Er...then...what other measurable metric can I use? We don't record every roll a character makes (and nor are we going to), and this is over a 35-year span with half a dozen DMs running 10 or more campaigns. What I have for raw data is lots of character sheets (but by no means all of them) and logs* showing when they came in, what adventures they were in, deaths, and when (and often why) they finished.
* - many of these logs are online at the site in my .sig, in each campaign there is a "character log" link; and some logs for other games are also listed in various parts of the site.
Backed up by data, putting it a step or two beyond just anecdotes by memory.
Slightly above anecdote, but well below concrete data. It's a pretty perfect example of an extremely limited and inherently biased sample size.
Where did you find this data?
And when was the poll taken? This is relevant as the more recent editions (3e-pf-4e) don't support long campaigns as well as older ones did unless the DM does some tweaking. 3e, in fact, was specifically designed for a 1-2 year campaign. I mean, I played in a 10-year 3e campaign and I've seen posters here talk about 6-year 4e campaigns, but from all I can gather those are extreme outliers for those editions.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?217967-Campaign-Length
So 2008, just as/before 4e came out. I'm not sure how you can say a given campaign can't last X years in a specific system. Or, really, a somewhat modified version of the same system, with varying levels of tweaking. Show me any data to back that up? What makes an AD&D campaign potentially last any longer than a 3.X campaign, exactly? What difference in design alters the fundamental flow of a campaign? Levels 1-20? Check. Same rough tiers of gaining access to new effects via spells and magic items? Check. Monsters roughly the same? If anything, a bit less deadly, meaning characters are a bit more likely to make it further. Potentially unlimited levels beyond 20 if you wish? Check. Campaign worlds? Identical if you want them to be.
What, exactly, about any given system limits the length of the campaign, barring systems with very specific mechanics for characters retiring upon achieving X, Y, or Z? And even those, you can quite easily eliminate that specific mechanic if you want. Characters retire after X? No, they don't. That was easy. You can quite easily play a FATE game for a decade. Without any difficulty whatsoever. HERO System? Super simple, actually.
How do you figure 3e was specifically designed for 1-2 year campaigns? Like 1e/AD&D, 3e specifically discusses at length varying XP rewards to shorten or lengthen the time between gaining levels to set a pace appropriate to your own game. That they put a somewhat more comprehensive structure to XP rewards isn't indicative of designing it to last a certain length. AD&D could quite easily (and has, in my own first-hand experience) be paced at a level right there with 3e. It completely depends on the adventures played in. AD&D explicitly states a character can gain a level as often as once per adventure, or as long as once per 10 adventures. 3e on the other hand has it paced at roughly a number of encounters, but...and this is rather critical...that number of encounters varies considerably between adventures, such that some adventures have so few actual encounters that no one should come close to leveling during that adventure.
4e...yes, 4e was designed to be paced at roughly three long adventures per tier. So over 30 levels you should roughly play nine longish adventures. However...4e explicitly has a section explaining how and why you should raise or lower XP rewards to increase or decrease the rate of advancement. To specifically accommodate any length of campaign. The system inherently tells you when and how to stretch a campaign out as long as you desire. And without modifying anything, is designed for around 16 months of play from 1-30, but only if you actually play once a week, every week, all year.
Jury's still out on 5e but it looks like it could easily be made to handle a long campaign; and may even do so as written.
5e is unusual in that it doesn't actually list an explicit baseline pacing. The closest it comes is the rough xp appropriate per fully packed adventuring day. But it also defines an adventuring day of consisting of ~6-8 medium to hard encounters. Which, on most actual days out and about, is probably quite a lot when not in the midst of a war, a rather populous dungeon, etc. And even then, with that high number of medium-to-hard encounters, it scales. You should, according to that, jump from level 1 to 2 in a single day, but then it gets longer and longer, to ~6.5 such days at level 11, and ~10 at level 19. But that is running under an assumption of quite a few rough encounters each of those days, which really means it's more likely stretched out quite a bit.
And...interestingly enough...the length of a campaign is so much easier to handle...wait for it...if you remove XP from the reward structure entirely, and simply level everyone when you want to level.
Something that multiple editions, including both 4e and 5e, explicitly point out as an option. 3e does so in a roundabout manner, suggesting an alternate structure where everyone gets a set level of XP per encounter of session, determined on the fly by the DM, with all the characters getting the same amount. Which is just another way of saying: level the characters when you feel like it (but hand out the XP so they feel like it's a reward).
IME the only thing that gets endangered by reckless not-sober behaviour at my table are the poor defenseless characters they're playing.
And in my experience, that can be quite hit or miss depending on the drunk. Additionally, in my experience, people not-sober on not-alcohol are very rarely any danger to anyone else, including themselves. Considerably less endangered than a drunk person is, even a drunk person with just a buzz-on drunk, who can still quite readily wobble about and bump into people/things, knock potentially expensive objects over, or spill food/drinks, etc. Rare indeed is the stoned person at a table unable to walk around and function, in my experience. Same with people mildly tripping on various psychoactives.
And keep in mind I'm talking about nice-buzz-on drunk rather than faceplant-on-the-floor drunk; passed-out players are really dull, and a passed-out DM kinda puts an end to proceedings.
Besides, how can you have a beer-and-pretzels game without beer?
Again, there's a difference between somebody being a little buzzed and somebody drugged to irrationality, which is what I have to deal with IRL in my work environment (downtown retail) and absolutely do NOT want to deal with anywhere else.
Having worked retail for well over a decade (no more, screw that, never again), and half that time was actually downtown (in a college town, no less!), I do somewhat understand. But again, the drunks? Always vastly worse than people on the majority of drugs. The stoners, the people obviously tripping, or people rolling, were easily the least offensive, and least irrational. It was the drunks or the tweakers that caused the problems, as far as intoxicated people went. Although they never held a candle to the ridiculously entitled people with more money than sense. The latter were easily the most obnoxious and belligerent customers I ever had to deal with.
It's because it's what I'm familiar with, meaning I can somewhat predict what comes next particularly with people I know well (and this game with).
And again, radically different than my experiences. Except for people I know and trust, I find the behavior of drunk people in particular to be extremely erratic and unpredictable. You never know what will set them off and turn them into a loud, belligerent, potentially violent person. I know that 99.9% of the time someone who is stoned, someone who is rolling, someone who is tripping and didn't take some ludicrous dose, is generally going to be extremely easy to both predict, and to calm down. Other than alcohol, it's the people tweaking on meth or crack that are incredibly unpredictable, IME.
What I am, however, is quite certain based on the raw statistics, that odds are you regularly deal with people mildly stoned, or mildly tripping on a psychoactive, or mildly stimulated on coke, and had no idea. The sheer number of people out and about every day a bit high on pot is quite staggeringly large, and the vast majority do so while being fully functional members of society. Even the number of people addicted to opiates, or who use coke, who you likely come across on a daily basis, don't actually exhibit the signs stereotypically attributed to those drugs. I think you'd be quite surprised at the number and types of people on recreational drugs of one variety or another you encounter. Truckers, kitchen staff, and retail workers, are on pot with some regularity. Lawyers, cops, and executives have very high rates of using cocaine or other powerful stimulants regularly.
Just saying, as drugs go, alcohol is demonstrably one of the more addictive, and strongly correlated to reckless, dangerous, or violent behavior.
Would so much rather game with stoners and people on psychoactives than people who want to get drunk on the regular. This is not to say I don't drink when I game. We do in fact have wine fairly regularly when we game, in moderation. Sometimes beer, but not as often. Not to the point of being drunk, just mildly buzzed at the very most. Usually it's a couple of glasses lasting the entire evening.
