Why do so many campaigns never finish? Genuinely curious what others think

[kronovan]

I can identify as both GM and player, with many of the reasons suggested.

I'm just going to add that VTT hosted, or assisted campaigns I've participated in as player and GM, have generally had better success rates for completion. In particular, those for which we've had a VTT on a big screen beside an IRL table (not as hard as it sounds to set up), to support players that can't attend in-person session, have been much better for avoiding player drop out.

So at least for my city, the challenge of players attending in-person sessions, seems to be a significant deterent.

 

[GrimCo]

Do other people find they have similar sweet spots for campaign / mini-campaign lengths? And are any of you thousand-year-old vampires who like to run 30+ year campaigns?

My "campaigns" are pretty linear , 8-10 sessions, 12 sessions top, usually 3-3.5h per session. But i mostly run short games, up to 3 sessions, each 3-3.5 hours long.

Second best thing you can do - make sure scheduling doesn't become the issue it is in every subreddit, enworld thread, etc. Two ways to do this: 1) ALWAYS run your game even if people don't show up or cancel. This respects the people who moved their schedule around to be there. It creates FOMO with those who missed out, especially if you send a summary email after the session. 2) Do not let everyone leave the house or sign off Discord until you have scheduled the next session. This means everyone will have committed to a day that supposedly works for them. This create a social and honor pressure to meet the date. If everyone picked 20 Mar because that's the only day Johnny was available, then Johnny will feel like a jerk if he skips that day. Really, once you have agreed on a date the only reasonable excuses are sickness of player or family member, sickness of GM/GM's family, or something unavoidable like a car accident or if you work the type of job where you don't know your schedule and your boss schedules your shift on top of the TTRPG date.

It's solid advice except when:
1) You run very character driven campaign with strong connected story that cannot really progress if everybody isn't present. For more "adventure of the week" style game, that works very well.
2) Life happens. In my group, family obligations are always priority above all else. So if we schedule game for sunday march 20 and i find out in meantime that my kid has something that date, i'm not playing. Same with rest of the group. We only play weekends and kids birthdays, family member (i have larger extended family i'm very close to) birthdays, sports tournaments, recitals, plays etc. We are too old for game to cause FOMO. We treat playing rpg same as we treat coffe/drinks. It's nice if schedules allow it, we all do our best to make it, but it's way down on priority list.

This may have been brought up already, but I find in certain games (coughdndcough) the characters start to feel so powerful so fast that I quickly begin to long for the simple days of being 3rd level when finding a +1 weapon was a big deal.

Yeah, i remember 3.5 days, where levels 4-8 was sweet spot. In 5e, that's 3-10. IMHO, 1-20 campaigns are overrated. Shorter campaign spanning few levels is more condensed and more fun experience.

We're an old group, been playing with these people for ~35 years, and when we didn't play pnp RPGs, we played boardgames.

We did something similar in few instances. Board games are easier to schedule (who shows up, shows up), it's one and done, low to no prep work. Sometimes, we would play one game of Descent, then go out for a couple of beers and just hang out.

 

[Lanefan]

Frankly it's both.

Unless the campaign is completely divorced from the PC's, then completely replacing the lineup of PC's is, IMO, a new campaign.

Then I must be on about my 25th campaign in my current game, then, using that definition.

Once the players have each built up a stable of characters over time, they might put different parties into the field for each mission based on what that mission needs and-or what various characters are otherwise doing at the time. Still the same overall campaign, though: same DM, same setting, same overarching stories or plotlines, same played history.

I should ask: are you talking about adventure-path campaigns where the campaign scope and endpoint are pretty much predetermined? If yes, we're comparing apples and motorboats; as to me a campaign is way bigger, longer, and more sprawling than any single AP can ever be.

I don't run campaigns like that anymore. My campaigns are tied around the PC's as tightly as I can. Losing a PC means that the campaign will likely radically change. As in, while it might share some DNA with the original campaign, it will be significantly different in tone and content.

I long ago learned to never tie a story or plotline to any one character because sure as shootin' that'll be the character who dies next, or who its player decides to retire.

