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Loooong Campaigns...How Do You Do It?
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<blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 3065363" data-attributes="member: 2"><p>Well said. I went in (June of 1992) hoping it would run for two or three years. I was lucky to pick good players at the start, and I started out using pre-written adventures from Dungeon almost exclusively, and they worked extremely well. </p><p></p><p>Then something weird happened. The aftermath of the adventures suggested new adventures - ones that weren't in Dungeon magazine. An escaped doppelganger would logically make trouble for the party, and an evil cult became a reoccurring thorn in the side. The game took on a life of its own. When Planescape came out, it was a perfect fit and the group did some planar adventuring as well.</p><p></p><p>The game was, however, still almost wholly episodic; there was no real over-arching plot line. I had never seen one before, and had no idea how to pull it off. By then I was playing in Sagiro's campaign (in its 12th year!) and learned from a master. I dropped in a Great Big Plot (tm) that would require the heroes to travel all over the continent. See, the PCs mostly stayed in a relatively small geographic area, since world building was pretty intimidating to me. I had my feet underneath me and wanted to branch out. So I started making travel mandatory if they wanted to stop their foes. This was great fun for me; it was the first time I really expanded my world, and I got to drop in all kinds of cool stuff. </p><p></p><p>The big plot was supposed to take six months to complete. It actually took two years. I had developed a habit for dropping in side quests; these really helped pacing and variety, but did slow down the big finale.</p><p></p><p>At this point, we were seven years into the game and folks were about 12th level (in 2e). I had originally considered ending the game after the big plot finale, but there turned out to be a lot of other fun stuff I wanted to try, so we continued - and the gaming kept getting better. In addition, we had the opportunity to playtest 3e at that point, and when a 2e game would have turned moribund (14th lvl or so), 3e made all kinds of things seem new again. I also had more than a dozen continuing plot threads at this point, so we all wanted to continue the game. No one <em>wanted</em> to start new heroes, because they wanted to know what would happen next.</p><p></p><p>That's probably my best advice for having a long-running campaign. Make the world reflect the changes caused by the heroes. If they see the game world changing because of what they do, they're going to have a lot of buy-in to the game, and they'll want to make things change. the other advice is for pacing: use one or more long-term plots, but intersperse those liberally with shorter, unrelated adventures.</p><p></p><p>Incidentally, we play every other week for 3-4 hours, always on the same day. Not as often as I'd like, but the weekday schedule and consistency means that we have very little trouble scheduling, and almost never need to cancel unless lots of people are sick. It's also clear that I like slow advancement, about one level every ten sessions. Interestingly, I've never had people complain that they were getting bored - possibly because I try to challenge their various capabilities at every level, so that they have a chance to use and understand all their new abilities.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Piratecat, post: 3065363, member: 2"] Well said. I went in (June of 1992) hoping it would run for two or three years. I was lucky to pick good players at the start, and I started out using pre-written adventures from Dungeon almost exclusively, and they worked extremely well. Then something weird happened. The aftermath of the adventures suggested new adventures - ones that weren't in Dungeon magazine. An escaped doppelganger would logically make trouble for the party, and an evil cult became a reoccurring thorn in the side. The game took on a life of its own. When Planescape came out, it was a perfect fit and the group did some planar adventuring as well. The game was, however, still almost wholly episodic; there was no real over-arching plot line. I had never seen one before, and had no idea how to pull it off. By then I was playing in Sagiro's campaign (in its 12th year!) and learned from a master. I dropped in a Great Big Plot (tm) that would require the heroes to travel all over the continent. See, the PCs mostly stayed in a relatively small geographic area, since world building was pretty intimidating to me. I had my feet underneath me and wanted to branch out. So I started making travel mandatory if they wanted to stop their foes. This was great fun for me; it was the first time I really expanded my world, and I got to drop in all kinds of cool stuff. The big plot was supposed to take six months to complete. It actually took two years. I had developed a habit for dropping in side quests; these really helped pacing and variety, but did slow down the big finale. At this point, we were seven years into the game and folks were about 12th level (in 2e). I had originally considered ending the game after the big plot finale, but there turned out to be a lot of other fun stuff I wanted to try, so we continued - and the gaming kept getting better. In addition, we had the opportunity to playtest 3e at that point, and when a 2e game would have turned moribund (14th lvl or so), 3e made all kinds of things seem new again. I also had more than a dozen continuing plot threads at this point, so we all wanted to continue the game. No one [i]wanted[/i] to start new heroes, because they wanted to know what would happen next. That's probably my best advice for having a long-running campaign. Make the world reflect the changes caused by the heroes. If they see the game world changing because of what they do, they're going to have a lot of buy-in to the game, and they'll want to make things change. the other advice is for pacing: use one or more long-term plots, but intersperse those liberally with shorter, unrelated adventures. Incidentally, we play every other week for 3-4 hours, always on the same day. Not as often as I'd like, but the weekday schedule and consistency means that we have very little trouble scheduling, and almost never need to cancel unless lots of people are sick. It's also clear that I like slow advancement, about one level every ten sessions. Interestingly, I've never had people complain that they were getting bored - possibly because I try to challenge their various capabilities at every level, so that they have a chance to use and understand all their new abilities. [/QUOTE]
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