Three Game Plot - Possible Solution to Address Games Petering Out

[Rechan]

Ran across this article and thought it not only would help me, but might help you: http://lookrobot.co.uk/2014/01/06/three-game-plot-make-actual-game-happen/

 

[Rechan]

One other bonus of this method is with "New systems". If you only commit to 3 sessions, it makes it easier to sell players on experimenting with new systems without needing to commit, and GMs the opportunity to see how it works out.

 

[delericho]

There's a lot of good advice in there. In particular, I think we get 'programmed' a bit into thinking we must have a big epic RPG campaign - by D&D's 20-levels, by Adventure Paths, by the campaign-building advice in the books... even by those open-ended fantasy novel series that we read. So the advice to go for a much more realistic (and time-bound) structure is certainly good, especially for less experienced DMs and for those groups for whom a major commitment just isn't possible, or is no longer possible.

Incidentally, for trying out a new system, my preference is generally to go for a one-shot session but to hold it on a weekend, thus allowing for a longer session. This crams the beginning/middle/end into a single session, but also has the advantage that there's no ongoing commitment. We then have a wash-up discussion, and potentially then schedule further games using the system.

Now, having said all that...

Over the years, I have run a good number of campaigns to completion, including one five-year Vampire: the Masquerade chronicle and a three-year D&D (3.5e) campaign recently. These were the outliers, though - most of my campaigns last between six months and a year.

My experience with those long-running campaigns is that they genuinely do work much better if I've given quite a bit of thought to the campaign story and structure, including the end, before I start. That is, the benefit if I do plan the full 12-months, rather than just the three games the article suggests. (It's perhaps worth noting, though, that these days I sub-divide my campaign into blocks, each of which is generally three sessions, with a sub-beginning, middle, and end. So even here, there's value in the "three game" structure. With the three-year D&D campaign, I also found it very useful to split the campaign into three year-long 'volumes', again each with a beginning, middle and end. Conveniently, these matched up with the low-, mid-, and high-levels.)

Ultimately, I think it's about determining what you want and what you (and your players) can reasonably commit to. If you're not sure, then the suggestion to go for a smaller commitment (potentially with an open-ended option to "pick up the game for the next season") is good advice. But if you do want to go for the sprawling epic, and you and your group really think you can make it work, then go for it!

 

[Rechan]

My experience with those long-running campaigns is that they genuinely do work much better if I've given quite a bit of thought to the campaign story and structure, including the end, before I start. That is, the benefit if I do plan the full 12-months, rather than just the three games the article suggests. (It's perhaps worth noting, though, that these days I sub-divide my campaign into blocks, each of which is generally three sessions, with a sub-beginning, middle, and end. So even here, there's value in the "three game" structure. With the three-year D&D campaign, I also found it very useful to split the campaign into three year-long 'volumes', again each with a beginning, middle and end. Conveniently, these matched up with the low-, mid-, and high-levels.)

Ultimately, I think it's about determining what you want and what you (and your players) can reasonably commit to. If you're not sure, then the suggestion to go for a smaller commitment (potentially with an open-ended option to "pick up the game for the next season") is good advice. But if you do want to go for the sprawling epic, and you and your group really think you can make it work, then go for it!

I think that if you have a committed gaming group that you know will be playing together next year, and two years after that, and they have set times for gaming, then this method probably isn't for you.

Whereas I've not played two campaigns with the same group since say, 2004, and typically the games I am in disintegrate after 2-3 sessions.

And if you're the type that Likes big campaigns, that doesn't necessarily rule this out. To me, this is more a TV Pilot method. 3 sessions to make sure the group works out, the DM works out, everyone is on the same page in terms of the campaign's tone, but it's also flexible in the sense you can fine tune. Once the 3 sessions are over, then you decide to go whole hog. I know that if I were to use this method, I'd not do an endless series of 3 sessions, unconnected to one another.

My reasoning for using this to test new systems is because the delay between sessions might give you opportunities to go back and look at rules, to seeif you're doing it wrong. Consult with people online. Nail down those wiggly issues. It also gets over that first session that might not go well, and thus color the experience with a bad impression of the system. (Also IMO it's rare to get people to commit to more than 4 hours of gaming so doing a LONG session is tough).

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I've been saying this sort of thing since before 3.5 came out. 3E was DESIGNED to progress your PC's at a fixed rate. Everyone's campaign followed that basic schedule of levelling every 13.5 encounters. But that wasn't so much the problem as the fact that they kept writing adventures that were the same length as they had always been in 1E/2E. Worse, there came the fad of the mega-dungeon. Now in previous editions you could get away with extreme dungeon crawls without reaching the end of your PC's adventuring life (at least in my own experience I had PC's go through TOEE and not even level up ONCE much less advance 20 levels). Module series and mega-dungeons were now effectively campaign settings because they covered a characters entire potential career - but they weren't really meant to be handled that way.

I started saying back then that given the new paradigm of the pace of advancement that adventure design had UTTERLY failed to adapt. I think that is largely still the case. People do NOT design adventures to fit the rule system they are using and it is leading to unsatisfying ends to campaigns. Back in the day we had campaigns that ran for YEARS before they faded out but because we had not built those campaigns upon the idea of finishing a particular story arc and because they ran for so long it didn't matter that they withered away - because we could actually get tired of them and want to start over anyway. It wasn't until this idea came along that D&D was about completing pre-determined stories that our characters had to be plugged into that it started to grow to a bigger problem. Now I'd say that probably started with Dragonlance but I personally didn't really see it become a pervasive issue until 3E. It seems to have persisted through 4E.

The modern expectation seems to be for VERY regular and often rapid character advancement. Module design and even campaign setting design has sitll not adapted to fit that. JMO

 

[Janx]

My group never played that way.

A game session was 8-12 hours in the old days, 4-6 hours in the modern days.

A story was one to 3 game sessions long.

We played the same PCs from story to story, and the stories were sequential.

But there was no planned arc of stories per se, nor design to be level X by a certain time.

We never used canned adventures/modules.

 

[gamerprinter]

I prefer to run short campaign arcs of 3 levels of modules or a series of one shots whether prepublished or created from scratch, especially when experimenting with different themed games. Although I have indeed participated on long lasting campaigns going 20 levels or more, and lasting more than one year, I am far less interested in that, except as a GM only. I get bored with existing character concepts that I might be playing and want to try other builds and other directions. Being stuck in a multi-year campaign is both less practical and less fulfilling for my tastes anymore. The 'canned adventures' that I play, are most often adventures that I wrote or help developed and is published. I seldom use another publishers adventure material. For example, I never use Golarian, even though I play PF pretty much exclusively, so Paizo APs and modules don't really fit my preferred themes.