How infrequently is too infrequently?

[willpax]

About a year and a half ago, my brother bought several copies of the 3rd edition rules in an attempt to get our old group from the 1980s back into roleplaying. It worked, to a certain extent: we have revived our old campaign world, and are currently taking a band of adventurers through my too-subtle, over-clever, nefarious world-spanning plots that hint at secrets-man-was-not-meant-to-know (TM, H.P. Lovecraft).

Unfortunately (and unlike back in high school), our lives are much more complicated. Most of us are married with young children, our homes span three separate urban areas, and we all work full time. In addition, several are fanatic college football fans, meaning that most weekends in the fall are busy.

In that year and a half, we have played four 5-6 hour sessions. The characters are all third level (I bumped them up to handle some more interesting encounters; they have second level experience and will probably not reach L4 for a while). My worry is that we play much too infrequently for any sort of campaign coherence.

There are several things we do between sessions: we have email exchanges and phone conversations to help me know character ambitions and other useful types of information; I have sent out several "ongoing plot hook" newsletters to try to refresh their memory from session to session (If I ever have time, I might try to turn them into a story hour); and a "previous episode" review at the beginning of each session.

Two questions for the board:

1) How infrequently is it possible to play before it seriously undermines the gaming experience (especially when one is attempting to run rather dense, plot-based campaigns as opposed to more encapsulated and/or combat oriented sessions);

2) What inventive tactics/story pacing/creativetechniques have you developed to help maintain some continuity between longer breaks from gaming?

 

[Shin Okada]

1) It is difficult. Once I had about a half year break between two sessions in a campaign, when I and all my friends were busy preparing for university examinations (a long time ago).

2) It was for a Call of Cthulhu campaign, but after every session, one player (in rotation) wrote a "note" or "diary" from his PC's point of view and gave it to other players.

The last "diary" written by my character was ended like this, "Now they are coming, I must go......."

 

[Number47]

Most of us are married with young children...

That's just sick!

 

[EOL]

Well let's just say I wouldn't want to try it. I guess if I was in your position I might try to do a PBEM/face-to-face hybrid. Handle all the story and role-playing elements as a PBEM and then get together every other month for some combat.

 

[D'karr]

Any gap longer than once a month starts to stretch it out way too far.

I have a gaming group in much the same predicament as yours. We've set aside one Saturday a month to game. We game for almost 10 hours on that day. We do get a lot of things done on that day but continuity is still lost between games. The campaign is also epic in scope with a war brewing and lots of investigation and political intrigue.

I try to keep the characters engaged by using e-mail. We also have a BB set up where one of the players sets a 'journal'. That way everyone can engage in the topic discussions at their own leisure.

This is actually my favorite group to DM. When we do get together the adventure is much more exciting because of the length of time between adventures. However, trying to focus on the current task at hand is sometimes difficult.

 

[Voadam]

I use "pigs in space" e-mail messages starting a month or two before our now once yearly gaming 3day weekend. These start off "When last we left our brave adventurers" and then recap the last game, the current situation, the current factors affecting the individual characters, and reminding them of the plot and little details (what did Baba Yaga tell us to do again, what was that big prophecy and why do we think we are working towards filling it, Clifford and Leviathan's wounds from the shifting tigers are throbbing, does that mean anything)

It helps that I have a good memory for the campaign's details and I am able to bring up the mysteries and relevant tidbits they have gathered but have forgotten.

We started out in Jr. High and gamed often all the way through high school, then scatered across the country for college and afterwards with games going to christmas break and summer to now once or twice a year. We come from four different states and 2 coasts now but we do it and have made a tradition of it.

Everybody in our group looks forward to our games and is ready to get into character and rip into the adventure right away. We have a great time even though it is so infrequent.

 

[Crothian]

Any less then once a month and it really gets hard to keep things together.

I'd try sesssion summaries and set ups. Within a week after the session write and overall summary of the session and include how events effect the world and world news and use it to help build the campaign. And then within a week of the next session, e-mail everyone a set up of what's happening. It can include further news and rumors that the charcters ask about. We do this for our by-weekly game and it helps out.

 

[Pigeon]

You could just try doing on off games, but keep the same characters. Kind of like stand alone episodes which have a beginning, middle and an end in themselves - Kind of "Star Trek the next generation" rather than "Bab5".

Of course an onging and complex interlinked campaign is more enjoyable, but a fix is a fix.

 

[Henry]

It's not impossible at ANY point, but someone had better have a gooooooood memory and a campaign diary.

Once a month sounds about right; longer than that, and you begin to forget not only what the goal was, but more importantly HOW the character was played. There can be a vast difference in characterization between NOW and EIGHT MONTHS from now; real life colors your perceptions and thoughts, you fall in love with other character ideas, etc.

Having been through 5 sessions now, you should have a good idea whether or not it's working.

If not, you could always plan for a series of "one-shots" when you get together. It would take about as much preparation as planning for a private party. Get the scenario together, pre-generate everyone's character for them, based on what they tell you through phone or e-mail ahead of time, and basically set up to do nothing at game time except game and have fun.

In this atmosphere it becomes less Story Hour and more Social Hour; but friends whose purpose are to gather together and have fun, will more enjoy completing the "mission" and having fun, than continuing development of a character that they do not have a lot of time for.

In this sense, plan as if you were setting up convention events; every game, you play a new character, with a different setting, and different challenges to overcome. When you don't have to worry about continuity, you can let your imagination run wild from setting to setting!

-In any event, when all is said and done, I hope you still can get together with friends and have fun for a long time to come.

 

[willpax]

Thanks for the feedback

Thanks you all for the feedback. I think I will see if any of the players would like to try the diary/log concept.

Number47: I think you may have misunderstood. "Married with" means something very different from "married to" according to my understanding. Of course, you could be disgusted by young children in general.

My hope is that we may be able to rach once session per month this summer, but with at least four non-gaming wives, that may be pushing it.