As you know, I'm currently refereeing three different roleplaying game campaigns: House of Worms (Empire of the Petal Throne), Barrett's Raiders (Twilight: 2000), and Dolmenwood (which doesn't have a separate name, despite my long-held practice of bestowing them). Dolmenwood is the newest of the three, having been started a little less than a year ago (November 2024), while the other two of much older vintage – House of Worms has been going for over a decade of continuous play, while Barrett's Raiders will celebrate its fourth anniversary this December.
Though I never specifically set out to run a multi-year campaign when I began any of these, I nevertheless hoped that they would last for several years. Indeed, it remains my firm belief that roleplaying games are best enjoyed not as some casual entertainment but as something demanding more sustained commitment from both players and the referee. This is, in my opinion, the ideal form of roleplaying, for reasons I've elucidated elsewhere. Consequently, I always feel a little bit defeated when a new campaign doesn't quite take and sputters out after only a few weeks or months.
Of course, if I look back at the more than four decades I've been involved in this hobby, I can see far more "failed" campaigns, which is to say, campaigns lasting a year or less, than those lasting two or more years, never mind a decade. House of Worms is truly unique. Were I to live to be one hundred, I doubt I will ever strike gold the way I have with House of Worms. Even after all this time, its longevity is inexplicable to me – a one-of-a-kind coincidence of elements that I couldn't have planned no matter how hard I tried (and I didn't). As that campaign prepares for its conclusion, I cannot help but be profoundly grateful for the experience of such a long and enjoyable campaign.
I bring all this up as something of a prolog to a conversation I recently had with my adult daughter, who's a bit more plugged into the contemporary RPG scene than I am. We were out somewhere and I saw a new roleplaying game with which I wasn't familiar. I thought the idea behind it was interesting but very focused. I told her that I couldn't imagine anyone being able to play this game for very long, to which she replied, "Not everyone wants to play the same game continuously for years."
Now, obviously, I knew this to be true. Even so, hearing her say that made me ponder the question a bit more. How many of the games I own are broad enough in concept that I can imagine playing them for years? The truth is fewer than I would have thought. Certainly, Dungeons & Dragons and its various descendants have proved that they can support long-term play. I don't hesitate in saying that about Traveller as well, but what about, say, Call of Cthulhu? Is it possible to play a continuous CoC campaign for years with the same group of characters (more or less)? I know of long-running Call of Cthulhu campaigns but how common are they and are the odds stacked against them, given the frame of the game?
Mind you, I'd argue that the odds are stacked against most RPGs, not necessarily because of their rules or even their focus but because most players and referees grow bored of them after a while. Gamer ADD is a real thing and always has been, though I think it's gotten worse in the last couple of decades. If I had to venture a guess as to why, I think its roots are twofold. First, I think most people nowadays are much more easily distracted. There are so many shiny things competing for their attention that it's harder and harder to keep them on task. Second, there are so many more RPGs to choose from. Gamers have always been prone to neophilia in my experience, so when there are literally dozens of new games released every year, it's little wonder that they find it difficult to commit to any one of them for more than a few weeks or months. They wouldn't want to "miss out," would they?
I see convention-style gaming as very different from campaign style. Campaign style gaming *is* gaming to me: that this character has a future and that I will be playing that future. So many of the choices that I make as a player are different in a campaign than in a one-shot or what is basically a one-shot that lasts for two or three sessions because gaming is not the reason we’re there.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that highlights that I’m the old guy in our current group is that they refer to adventures and to campaigns as if they meant the same thing. “We’ll be playing John’s campaign this weekend” where John’s campaign is a single adventure meant to be played out in one night. When we playtest adventures that I’ll be running at North Texas, those adventures are my “campaign”.
I want a character with a real, played history behind him and a real, played future ahead of him—preferably a played future with experienced consequences, including but not limited to death or other removal from the game. When we talk about the wonder of gaming and how you can never have that sense of the wonder of playing for the first time, that isn’t entirely true. A campaign character, especially in a superb game with a superb GM but even in an everyday game with an everyday GM, always includes a sense of wonder because the character has that kind of a future.
I'm pushing 60 and have never minded short campaigns or one-shots. They offer their own unique pleasures. As you say, James, there are few game systems that can sustain the long campaign. Without short campaigns, or one-shots adventures, many, many genres would be off the table. It's fun to experiment. Variety is the spice of life. Sometimes you just want to be a superhero or a spy or a Klingon or a hard boiled detective.
ReplyDeleteAnd it isn't either-or. Usually we were playing long campaigns simultaneous to these one-offs.
Some of my fondest gaming memories include sessions of those short-lived campaigns. I don't see them as having failed, any more than an appetizer is a failure when compared to the main course. Both are very welcome at my table.
