almost every aspect of my definition, especially since many of the foundational campaigns of the hobby might not qualify under its terms. Likewise, my definition, for all its specificity, is silent on questions as basic as whether a campaign with multiple referees – like the Greyhawk campaign that was eventually co-refereed by Rob Kuntz – is one campaign or two. Then, there's the Ship of Theseus question of how many of the elements of a campaign's beginning must persist over time for it to qualify as the "same" campaign, to say nothing of what constitutes "long." Is length determined by the calendar, the number of sessions, or the time spent playing?

I think these are all important questions, even if we can't easily agree on the answers. Simply asking them is, in my opinion, a good way to fumble toward a better understanding of this hobby, its parameters, and its history. For example, M.A.R. Barker's Thursday night Tékumel campaign would seem to be a paradigmatic example of a long campaign, lasting as it did, with many of the same players, from the late '70s into the 21st century. Though there are no doubt other examples of similarly long-running campaigns, the "Thursday Night Group" is quite likely the highest profile one of which I know. Its longevity and degree of continuity surpasses that of anything Arneson, Gygax, Stafford, or any of the other founders have the hobby ever achieved. That's no small accomplishment, but is it in any way representative of what a long campaign is or should be?

There's also the question of what RPG players in the wider world beyond were doing. How many of them were involved in long campaigns? Depending on how you want to look at it, I was part of either the second or third wave of roleplayers, entering the hobby at the very end of 1979 and beginning serious play of RPGs in early 1980. My friends and I were young – I would have been 10 years old at the time – and, while we knew older, more experienced gamers and were influenced by them, we mostly forged our own paths. For the most part, that path did not include long campaigns. Instead, we flitted from game to game, playing D&D intensely for a month or two, then doing the same with Gamma World or Traveller or Call of Cthulhu, before returning to D&D or whatever other game caught or fancy at the time.

I doubt we were alone in this sort of behavior and I suspect that, as the RPG industry grew, producing ever more games, our behavior was much more widespread than sticking with one game devotedly for years on end. That's not to say we never played a single game for long stretches of time and to the exclusion of others – we did – but these were exceptions rather than the rule, at least until I attended college. Indeed, it was only with adulthood that I succeeded in refereeing a multi-year campaign with the same players and their characters. All the long campaigns I can recall have occurred after I was in my 20s and I sometimes wonder if the level of attentiveness necessary to maintain campaigns of this sort is only possible after a certain age.

So, how common were long campaigns in the past? I wish I knew, if only because I think it's important to understand the history of the hobby as it was rather than as we wish it were.