What Games are Best for Campaigning? Which are Not?

[saskganesh]

I really don't think system really matters here does it? It really comes down to DM design and player commitment and participation in a coherent world.

The other thing I would like to point out is that many (most?) campaigns never end. I know one fellow whose been in a 20 year onging game, (and they use D&D 2nd ed but that's by and by.) To me that's more impressive than a game which ended and was "completed" in a year or two.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think for a campaign there's more reason to need a rules-intensive system. Simple characters can get mechanically and dramatically boring over time, so there's an impetus to have complex characters with in-depth statblocks. There's also a push for flexibility to accomodate the breadth of topics and styles you'll need to keep the game as a whole interesting.

In short D&D (3.X) is an example of a game that works very well for long-term, complex play; (and while certainly effective is not ideal for shorter games). The same is true of PF, and 2e.

Conversely, Dragon Age is relatively simple, and though I wouldn't play a yearlong game, it's fun as a one-night stand just to change things up.

Horror games of any sort I think are very difficult to run as long campaigns. It's very difficult to create a sense of menace without having meaningful trauma to PCs at some point, and it's very difficult to maintain a campaign when your PCs die a lot. It can definitely be done, but it's a creative challenge.

 

[Ringlerun]

A lot of it comes to play style -- a game that makes a great campaign in one group may be only good for episodic adventures with another. I'd put Call of Cthulhu in that category -- it takes a carefully managed game to pull off a long term campaign.

I totally agree.

For me a campaign is more than just leveling my character or getting better skills. Its about the long term goals of my character.

A campaign is just a series of adventures that flow from the end of one adventure to the start of another. But below the surface you have the players long term goals as well as the GM's.

I have played in a few games were as a group we decided to do a one off just for the hell of it. And during the game everyone got enthralled by the story line and atmosphere and by the end we were all asking the GM "OK whens the next session"

On the other hand i have decided to run a campaign. Spent many a sleepless night writing up material to have the whole thing come to a screaming halt 3 games in. As a GM if you cant hook your players and get them excited about playing. Your campaign will turn into a one shot pretty quick.

On the surface it would seam that some system are better suited for campaigns than others but that can be misleading. I for one have never been in a oWod or nWod campaign. Every few years someone in my gaming group decided to run a vampire campaign and it always tanks. It has nothing to do with the system or the GM. Its just as a player collective we dont have much interest in vampires and such. So its doomed to fail from the get go. Then again as a group we have done campaigns in systems that would be considered one shot friendly only. Paranoia, Cthulhu, Robotech, Chill, GURPS, Twilight 2000, Rifts,

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Campaign can have quite a few different meanings. One of my favorites is the kind of campaign where the setting goes beyond being just a backdrop for the story or action and instead becomes part of the game. That is, players can play the setting. It has resources that are finite and can be cultivated, managed, used, and depleted.

D&D is good for that, of course, because of the name-level "end-game" with its territorial development: seasonal income from taxation, expenses from upkeep, fortress building, and hiring of troops and specialists, et cetera. Such an end-game suits the way I like to approach D&D: the PCs are bold adventurers seeking fortune, glory, and lordship after they've trod the jeweled thrones of the earth beneath their feet. (Alternatively, one might say I like using that approach because D&D was designed to suit it.)

 

[S'mon]

And certain games are, in my opinion, constructed or structured in such a way as to promote campaigning and others are not.

But you define it as you wish and then tell why you think a game is that way, or not.

There are games designed for short-term play (most Indie games), and games which work best with long term play (all versions of D&D) but if the difference is between long term Epic Quest (Campaign) vs long term serial adventuring, I can't think of many systems which best support one or the other. I guess Decipher Lord of the Rings for the former. The training requirements to level in pre-3e AD&D don't jibe well with Epic Quest style.

 

[S'mon]

Campaign can have quite a few different meanings. One of my favorites is the kind of campaign where the setting goes beyond being just a backdrop for the story or action and instead becomes part of the game. That is, players can play the setting. It has resources that are finite and can be cultivated, managed, used, and depleted.