Losing players though? Yeah, that's a new campaign. If you've completely changed the lineup of players, that's a new campaign to me. I hate bringing in new players into existing campaigns simply because they lack any context for what's going on in the campaign. One player early on? Ok, that's fine. Lose more than half the players after say, 5th level? Yup, campaign folds.

I find new players coming in mid-stream either pick up the context pretty fast or just add in their own context (and maybe push the story in new directions) by what they have their characters do.

Which raises another point: the same players playing the same characters for ages can easily get stale. Turnover freshens things up.

I have neither the energy nor the interest in jumping into a campaign halfway through, either as a player or a DM.

As a player, I've been in four long (as in, 8+ years) campaigns. The first one I joined partway, then left, then joined again, and came and went on various occasions thereafter. The second one I started, then left, then came back a few years later. The third and fourth ones I started; one of those I left partway through and the other I'm still in.

 

[Lanefan]

I have very dear and close friend whom i love like a brother. Great guy. For very casual, goofy, beer & pretzels game of D&D, he's awesome, makes whole table cry from laughing. But for anything more serious, more dramatic, rp heavy, character driven, he is bad fit.

Send him my way - I love players like that!

 

[Lanefan]

Heh. In all honestly, I don’t think I could run the same campaign for a decade even. I understand the appeal of the “I’ve been running the same D&D campaign since I was 12” guys, but for me it would be like always eating the same food for dinner. Sure, I like what I’m eating, but I’d miss out on all the other fun food!

For me, the fun of a campaign is often learning and enjoying a new set of rules.

For me, learning new rule systems is pure drudgery hell and to be avoided if-whenever possible; even more so if said new system is as complex as, say, 3.x D&D or PF1. I'd far rather tweak-to-purpose the rule system I'm already using.

Do other people find they have similar sweet spots for campaign / mini-campaign lengths? And are any of you thousand-year-old vampires who like to run 30+ year campaigns?

As far as I know I haven't continued on to undead status yet, thus not a vampire, but my current campaign is 18 years in as of this month. My other two before that went 10 (first one) and 12 (second one) years.

The "sweet spot" for campaign length for me, simply put, is however long it remains interesting and fun for me to run and the players to play.

 

[TheSword]

My top five reasons campaigns end early

5. GM burn out from time pressure / life gets in the way
4. TPK or character death
3. Something more exciting comes along
2. GM burnout because of overpowered character(s)
1. GM burnout because character(s) start to interact with the world or each other in a non-collegiate way.

That’s my top 5 reasons as both a player and a GM.

 

[djotaku]

My top five reasons campaigns end early

5. GM burn out from time pressure / life gets in the way
4. TPK or character death
3. Something more exciting comes along
2. Overpowered character(s)
1. Character(s) start to interact with the world or each other in a non-collegiate way.

That’s my top 5 reasons as both a player and a GM.

Depending on the group and the way it happened - TPK not necessarily a bad reason

 

[Lanefan]

I dunno, I always look forward to the PCs getting to be high enough level that A) they get interesting (including being able to choose their own interesting goals) and B) they can handle stuff. I'm a weirdo, though, and I actually enjoy running high-level 5e.

I don't mind their getting powerful enough to hold their own but I don't like it when they get so powerful they simply don't and can't fit into their own setting and background any more.

 

[prabe]

I don't mind their getting powerful enough to hold their own but I don't like it when they get so powerful they simply don't and can't fit into their own setting and background any more.

I've never felt as though even high-level 5e PCs couldn't, wouldn't, or otherwise didn't fit into the setting, or as though their background and backstories failed to matter.

 

[Retreater]

The same players keep coming, week after week. We often play the same system.

The majority of my campaigns that never finish end due to TPKs. Or "enough of the party is killed" - where it just doesn't make sense to continue after 50% or more of the characters die in a way that means the game can't finish. (For example, half the party is dead with no healing available, the rest of the party barely survived with a handful of HP remaining. We will just cut our losses and start anew.)

Now that I'm running Daggerheart - which doesn't mandate character death - it seems much more likely that we'll finish a campaign.