Poor DM/ Game Advice

[jgsugden]

D&D is an RPG. Role playing game. Characters play a role in a story.

When the story has run to completion, you have several choices - a sequel story that uses the same characters, starting a new story that is entirely different, using a new story but have it cross over with the old story characters, etc...

My preference, as a DM, is to plan a 'Babylon 5' campaign, as I call it. Babylon 5 is a classic Scifi show that essentially pioneered the American modern serial drama that broke from standalone episodes that did not impact each other. Instead, the design is that each episode can stand alone, but most episodes also play int continuing storylines that themselves contribute to a greater story. In my games, I am for each session to have a climax, for each session to contribute to longer storylines,and for several of these longer storylines to time together into 1, 2 or 3 overarching storylines that will culminate in climaxes around 15th, 17th and 20th levels.

The trick is writing these story lines loosely enough that players can impact them earlier, or that they might be allowed to come to a dark fruition if the PCs ignore them. That takes a while to figure out.

Regardless, if you use this style, the game is going to naturally want to flow from a start at low levels to a completion in the highest levels. If you listen to Critical Role, you'll see that Matt Mercer uses this same style of game to keep players interested in their characters for an entire campaign length.

 

[Blue]

So I'm in an odd place, simply because we let a finished campaign open back up. And founder.

We finished a campaign. 1-7, ran about 2 years. Very satisfying conclusion. People liked their characters a lot. One player near the end had an important competing commitment for our regular game night so we started alternating that main campaign and a filler game.

After the campaign ended, the DM started a new campaign. But it started at 3rd and several players grumbled some that they wanted to play higher levels.

One player asked if he could run a one shot for the characters of the finished campaign. It turned into several adventures, but had a rather different feel. He only wanted to run a bit, he'd much rather run. During that time he was free with XP and the group just hit 9th.

So ... the original DM has gotten it in his head that we wanted to run those characters. He won't run two campaigns at once so he put the new campaign on permanent hiatus, and took back up the continuing adventures of the first group. Which had completed the campaign arcs (the Dragon War and the refounding of the lost kingdom) that had interested them.

One player didn't want to continue her character, so she was making another. And then others started wanting to try new ones. And then it got to be most of the group, and a few hold-outs no longer wanted to play their old character transplanted into a new group. So at the end, there's only one original character plus one occasional "guest star" original character (a player who only occasionally can make it).

So now we have this campaign, that's not the growth of the current crop of characters, but we have to deal with the fallout. Starting 9th. Okay, not bad. But we closed down a campaign that was going well with fun characters to do it simply because it got in people's heads to continue, but we're not really continuing either.

It feels unnecessary - I much would have continued the existing new campaign then resurrect a satisfyingly finished campaign, but not really.

 

[Oofta]

So I'm in an odd place, simply because we let a finished campaign open back up. And founder.

We finished a campaign. 1-7, ran about 2 years. Very satisfying conclusion. People liked their characters a lot. One player near the end had an important competing commitment for our regular game night so we started alternating that main campaign and a filler game.

After the campaign ended, the DM started a new campaign. But it started at 3rd and several players grumbled some that they wanted to play higher levels.

One player asked if he could run a one shot for the characters of the finished campaign. It turned into several adventures, but had a rather different feel. He only wanted to run a bit, he'd much rather run. During that time he was free with XP and the group just hit 9th.

So ... the original DM has gotten it in his head that we wanted to run those characters. He won't run two campaigns at once so he put the new campaign on permanent hiatus, and took back up the continuing adventures of the first group. Which had completed the campaign arcs (the Dragon War and the refounding of the lost kingdom) that had interested them.

One player didn't want to continue her character, so she was making another. And then others started wanting to try new ones. And then it got to be most of the group, and a few hold-outs no longer wanted to play their old character transplanted into a new group. So at the end, there's only one original character plus one occasional "guest star" original character (a player who only occasionally can make it).

So now we have this campaign, that's not the growth of the current crop of characters, but we have to deal with the fallout. Starting 9th. Okay, not bad. But we closed down a campaign that was going well with fun characters to do it simply because it got in people's heads to continue, but we're not really continuing either.

It feels unnecessary - I much would have continued the existing new campaign then resurrect a satisfyingly finished campaign, but not really.

Sounds more like an issue with your DMs than the campaign itself.

On the other hand ... long term campaigns aren't everybody's cup of tea. Which is fine, I always tell players that if they want to swap out new PCs they just need to let me know so we can try to work it into the narrative. I think I've had 2, maybe 3 people take me up on this over the years (I've been doing this a long time). PCs are more likely to die than fade out.

Not that either one of our experiences is necessarily indicative of a broader trend, just an observation.

 

[Blue]

Sounds more like an issue with your DMs than the campaign itself.

