D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Hussar]

Errr... Huh? Wha...?

A definition of "campaign" could somehow be taken as insulting?

Yikes.

Exactly right.

The term "campaign" while it might vary a bit - you mean it somewhat differently than I do, for example - is never meant in any sort of negative context. You run a campaign. I run a campaign. At no point is anyone going to see that in a negative light.

Pretending that context doesn't matter is not communication. Context always matters. If you know that a word is contextually negative, but you use that word anyway just because you personally don't think the context is a problem, that's on you. You are the cause of the breakdown in communication.

I mean, good grief, we're over a thousand pages here, and most of that has been an attempt to wring out a consensual definition of various gaming terms. Context is ALWAY important.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh, fair enough. Although, I would clarify that this is hardly new for me. Even all the way back in the dark ages of the eighties when we started play, it was the same. Campaigns had a half life of about 18 months at most. Once I hit university, campaigns had a half life of a school year - so about 8 months.

That's completely counter to my experience - I started playing in university, and still play with some of those same people today; and the campaign I started in ran straight through for seven years after I joined and a few more years in fits and starts after that.

It helps, of course, if everyone (or close) in the game lives full-time in town and stays there year-round. I've never been one for moving from town to town and, quite honestly, just don't understand that mindset.

They almost never lasted longer than that. Heck it wasn't until the last 10 years that I had regularly actually completed any campaigns. I think before 5e the number of actual complete campaigns I'd either run or played could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.

The idea of multi-year campaigns is honestly so far beyond my experience in gaming that I have no idea how I'd even begin to approach it. Back in AD&D, we'd play 1-9 or 10th level, which takes about a year of play, and then restart. We retired at name level. That process has simply held true for the vast majority of my gaming experience.

We took out xp for gp, which makes 1st to 9th in 1e take a LOT longer than a year of play!

I think this is largely why things like campaign lore matters so little to me. When campaigns are restarting very often, you never really get too deep into a setting. I've played in a LOT of settings - both homebrew and published - over the years. So, why would I particularly care if the setting lore for setting X gets rewritten? It happens all the time by the publishers - my Dragonlance has no devils, for example, because my formative Dragonlance experience was in 1e and there was no Hell in Dragonlance and all this was pre-Planescape.

Sure, if you're restarting all the time in different settings I can easily see how too much lore could just blur together.

That said, even if you run a bunch of published WotC adventure paths there's nothing saying you can't run them all in the same greater setting e.g. Out of the Abyss takes place in this part of the world, Phandelver's over here with Princes of the Apocalpyse just to the north, and so on. That way a bunch of basic stuff like astronomy, calendar, astrology, etc. only has to be designed once and you're good for life (and I vastly prefer work that only has to be done once!), and after a few runs the familiarity will make it second nature for you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Errr... Huh? Wha...?

A definition of "campaign" could somehow be taken as insulting?

Yikes.

Like I said, I don't see it. But someone might.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, actually, yes it makes perfect sense. Very, very few people have ever played in these open, multi-year campaigns. Even back in the day, it was very uncommon for people to play that way. It's not like there weren't serial adventures back then - GDQ, A1-4, the U series, just to name a few. And, the setup of AD&D lends itself very strongly to retiring characters after name level, that's why you got a keep and all that kind of stuff. That told players it was time to retire.

Time to retire that one character. Not time to sink the whole campaign. Instead, you'd roll up something else and keep going, or take your original character's hench on as your main PC, or pull another one out of the stable and run it for a while; meanwhile the greater campaign just keeps chuggin' along for as long as the DM is willing to run it.

And I very much suspect that longer-running style of play was considerably more common - particularly among groups of friends, as opposed to gaming clubs and RPGA play - back in the day than you're giving it credit for.

 

[hawkeyefan]

To be fair, I don't know if anyone sees @Lanefan 's definition of campaign (which he explained has been superceded) would be considered insulting to anyone. But maybe?

Yes, that's true... I don't think anyone would tend to view the use of campaign one way or another as insulting.

I think we'd probably all benefit collectively if we stopped looking to be offended all the time.

Okay. You got me there. I could expect the sun to rise in the north tomorrow.

If you think that people accepting someone's slightly different use of a word is the equivalent of the sun rising in the north... well, I don't know if I can think of a better display of the thread title than that.

I can't think of the specific instances, but I know I've seen some that had me scratching my head. But yes, I do agree that job context does matter for a chunk of them.

Well, some are earned to one extent or the other. Many others are not. But this is kind of beside the point, and could veer into potentially dangerous territory as far as topics go, so I think it's probably best to leave it at that.

I think this is where we agree. To me, it's the conflation of linear -which @hawkeyefan straight up admits that he doesn't see a difference - with railroad that causes all sorts of problems.

Well, I see a difference in that I get what people are saying. I understand what they're talking about. It's just that, setting aside internet discussion and looking solely at play... the differences don't much matter to the experience I'll likely have as a player in one or the other. In practice, they're not that different to me.

Does that make more sense?

 

[hawkeyefan]

So, if every time you use the word campaign, you are using it differently than most people around you, you are deliberately obscuring communication. And it's not like you don't know that you are using the word differently than everyone else. Because you've been told repeatedly that no one uses the word the way you use it.

Sure, but does anyone of us longtime folks not have a sense of what @Lanefan appreciates in play? Does anyone not understand what he means by campaign?

Yes, someone new to the conversation would not know this... but I think @Lanefan would happily explain his preference.

That's not deliberately obscuring communication.

What would be deliberately obscuring communication would be to ignore @Lanefan 's clarification of what he means.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Like I said, I don't see it. But someone might.

I think @Hussar had a good argument relating to this; "campaign" is a relatively neutral term in the hobby (barring a small subset that are particularly hostile to the wargaming origin of both the hobby and that term), so its not going to be viewed as insulting that someone uses it for someone else's game normally. As I noted, the only problem with @Lanefan's usage is that he's kind of exclusionary in the way he uses it, but unless he makes a big deal about it when someone uses it differently, no one is liable to care (and even if he did, it wouldn't be insulting, per se).

 

[Thomas Shey]

And I very much suspect that longer-running style of play was considerably more common - particularly among groups of friends, as opposed to gaming clubs and RPGA play - back in the day than you're giving it credit for.

Its hard to say. I was around then, and while ongoing campaigns were not unknown then, I don't recall seeing any that went for more than a couple of years. On the other hand, most of the people I was interacting with either in person or via other means weren't sticking with the same game system for that long, let alone the same campaign, but even when they were sticking with the same game system and setting, it wasn't really the same campaign in most cases because there would be things like time gaps and such that disconnected them from the prior one except in a historical sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think we'd probably all benefit collectively if we stopped looking to be offended all the time.

I will just note this is the card that's almost always played by someone who was sloppy with insulting someone else but doesn't want to take responsibility for it.

If that's not what you're trying to do, its a bad tact to take.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think @Hussar had a good argument relating to this; "campaign" is a relatively neutral term in the hobby (barring a small subset that are particularly hostile to the wargaming origin of both the hobby and that term), so its not going to be viewed as insulting that someone uses it for someone else's game normally. As I noted, the only problem with @Lanefan's usage is that he's kind of exclusionary in the way he uses it, but unless he makes a big deal about it when someone uses it differently, no one is liable to care (and even if he did, it wouldn't be insulting, per se).

Makes sense, but I'll have to take your word for it. @Hussar blocked me a while back.