You've said pretty much everything I would have on the subject, right down to the "pushing 60" part. I don't think our mindset is a product of our age either, I know plenty of 20--somethings who happily mix a long-running multi-year campaign or two with a steady diet of one-shots and short arcs. What formats one enjoys is subjective, varies depending on the people at any given table, and there's no one "right way" to enjoy roleplaying.
DeleteI agree...for Marvel Superheroes or Gangbusters or Paranoia. But for D&D, Rolemaster, Runequest, etc.? A one-shot is a patch, a tournament ,or a birthday party celebration at best, and at worst a disappointment. The first 2-3 levels of a character is an introduction to how that character operates in the world, and how their actions impact its future on a tiny scale.
DeleteEven tournament plays turned into long campaigns, because of their intense nature - you just develop your PC a little faster.
When I got too old/busy to invest in long-form roleplaying, I stopped roleplaying. Short campaigns (and worse, oneshots) were just too wholly dissatisfying, something that happened by accident, a big campaign that didn't get a good start or just crashed out.
That's just my experience. Maybe in my "older than Lovecraft ever was" days, I should try to play a one-shot, and see if I have a better appreciation for it.
Gamma World would be a good example of a game designed for shortish campaigns. Players face a higher risk of death from radiation and assorted monsters without the benefit of reliable technology or magic, and there are no levels to aspire to, just survival. You need to be ready to say goodbye to a character as soon as you roll it up.
DeleteMeasuring campaign length by calendar years isn't terribly useful, since the frequency of play between groups (and even within the same group) can vary wildly. A year long campaign where you're meeting once a week is a very different animal than one on a monthly schedule, and I dare say some of the "short" campaigns from when I was in my teens and twenties met so frequently that they rivalled House of Worms in terms of overall hours spent gaming. Measuring by sessions isn't much better since session length varies a lot too, but it's probably easier to track than actually keeping track of hours played. In many (most?) cases, you lose a fair chunk of every session to recaps, socializing, meals, and other non-gaming stuff anyway, so just going by hours invested is a bit illusory too unless you "stop the clock" outside of when everyone's focused on playing. I don't know anyone who tracks things that accurately, personally.
ReplyDeleteSo the question becomes, roughly how many hours of active play over the course of a campaign are you counting as "failed" or "successful" here?
I suppose I'm judging anything less than about 100 hours of total play time as a "failure," though it's not just about hours played but something a little more nebulous.
DeleteFor example, I don't think that calendar time is a completely illegitimate way to judge these things in the sense that part of what makes a long campaign long is the commitment of its participants to keep playing together despite the vicissitudes of life. Obviously, if a group only meets a couple of times each year for ten years, it's not quite the same as meeting for six-hour sessions every week for just a couple of years, but I can't help but feel that reducing this discussion to clock time is any better than focusing solely on the calendar.
I realize this is probably unhelpful. I suppose it shows that my thoughts on this are not yet fully formed.
Technically, calendar time, originally, was in-game time whenever the game was not at play. Stop a session in the middle of a dungeon and get back to it in a month? The surviving characters have run out of provisions and water and have made it through 20-30 days of Wandering Monster Table rolls.
DeleteThat's why it was so important to have a mapper and keep an eye on the clock in the early days. You fled the dungeon or hunkered down and made darn sure your game met again as soon as possible!
I think cumulative play time is less important than number of sessions. But there is something special, if different, about a campaign that lasts years but meets at most a few times a year. It's the ongoing commitment that makes for a long campaign to be something special.
DeleteThat said, I think my current RuneQuest campaign may have any other campaign of mine beat by hours of play in addition to having been running more than 7 years. But I don't have a solid idea of the number of sessions of my earlier campaigns from the days of running 6+, 8+, even 10+ hour sessions almost every week.
Like you, I have found that I like the *idea* that a campaign will go on for years, but so many do not. More recently, I find myself (usually as a player) getting bored with many of my group's longer games, and dropping out after 1-2 years and begging for shorter ones to begin with.
ReplyDeleteWhen I start planning games, my dreams usually go straight to, "I want this to go on forever!", and then I inject the reality of, "Let's plan for 3-5 sessions, with an option for 10-12, and see what happens." In a few cases (Traveller), people have asked for returns to those previous games.
In regard to new games written more tightly to a short-campaign model, that was one of (several) turn-offs for me from the Free League edition of Twilight:2000. From the setup given, I couldn't see how a game would last more than a few weeks.
When my original obsessive passion for D&D began to dissolve after college, while dispensing with some of my gaming materials (that I of course wish I had back today), I came across a small stack of frozen players from stalled campaigns.
ReplyDeleteThat empty feeling of unrealized potential was worse than ditching all my modules.
It took me a moment to parse what you are saying, but totally agree that finding that folder of 6th level characters from an old campaign and remembering where they were abandoned is it's own special form of heartbreak...
DeleteLong form campaigns can be paused or put on hiatus. I resumed a high school AD&D 2nd Ed. campaign setting with my original group 27 years hence via the magic of online play. I also look back over the years and the times I had more free time and was a single man without kids afforded me the most gaming time which aided regular long term play.