On the other hand ... long term campaigns aren't everybody's cup of tea. Which is fine, I always tell players that if they want to swap out new PCs they just need to let me know so we can try to work it into the narrative. I think I've had 2, maybe 3 people take me up on this over the years (I've been doing this a long time). PCs are more likely to die than fade out.

Not that either one of our experiences is necessarily indicative of a broader trend, just an observation.

We're fine with long term campaigns. This one ran for over 2 years. The last three campaigns I ran (various systems) were 4.5, 7, and 5 years long. In the most recent one I had a play swap out their character 3 times - while no one else did - because he wanted to try different things. Neither of those is a factor in the poor fit the resurrected campaign left us.

This feels like it was raised as undead, mostly because of grumbling from some players that they wanted to play higher levels than the new campaign. The DM liked the new campaign more. With one exception it doesn't look like the players wanted to continue the old campaign because they made new characters. It's just a cluster.

Sure, this isn't a standard experience. Just discussing how forcing a campaign to go on past a satisfying conclusion can be significantly worse than just starting a new campaign at high level.

 

[merwins]

Setting aside game killers that are uncontrollable, what is it that stops games at 5th level?
What is causing groups to retire at 12th? etc

I went back and read the OP. This was the main question.

There's probably a LOT of reasons. I'll toss out a few in sketch-mode, some of which may have already been covered. Keep in mind I'm bouncing between GM and player mindsets.

1) There's a lot of shiny stuff out there. New adventures, new splatbooks, new systems. If you're stuck in one campaign, you don't get to try them. And a lot of the new stuff is for lower levels.
2) There's a lot of shiny stuff slipping through your hands. Different personalities you want to try, different classes you want to experiment with. If you're a player in a campaign, you have to "settle" for the character you've got.
3) There's a lot of competition for your attention outside of gaming (TV, RL, shiny stuff). Campaigns require a little bit of time to plan out, at some point. Less time than learning a new system, but time, nonetheless. Playing a game is far less of an investment than GM-ing.
4) Like any other invested activity, campaigns require discipline. I don't mean to say that a GM who can't maintain a campaign is undisciplined, but then again, based on my own experience in the past, I do. It's easy to think that the grass is greener elsewhere.
5) Sometimes you have to push through a scenario you don't like to get through one that feels worthwhile. Or you have to find the good parts of every session.

 

[Jd Smith1]

In my personal experience, Real Life gets in the way of every campaign eventually.

I've been running much the same group for 17 years (in a few weeks, 18). IME life only gets in the way if you let it. One of my players was a bachelor when he started with me, and a marriage and four kids later, he still makes every game every week (holidays excepted, of course).

 

[Blue]

Out of curiosity (and this is not a criticism), what happens when the campaign isn't designed?

If it's just, you know, a series of events that the adventurers do, with no particular connected plot, no BBEG. The story just being whatever the party ends up doing?

I don't think that's a campaign. Not in an elitist point of view, but there's a continuity to a campaign that purely episodic adventures don't seem to give. It does have the same characters, but if there's nothing recurring, no past, no foreshadowing, no connection, then it's a bunch of adventures, not a campaign. Which there's nothing wrong with - this isn't judging style. A campaign has a history that informs the present and future at the least, and common has thematic and meta elements as well.

 

[Lanefan]

You sure about that? I mean ... I'm not sure I qualify as sentient part first thing in the morning before I get some caffeine.

Me neither, but as I'm not usually trying to either play or DM at that time it's all good.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree, except for the last sentence. I think people can care about what happens when the campaign is taken as a whole, and still not design it from the beginning.

In other words, sometimes you just get a series of unconnected modules, and it's a lot like life; you know, no real plot other than what you make of it. Kind of the old school style of play.

But sometimes, there is an emergent theme that comes through, driven by the players through the interaction with the campaign setting the micro choices of the DM.

Or, and I've had this happen myself, while looking back and-or reading the game logs later a pattern suddenly emerges that nobody realized was there - and I-as-DM can mine that pattern and then say "yep, planned that all along!" with my fingers crossed firmly behind my back as absolutely no planning went into it at all!

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think that's a campaign. Not in an elitist point of view, but there's a continuity to a campaign that purely episodic adventures don't seem to give. It does have the same characters, but if there's nothing recurring, no past, no foreshadowing, no connection, then it's a bunch of adventures, not a campaign. Which there's nothing wrong with - this isn't judging style. A campaign has a history that informs the present and future at the least, and common has thematic and meta elements as well.

I disagree a bit with your definition of a campaign.

For me, if it's the same characters (or same party) under the same DM in the same consistent setting, it's a campaign; and I'm not even completely married to the "same characters" part of that and could maybe be talked out of it. Doesn't matter if what they do adventure-wise is completely episodic or disconnected in the fiction.

Consider a sports team. They play x number of discrete games (episodic adventures) during a season (campaign) but it's still the same identifyable team (party) all the way through even if some of the individual players (characters) change out or get traded or whatever.