D&D is good for that, of course, because of the name-level "end-game" with its territorial development: seasonal income from taxation, expenses from upkeep, fortress building, and hiring of troops and specialists, et cetera. Such an end-game suits the way I like to approach D&D: the PCs are bold adventurers seeking fortune, glory, and lordship after they've trod the jeweled thrones of the earth beneath their feet. (Alternatively, one might say I like using that approach because D&D was designed to suit it.)

I agree, but I suspect the OP might be thinking more of Real Campaigning as something like an Adventure Path, so this style might be 'mere adventuring'. I can't tell though.

 

[delericho]

To me a good Campaign Game (my personal definition) is a game that promotes big ideas and big events, settings, that would normally constitute a large, sophisticated, multi-objective campaign that could not easily be solved just by Adventuring through a few disconnected locales.

Okay, in that case I'm not aware of any games that really support the one over the other. AD&D1 assumes you'll mostly just do 'adventuring' rather than what you consider 'campaigning', but only really supports the one over the other by virtue of the nature of the adventures ('Slavers' and 'Dragonlance' being exceptions, of course).

Virtually every other game I have read or played assumes 'campaigning', although again they don't really support it over 'adventuring'. Although most adventures now seem to be sold in series, trilogies or Paths, which would be campaign support.

There are also quite a lot of games that are best suited to one-off play. Of these, the only one I'm really familiar with is Call of Cthulhu, but that's just because of the nature of the games I play.

 

[steenan]

Among games I play, Nobilis and Exalted are definitely well suited for campaign play. Both systems:
- expect characters to make lasting changes in the setting and handle it well
- benefit strongly from gradual development of character personality in play
- offer interesting settings that are fun to explore
- characters typically have many NPCs and plots connected to them

For one-shots, I like Wolsung, Dogs in the Vineyard, CoC and low level D&D:
- character creation is fast
- play focuses on exploring situation and creating interesting situations is easy
- character concepts are front-loaded and characters may be played in interesting ways from the beginning

 

[scourger]

The best answer I can give is based on my GMing.

The most successful campaign I've run is for Savage Worlds. It started as a Tour of Darkness game, and the players really invested in the setting of the Viet Nam War. Plus, it was about 90% less preparation work than d20, so I was able to really focus on the story. I used the basic campaign outline and many of the encounters but really made it more my own story than the book's.

At the end of that campaign, the heroes were transported to Necropolis. That segment was less successful because the players really didn't understand or particularly like the setting. I think it could have worked if they were more into sci-fi crusading vs. the undead (almost like 40K), but one of the smartest things I did was abandon that phase once they let me know that they weren't into it.

Now, I am running it as my own version of Weird War Rome. The players love the idea of their characters leapfrogging through time to different conflicts, and it is fun for me to craft the story from various existing sources.

I think this Savage Worlds campaign has been successful because it is designed to be simple enough to GM easily but remain complex enough to give the players plenty of choices for character advancement. It is very easy to incorporate the extras and the give all the characters plenty of story.

I've had long-running campaigns of D&D 2e & 3.0, too; but those games required so much time & effort to prepare & run that they weren't sustainable. Plus, it is not easy to allow fluctuating numbers of players from session-to-session. I did have good success with an Omega World d20 mini-campaign using the Alternity Gamma World adventures, but I think that was because the game really streamlines the d20 rules engine to a different genre. My experience is that any game of D&D is easier to run and more fun to play if restricted to the core rules. Otherwise, the complexities get too great at higher levels--even a core game is hard to maintain.

For adventuring, the best game I've used was a type of the D&D Miniatures skirmish campaign. I gave the players a bunch of minis to use as characters & allies. Then I based a series of encounters on an island to which they traveled. At each location was a set of opponents drawn from minis I had on hand. The PC mini could be advanced at the close of each successful encounter. It was fun, but very war-gamey.

I also think highly of the game ORK! for 1-shots. We played it once, and it was very fun for what it was intended to be: a beer & pretzels game.

 

[Jhaelen]

For me the deciding factor is if a system features a good downtime system or not. Great examples include Pendragon and Ars Magica. In both systems you can easily play several generations of pcs.

Other systems at least allow pcs to make good use of downtime, e.g. Runequest.

D&D (at least in its more recent incarnations) is awkward, due to the fast levelling.