D&D General How often do you complete a campaign as a player?

[TwoSix]

If you're trying to kill it because you're bored of playing it, why not just have it in-character retire from adventuring and bring in something new?

Because our current DM isn't a huge fan of bringing in new PCs in the middle of an adventure arc. He doesn't like the disruption.

 

[Lanefan]

Finding a group of people with these characteristics, who you also get along with and share gaming tastes with, is a very tricky business.

It helps immensely if these are people you already know from outside the game; and if they've never played before then their tastes will likely be shaped by the first campaign they're in.

There are plenty of things I like about classic/OSR style play. But if you told me, "Hey, are you interested in playing in a campaign that will last a decade+ and we'll just keep playing the same system," I'd nope right out of there.

My usual answer to the question "How long will the campaign last?" is "Open-ended". I try to come up with a setting that had enough to it that it can support near-forever adventuring, and I'll storyboard out some big-picture story and adventure ideas for if nothing else appeals at the time, but going in I've no idea if it'll last two years, or five, or ten: I can't predict the future.

What's not in question, though, is that it'll be the same system all the way along; which if you're someone who system-hops would likely rule you out.

 

[Lanefan]

Because our current DM isn't a huge fan of bringing in new PCs in the middle of an adventure arc. He doesn't like the disruption.

Ah.

But isn't he going to have to deal with that same disruption anyway if you're successful in killing your character off?

 

[payn]

Character-hoppers are easy to deal with: just let 'em roll up new characters in the same ongoing campaign. I've seen and been that many a time.

System hoppers, though, can go play somewhere else.

Not for me I don’t do episodic west march style gaming. I’m more of a modern serial continuity style player.

 

[TwoSix]

Ah.

But isn't he going to have to deal with that same disruption anyway if you're successful in killing your character off?

Yep. But then the disruption is an organic part of play (not pulling punches with PC death is a generally agreed upon fact at this table), and not something I'm pushing onto the DM.

It's not a huge deal, but it would be a minor breach of table etiquette for me to say "Sorry about the whole undead invasion going on, but Verklempt has some other places to be, later gators!"

 

[James Gasik]

Ah.

But isn't he going to have to deal with that same disruption anyway if you're successful in killing your character off?

No, he'll just have a wandering Druid reincarnate the character as a badger!

 

[TwoSix]

No, he'll just have a wandering Druid reincarnate the character as a badger!

To be fair, this is 100% something my current DM would do.

And I would roleplay the hell out of that badger.

 

[James Gasik]

To be fair, this is 100% something my current DM would do.

And I would roleplay the hell out of that badger.

It's a reference to the much-maligned Castle Greyhawk, where you encounter an adventuring party down on their luck- all but the Druid died, and they were reincarnated thusly:

The Wizard is a (grumpy) badger.

The Thief is a Centauress (Kentaurides?), complete with the racial adjustments for her thieving skills!

The Paladin is a Pixie (his warhorse laughed itself to death!).

They were all set to kill themselves and try again when the Druid encountered a Wight and lost two levels, thus they are forced to adventure in this sorry state to try and get him leveled up again!

 

[Hussar]

You answered your own question in the preceding paragraph.


Finding a group of people with these characteristics, who you also get along with and share gaming tastes with, is a very tricky business.

There are plenty of things I like about classic/OSR style play. But if you told me, "Hey, are you interested in playing in a campaign that will last a decade+ and we'll just keep playing the same system," I'd nope right out of there.

Never minding people like students who most certainly don’t fit this bill. Heck most people under thirty don’t fit. Additionally, anyone in the military.

I’m not about to say that DnD should mostly be played by retirees who own homes.

 

[TwoSix]

The short-campaign-as-normal thing is IMO a direct result of WotC marketing* in the 3e era (and since), as short campaigns are extremely likely to lead to more demand for books and materials. WotC outright said, for 3e, that the game is designed to go from start to finish in 18 months give or take; and people took that to heart and (sadly) normalized it. WotC sold more books, and then watched and learned as Paizo refined the process into the single-path-as-whole-campaign model, leading to the current-day corporately-mandated "normal".

Forgot to mention this before. My recollection is that WotC didn't "choose" this model; their surveys prior to 3e indicated that most groups only averaged between a year and 2 years for their campaigns before ending it.

Obviously, their product line leveraged that fact, but I don't think that decision is the root cause of short campaigns being more normalized. I think it was always the case that shorter games were the norm; people simply didn't plan and design around that fact, and would feel bad they didn't reach a standard most people weren't meeting anyway.