D&D General Kitchen sink setting or narrow genre focus for long-running campaigns (2,5,10+ years)

[Zardnaar]

I don't think it matters it depends on the group.
My campaigns tend to go for 12-15 months. We switch things up.

 

[Mort]

I tend to run in Greyhawk, a kitchen sink setting. But campaigns tend to get pretty narrow, focusing on something specific like the Scarlett Brotherhood (intrigue heavy and very political for that one) or the war against the demigod Iuz. I've found the players like narrowing the focus of the campaign themselves, rather than me pushing it on them from the get go.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Or campaigns last 3-5 years! We try to meet every other week, but there are gaps.

I don't want to play campaigns anymore.

 

[Distracted DM]

I don't think something like "Humans, halflings, and half-orcs, paladins, and wizards don't exist in the setting" or "the setting is pulp-action," or "the setting is gothic horror" has any great bearing on campaign length, with the exception that it may have some effect on the players that you end up with at your table.. because it's all going to depend on the GM and the players, not setting included/excluded stuff.

 

[kermit4karate]

Do you personally feel that one or the other lends itself to the health of a long-running campaign?

Kitchen sink settings of course allow you to shift genres when desired and can handle many more player options. There is a risk of the flavor becoming dilluted over time.

A more narrow genre focus can help provide consistent flavor and, well, focus, to the game. There is a risk of feeling constrained and repetitive.

Looking at the more popular settings, examples of kitchen sink would be:

Forgotten Realms
Golarion
Greyhawk

Settings with a more narrow genre focus would be:

Ravenloft
Dark Sun
Midnight

There are some that could potentially fall somewhere in the middle depending on how you run the game, such as:

Eberron
Planescape

What do you think? What are your experiences and preferencs?

The world is a kitchen sink, but our players may find themselves spending most of their time within one setting in it, especially at lower levels.

 

[Lanefan]

Kitchen sink, all day long.

The potential variety of setting, culture, climate, etc. is vital for the long-term continuation of a campaign, even if only some of that variety gets realized in play.

 

[Tonguez]

I like the middle ground and think that in most cases groups and certainly DMs fall back into what theyre comfortable with anyway, so even if it is a kitchensink the DM and players will make it more specific to their taste
and keep it from losing cohesiveness and becoming a meaningless mishmash. Of course some people want lite vanilla rather than deep longlasting flavour.

I tend to either do settings that are either very specific and thus built for short focussed games or when wanting longer gaming will develop cultural thematic settings by region (eg Al-Qadim, Karameikos, Ravenloft Core, Mythic Polynesia, Cruithne, Majapahit, Central Europe) or by time (Bronze Age, Neolithic, 17th Century, Victorian etc) but within that different genre are possible including epic adventure, pirate, horror, war, domain management (so is that kitchen sink?).

 

[kermit4karate]

Or campaigns last 3-5 years! We try to meet every other week, but there are gaps.

I don't want to play campaigns anymore.

I'm almost there myself. One-shots, or one-shots with a couple sequels, are becoming more and more appealing to me over time.

 

[Chaltab]

I've come to prefer narrow focus and about 2 years to complete. Playing every other week. I have never been in a single campaign either way that lasted more than 2 years (though I had the same group for 10 years running numerous 2 year campaigns).

I will denote that you can have kitchen sink settings that have narrow long running campaigns. Thats been my experience with Golarion and the APs. You could west march the setting, but you dont have to.

Golarion is a tough nut for me to crack. I've been in a Wrath of the Righteous campaign for a year now and I still don't feel like I have the slightest idea what differentiates Golarion from other settings. Maybe that's just the narrow focus of this campaign.

 

[Zardnaar]

Golarion is a tough nut for me to crack. I've been in a Wrath of the Righteous campaign for a year now and I still don't feel like I have the slightest idea what differentiates Golarion from other settings. Maybe that's just the narrow focus of this campaign.

Its essentially GH or FR with different flavor.