Define the term "campaign"

[Hussar]

Just to be absolutely clear.

Let's use A as the example. Why did A go from the caves to the castle? Was there something in the caves that directed him in some way to go to the castle (could be information, could be a need for a cure of a curse or disease, something)? Or, did A finish the caves adventure, come back next week and the DM said, "Ok, you're done the caves, tonight, I have 'Castle of Adventure!'"

In the first case, you have a campaign. In the second you have one off's.

 

[billd91]

Just to be absolutely clear.

Let's use A as the example. Why did A go from the caves to the castle? Was there something in the caves that directed him in some way to go to the castle (could be information, could be a need for a cure of a curse or disease, something)? Or, did A finish the caves adventure, come back next week and the DM said, "Ok, you're done the caves, tonight, I have 'Castle of Adventure!'"

In the first case, you have a campaign. In the second you have one off's.

Wouldn't it be up to A's player to decide why they went from the caves to the castle? Why A and B recruited some more adventurers before heading for the castle? You seem to be expecting a lot more to come from .... somewhere.

What I'm getting from your responses is you pretty much require a designed story for any adventures to be considered linked, which suggests to me that, despite your protestation, you fundamentally don't consider sandboxing to be a "campaign". The way you're trying to analyze my theoretical example, in which I didn't provide any description of the PCs' motivations for adventuring (which would be up to the players) pretty much screams the need for a specific story linking things together from the top down rather than coming from the players developing the story with their PCs.

Why go to the castle from the caves for A and B? Maybe they got a taste for exploring, heard some rumors while cashing in some artifacts from the caves, and decided to follow up on them. How are we not looking at a campaign here? You've got DM, player, PC, setting, and time continuity linking the adventure sites together. What you're missing, compared to an Adventure Path, is a DM/Author-organized story. So are you saying that's necessary for a game to be considered a "campaign"?

 

[Hussar]

Why go to the castle from the caves for A and B? Maybe they got a taste for exploring, heard some rumors while cashing in some artifacts from the caves, and decided to follow up on them. How are we not looking at a campaign here? You've got DM, player, PC, setting, and time continuity linking the adventure sites together. What you're missing, compared to an Adventure Path, is a DM/Author-organized story. So are you saying that's necessary for a game to be considered a "campaign"?

So, we're in agreement then. To have a campaign, you need some sort of causal linkage between adventures. That causal link doesn't have to come from the DM (I never stated that it did, quite the opposite in fact) but there must be some sort of chain of causality from one point to the next and so on.

That chain of causality is entirely lacking in your stated example.

IF there is a reason why the group has split up five times in five adventures, and IF there are causal links between each adventure, then YES you have a campaign.

OTOH, if the only reason A is going to the castle is because that's the adventure the DM had prepped that night, then no, you don't have a campaign, you have a series of one offs.

But, isn't it interesting Bill91, that your definition of a campaign didn't require any reference to a setting. In your definition, setting is completely irrelavent to whether something is a campaign or not.

The relavent fact is whether or not there is a "time continuity" linking the adventure sites together - which I take to mean a causal chain. (please correct me if I'm wrong)

So, no, you don't need a DM imposed story for a campaign. I never said that. Nor will I ever say that. You most certainly don't need that. I would never claim that sandbox campaigns are not campaigns. In the same way I would hope that you would never claim that an adventure path campaign is not a campaign. They are both campaigns in exactly the same way - a chain of events where you can follow along point by point and understand exactly how you got from A to B to C.

But, nowhere in that definition do I require anything about a setting.

So, how exactly does setting=campaign?

 

[billd91]

But, nowhere in that definition do I require anything about a setting.

So, how exactly does setting=campaign?

I do mention continuity of setting. Go check. But ultimately, the characters are adventuring somewhere, right? The trick about specific setting is: suppose they're campaign setting hopping through gates? Though of course, even there you have a setting, one that's very broad.

But I don't require a story or causal linkage either. I'm just trying to pin you down and see what your criteria really are. All I require is that the group of players perceive enough continuity between sessions to call it a campaign. It could be setting, it could be story, it could be characters, it could be DM, it could be players. It could be some combination of all of these so long as they feel that they have enough continuity in some way, shape, or form to call it their campaign.

 

[DragonLancer]

How about this as a way of explaining it:

Let's say I am running the Pathfinder campaign setting, Golarion. I have four players: Adam, Bob, Carol and Donna. We start at whatever level and go through until we decide to wrap it up. That's a campaign.

If Donna drops out and Edward joins us, but we are still carrying on with the game we started it is still the same campaign. Likewise if all but Bob's characters are killed the players roll new ones. Again, it is the same campaign if the same game continues.

If I run a seperate game of Pathfinder, also in Golarion, but with Fred, Gary, Heidi and Ian it is a different campaign because there is no tie to previous characters in the other campaign.

 

[coyote6]

The answer to those last questions, IMO, determine whether this is a campaign or a collection of one off's.

FWIW, I think I'd call billd91's game a campaign. I'd even say a collection of completely unrelated one-offs could be a campaign. Bill's One-Shots Campaign or whatever.

OTOH, the two D&D campaigns I ran in Greyhawk were separate campaigns, not part of some universal Greyhawk Campaign, nor the same campaign (even though the one started with a couple of characters "on loan" from the other).

I'm flexible on the definition of "campaign". It's like art or pornography, IMO.

 

[Ariosto]

But if it needs more than geography, what do you consider sufficient?

Suppose I DM a group of characters ABCD and they loot some caves. Then AB go off and visit a castle with characters EF while CD loot more caves with GH. Then suppose ACGH go and put down some bandits and BDFI go do some caravan guarding.

How many campaigns have I got going on here?

What Mr. McCrae said:

One. But it's way old school.

It is not, in the old style, the case that

To have a campaign, you need some sort of causal linkage between adventures.

The Volunteer Fire Department's activities are not necessarily directly causing, or being caused by, those of the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club, or the Fight Club, or even Tristero.

What is essential is that entities can affect one another, that effects propagate within the field of play that is an imagined universe. That distinguishes it from "a series of one shots".

Each player is free to make what use of that fact he or she pleases. It is not necessary that there should be any continuous alliance.

This is pretty much part and parcel with the "sandbox campaign" as I usually meet the term. The "monolithic party" is the root of many problems these days, when people in other respects carry forward unexamined "legacy" assumptions from the old game.

We can have such a thing, rather than the player, as the basic unit of play. The Party can be a free-range monad, and we can call that a "sandbox" -- and for some purposes of discussion that will be dandy. It is not the "campaign" arrangement, though, for which the original rules were set up. Prohibiting certain moves can radically change a game, possibly "breaking" balances that helped make it interesting.

The 3e and 4e games have books that discuss their own structures quite admirably, one field of endeavor in which I have seen improvement. How they define "encounters" and "adventures" and "campaigns" as technical jargon is a key part of the explication of "edition"-specific mechanisms.

 

[mxyzplk]

In my (and everyone I've ever gamed with's) usage, a campaign is a set of adventures in the same ruleset and setting, usually with decent player and character continuity.

It's almost exactly like a TV series. Sure, characters and/or actors change but tend to not change too much, and it's the same tone in the same general milieu. You can have a "spinoffs" with some similar characters, like the Stargate series, but those are "different shows". A campaign is like that. There may be variance in characters or plotline or setting, but there is overall continuity.