Poll: Type of Campaign You Play

[Hussar]

I think you would get significantly different results if your "short" was 18 months or less. 18 months seems to be the watershed mark for most campaigns.

 

[Tortoise]

Is the question is what you "usually" play, then you can't usually play all of them, can you?

Sure can. Our groups often have multiple things going on. The weekly group tends to have a couple different campaigns alternating play time and other people run one-shots in the breaks between switching main campaigns. Plus we sometimes have the opportunity for convention games, tournament games at cons, and pick-up games. So, yes. All of the above.

 

[Mattachine]

Then, Tortoise, you would squarely be in the "other" camp.


My cutoff time frames for each category were arbitrary. Still, the combination of the poll and comments did seem to produce the result that 12-18 month campaigns are common here on EN World.

 

[Hussar]

Matta - that's certainly been the case for a long time. And, IIRC, the WOTC market research way back in the mid-90's mirrored this as well.

 

[Lanefan]

Poll really needs one more option, for "mid-length campaign (1-3 years)", thus defining "long campaign" as 3+ years.

And I'd still be voting long.

For these purposes I don't count one-offs (usually a result of a bunch of us drinking too much beer and hauling out the dice) and I've only ever run one convention session; so the last (and thus far only) three that matter have gone 10.5 years, 11.7 years, and the current one which currently sits at 4 years.

Lanefan

 

[Lwaxy]

I could click most of the answers, but picked the long campaigns because all the single adventures and adventure paths usually combine into something bigger here.

 

[RYPros53]

I'm only 21, been D&Ding since I was 12 but only recently have been able to DM a serious campaign (meaning, 5 players and I know how to actually play). Never have I run a campaign that lasted more than a few sessions but this was always because of players not myself. I expect my current game to go MAYBE a year if I'm lucky.

What I want to know is where are the players (or DMs) who play 2+ year campaigns meeting (online - preferably VT) at least once every two weeks? Contact me because I would live that sort of devotion to a campaign.

So put me down for long campaigns, even though I've never been in one, it's always been my dream.

 

[Hussar]

I'm only 21, been D&Ding since I was 12 but only recently have been able to DM a serious campaign (meaning, 5 players and I know how to actually play). Never have I run a campaign that lasted more than a few sessions but this was always because of players not myself. I expect my current game to go MAYBE a year if I'm lucky.

What I want to know is where are the players (or DMs) who play 2+ year campaigns meeting (online - preferably VT) at least once every two weeks? Contact me because I would live that sort of devotion to a campaign.

So put me down for long campaigns, even though I've never been in one, it's always been my dream.

Honestly dude, you're not alone in this. I think probably, your closer to the norm than anything. And really, when you think about it, it's not that hard to figure out.

14-18 years old - High school. Well, supposing you manage to get a group together at 14, then, if you make the jump from junior high to high school, your friends move apart and your group fragments. And, let's face it, between school, part time jobs, girlfriends, and a HUGE amount of other things you could be doing, it's not easy to get 5 or 6 people in the same room at the same time weekly, let alone consistently for two years. Life is pretty topsy turvy.

19-23 (ish) - college age. Again, people move around and go off to school. Maybe you go away to school yourself. So, you've got this honking big break in the summer where half your group is all over the place and when you come back in the next year, who knows if your schedules match up again.

24-30+ - work, moving, getting married, kids. gaming takes a pretty serious beating here.

So, really dude, I don't think you're an outlier at all. It's us old fogies that grew up gaming before the Internet and Playstation 3 and Skyrim that have managed to have these longer term games. For someone your age right now? Yeah, I can see that being really, really tough.

Back when I was gaming in uni, campaigns lasted about 8 months because that's when school let out.

 

[pemerton]

Some of these posts are making me feel lucky that the group I game with is still the successor-in-title to my old uni group that I started GMing in 1990. I'm the only point of continuity going back all that way - the longest term of the current members joined in 1998, though I was playing in other games with a couple of them as early as 1993.

I had one player from 1992 until early 2009, but he then moved to England (where he is now married to an American and has a kid, and so is probably not coming back to Melbourne!).

 

[Mattachine]

I was a regular player from age 10-13.

By age 13, I primarily DMed games. I ran a mix of single adventures and campaigns that lasted a few months.

By age 16, I began a campaign that lasted about two years. I DMed nearly the whole time, with occasional breaks playing Marvel Super Heroes.

In college, ages 18-22, I hardly played D&D, which is the opposite of many people's experience. When I did play, it was typical for single adventures (usually lasting 2-3 sessions).

After college, I played MtG more than D&D, but did play in several campaigns. They were long (a year or two), but play sessions were monthly, rather than weekly.

Since about age 30, I have run mostly 9-12 month games, favoring "mega-adventures" over free-from campaigns. A premade adventure path does so much work for you, even using it as a starting place is much easier than creating a free-form campaign from scratch.

Now, at age 40, I am running a campaign in my own game world, Under a False Sky, that I have even posted here on EN World. It is a fully-realized 140 page source book. I hope that my campaign lasts over a year--we are in month 8 now. Our group plays about three times per month, for 2-3 hours a session being typical.