ReplyDelete> my tastes and preferences are increasingly out of touch with what the hobby seems to be about
ReplyDeleteI'm not entirely sure that you can safely draw that conclusion. I mean, maybe it's true (and it's undeniable that as we get older we are generally less excited to try new things), but it seems natural to me that the people that like to play many different games and try new ones (I'm one of those people, for the record), tend to generate more "noise": news, reviews, blogs posts, products, sales, convention attendance. People that play years-long campaigns are just a lot less visible.
I agree with the last Anonymous poster. Also, there are a LOT of popular titles by Chaosium, free league, modiphius, etc. that support long term play. And even the "indie" titles can go "long" - I just started a DungeonWorld campaign that might last a few months or go longer.
ReplyDeleteI don’t really ever start a campaign with any goal so far as duration. Usually it’s just something I, or members of my group, are interested in trying out (or revisiting) at the time. Some stick, others scratch that itch until we feel like exploring some different genre.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Call of Cthulhu: I just can’t imagine playing a multi-year campaign. I many ways, I think that particular game is almost meant to be played as a one-shot, or a short campaign with a definite end point.
Once the characters become fully aware of the “Cosmic Horror” that’s out there… what? They essentially become a gang of “monster hunters”. I don’t even think, at that point, Sanity Rules should apply. “Well guys, sounds like another cult to a Great Old One is operating near Arkham, let’s get the shotguns, hand grenades, and flame thrower and get to work…”
Of course some games, like Pendragon, are specifically meant to be played as a long term campaign. Just don’t use Greg’s Great Pendragon Campaign, unless you’re into an exceptionally long railroad ride….
During COVID I set up an online RPG campaign with three players (I was the DM) who were living in different countries.
ReplyDeleteThe campaign itself lasted a bit over two years (I based it in Al-Qadim but we were using Mini-six) - we would play almost every week.
But sometimes one of the players would not be able to join us, so I thought this could be a good chance to try out either new systems or new themes as "one shots".
In retrospective, I found that - at least for me - even if I stick to self contained, ready-to-play stuff and consciously selected very light rule systems (like Cepheum Quantum, TinySix or Tunnel Goons derivatives)... I was never able to find a sweet spot in terms of effort/fun (as a DM).
I.e. to prepare a one-shot would require significantly more effort (on my part) than just prepping the next session of the main campaign.
Also, it was basically impossible to actually make the adventure exactly fit the "one session" format.
Even if the stories were eminently exploration/combat oriented the players still struggled to adapt to the new universe, the new characters and all. So most of the time I either had to prematurely end the "episode" or (in one case) manage to stretch it to another game night.
Neither choices felt very natural or satisfying to me, though.
So for what is worth for me "short campaigns" do not seem to be worth it: if I really prepare a "one shot" I end up putting in lots of effort while still feeling straightjacketed by the time limit.
To be honest I never tried to prepare and play a "mini campaign" (i.e. a series of connected episodes that might take 3-4 nights to complete), so maybe there is a sweet spot between effort and satisfaction... but my overall experience so far has always been much more satisfying if I do not have to play with an already set ending date for my stories.
I think Masks of Nyarlathotep (Call of Cthulhu) is an exceptionally well done “mini-campaign” (as in, a campaign with a predetermined end point that’s not wildly far-off).
DeleteHi. Usually, when we ran one-offs or short campaigns alongside a long campaign, they were run by different GMs, which lightened the load.
DeleteThe one-shots or short games ended up giving a break to the GM of the long campaign. It gave the player group an amuse-bouche, that had them return to the long campaign refreshed. And it let the GMs of the one-shot games (who were players in the long campaign) scratch an itch they had about a new genre or rule system.
One-shot gaming is common at gaming conventions, naturally, and many tournament modules are in print, making the GM's work easier. :)
Unfortunately I was hit by the GM Curse decades ago.
DeleteEverybody (in my circle) constantly blathers about "I have an idea for a campaign... but I have not decided on which system to use yet" but in the end if I want to play I have to be the referee.
And this also means choosing players, setting up a regular schedule and so on.
When we were doing this "let's play a one shot when one of the regular players is away" I ended up running 3 separate one shots, and one of the players tried to follow suit and managed to put together a one shot all by himself (mostly by copying the approach I used for my previous game).
The result was definitely a disappointment... because (IMHO) being a GM is also an acquired skill, no matter if you only run episodic stuff or if you manage to keep up the same campaign for decades.
Way too many value judgments about the facts of life: the lack of long-term campaigns is not a failure; people have lives outside of RPGs - it's not a matter of ADD or distractions. There are a lot of different games out there that people want to try, and they shouldn't be categorized as suffering from FOMO because of it. Friendships are hard enough to maintain, let alone appointment-bound ones. You've had a handful of long-term campaigns in 50 years - maybe that's the normal?
ReplyDelete