Thursday, April 20, 2023

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. 

15 comments:

  1. Man, I get that. And really, since I hit my 50's, it hit pretty hard that we only have a finite amount of time, and after going to auctions of gamers that recently passed and picking up games that were unused (in some cases unopened) I am determined to use what I have while I have it. I thoroughly understand wrapping up a system or a setting, definitely after running a D&D 3.0 game for 12 years straight, and having an awesome, epic conclusion to the campaign that I'll never be able to top or replicate. It's best to go out on a high note!

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    1. Hang on, are you telling me you CAN die with unpainted miniatures left?

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  2. Do you think you would go back to Gm'ing your home brewed settings, like sha-Arthan or Dwimmermount?

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    1. I already have plans to begin a sha-Arthan campaign sometime this summer. When House of Worms ends, I'll probably replace it with another game. Which one, I won't know till the time comes.

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  3. _"I refereed a terrific campaign set in the Planescape setting that lasted four years with the same group of five players."_

    I would like to know more.

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  4. It is interesting that you bring this concept up. I'm contemplating returning to a campaign setting I ran for 10+ years as my next campaign. Not the same characters and place, but the same world and continent, just 30 years or so later.

    I originally stopped running the campaign as I found I had no idea where to go next. The PCs had just completes a save the world adventure arc and I had no idea where to take them next. This would seem to meet your definition and leaves me asking myself if I really want to revive that campaign world or not. Am I suffering nostalgia or do I really have ideas again? I need to think on this more before I have to pull the trigger. Good article!

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  5. While I don't have the kinds of long term campaigns under my belt many folks do, there are still quite a few games I've played or run enough of that I feel no itch to go back to them.

    World of Darkness got a fair chunk of five years and I've done all with it I wanted to do. Same goes for Aberrant, despite my general fondness for supers gaming.

    Gamma World only got about three years, maybe four, but for me it's so tied to teenage memories the only thing I've done with it in decades was a brief bit of dabbling with the WotC version. Which I enjoyed, but for the novelty of their unique take on it, not for any sense of nostalgia.

    Never want to roleplay in Warhammer's Old World again either. GW's abandonment of the setting in pursuit of profit still rankles, and I don't enjoy the kind of gritty hopelessness it was best at portraying much any more.

    And Tekumel, well, no. Never again. Especially with the continued silence out of the Foundation over what they've done to make up for their part in the coverup. Been over a year now. No signs of "reaching out to several Jewish organizations" having done anything meaningful like dedicating their (no doubt meager) profits to groups fighting against anti-Semitism. Just silence.

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    1. Yes, after all those decades of Tekumel having no discernable anti-Semitic content, the Foundation certainly owes the Jewish community so much money. Typical ADL shakedown. I'll keep my comment to just this.

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    2. I'd love to run an ultimate campaign in Tekumel, but right now I'm developing a set of scenarios in Middle Earth, based on the old ICE modules (before the company lost its license to make Tolkien products). I just finished my design of the city of Minas Morgul, and while it easily serves as a stand-alone sandbox as I've designed it, I'm starting to see potential for it tying in with a wider campaign linked to the southern region of Middle-Earth (the deep, deep south, that is).

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  6. This is an answer to both this post and the following post...

    Hmm, while there are RPGs I have run that I'm pretty sure I'll never return to, I wouldn't label those ultimate campaigns, rather they were things that just didn't end up holding a strong interest.

    As to campaigns that might reach for the ultimate label? I've yet to have any campaign last long enough to reach this consideration. And at this point, probably almost the only campaign that could reach that status would be Glorantha using RuneQuest rules. But even if I had such a long campaign that the campaign actually came to a satisfactory closure, I'm pretty sure I'd be happy to start a new Glorantha campaign. Maybe in a different region, or maybe the same region.

    I think in part I've come to a different conclusion as I age. Rather than looking forward to trying out things I haven't tried, I'm collapsing my interest towards the games that have stood the test of time for me. Because that list is down to a handful (RuneQuest, Cold Iron, Classic Traveller, and early D&D), I've still got plenty of time to try new things with those. Sure, there are a few other things I'd like to try, but some may be tried as a player like Tekumel or Talislanta as I'm really not confident I could GM those.

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  7. Insightful topic! We had an ultimate campaign that not only ended our desire to play a game system, it ended our desire to play any game! The experience was so complete, we quit gaming for 20 years. The OSR brought us back.

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  8. The idea of an 'Ultimate Campaign' in the way you describe it here terrifies me to my core. If I were to exhaust all of my ideas for a given genre or setting such that I saw no reasons to return to it I can't imagine what I'd do. t's unthinkable to me. It almost represents a persona failure to me, a collapse of my imagination and any skill I pretend to have as a GM.

    When I was about 12 (or so) I ran a Boot Hill campaign with considerable Homebrew and House Rules. It was so good that I have never run another Wild West campaign since (though I have done one-shots here there). I am now 54 and I fear I can not top that game. It was definitely an Ultimate Campaign and it tears me up inside every time I think about it. The idea that I can't outdo myself in regards to a game I ran some 40+ years ago...am I even a real GM?

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    1. Don't make posts using a cell phone. Autocorrect is the enemy of conversation. LOL

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    2. It's wisdom to not mess with perfection. How many reunion albums top a band's best effort?

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