D&D 5E Do you favour short or long campaigns?

[Mortilupo]

I like campaigns that go the amount of time I intend them to go.

My D&D includes:

• One Shots. A one to three session adventure unconnected to anything else, generally with characters used (or leveled) only for this purpose.
• Theme Adventures. An focused, thematic adventure designed to run somewhere between 8-15 sessions, with character custom created for this purpose (and who generally will not level up during the adventure).
• Mini-Campaigns. The best example of this is Lost Mine of Phandelver. A few months of play where organized around a large adventure or series of adventures, freeform or more structured, where the characters should advance multiple levels.
• Campaigns. A multi-year (the longer the better) exploration of the lives of the PCs, as they advance from their starting level towards an expected end point, generally at a much higher level than the starting level, and which may include any number of unrelated adventures and adventure arcs in addition to any that may be related. There need not (but can) be any story or event focus other than following the lives of the PCs.

I don't really consider anything that lasts less than 4 years a true campaign. If it were intended to be a campaign as I defined it, but stopped before hitting the intended end, I consider that a failed campaign. I'd honestly rather have played something else than to have started a D&D thing (whichever of those it may be, but especially one intended as a campaign) and have it not get to its completion.

I know it seems to be a pretty common thing for people to start a lot of campaigns and not finish them, but in my opinion that is a planning failure half the time (the other half of the time it's someone else's fault). I think the problem is that people really don't think about where they want things to go, and how they plan to get there before they get started. Kind of like (to bounce off of something from the OP) a lot of TV series. Some TV series are well-planned, they tell the story they want to tell in the right number of seasons, and then they end it in a pleasing manner. They knew what they were doing before they started, and it shows. Other TV series just sort of bumble along after an initial good season, without any real purpose, getting loony and stupid until they are eventually canceled. Don't let your campaign be that type. Be the planned type.

Now, out of that list I gave, my absolute favorite is the true long campaign. "Sim-Adventurer", so to speak. Planning doesn't have to mean plot. The plan can easily be, "The PCs adventure until they reach about 20th level, and then retire rich and well-settled in the world. Oh, and hopefully they'll kill an evil god or found a kingdom in the meantime." In fact, that's pretty much the old school D&D campaign goal.

But if I'm doing something other than a long campaign, I figure out what the heck it is going to be first (generally from that list I gave above) so that I can make sure it happens in a satisfying manner. Otherwise, you end up with failed experiences rather than successes.

(One thing I should point out is that it practically impossible to run a real campaign in 5e (or 3e, or 4e) using the default XP rates, because they are designed to level your characters way too fast.)

I stopped tracking it for my players after 7th, I just milestone them when I think it's time.

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[Yaztromo]

Of course the preference (for long campaigns, short campaigns, one-off adventure or chain of one-off adventures that may or may not turn into a campaign, or even long campaign with intervals made of special, unrelated one-off adventures with completely unrelated themes and settings) changes with time, with the availability of free time and with the availability (and tastes) of the other people sharing your same interests in gaming.

Often the preference waves between the various options, so don't feel bad about closing down (or pass on to more motivated game masters) the long campaigns that are becoming heavyier and heavyier for you to move forward and feel free to move to a format that suits you better.
It's a game and having fun is the very basis of it.
Just don't be surprised if in future you will look forward to other formats again or even to go back to long campaigns. It happens.


Said that, right now I prefer one-off adventures or mini-campaigns with rulesets that don't involve levelling up with experience, but at most improving your basic characteristics.
By the way, after playing a lot on line, I closed down most of that kind of games: now I prefer just face to face and if it can't be done for practical reasons, so be it.

 

[CydKnight]

What is a long campaign but several short ones strung together?

I try to approach each game session as a one shot. Sure there may be some aspects of it that have been built upon from previous campaigns so I simply build those important aspects into the current session's preparation. Trying to keep track of every detail in a campaign book will be overwhelming to most DMs so I like keep handy only what is relevant for the session at hand. When I start to feel overwhelmed, I narrow the focus.

Planning ahead for a direction of the campaign that may happen in the future is sometimes useful but often when I do so I find players heading off in a completely different direction or approaching in a completely different way than I imagined (or envisioned based on the campaign book). If you are at all like me an not efficient at improvisation, it may be necessary to scale back your focus (and the player's) closer to current events. Keeping their focus narrowed, limits their choices which limits the need for long hours of preparation each session. To some this may seem like railroading, and I suppose to some degree it is, but I think some at times is necessary to keep things moving forward. You can still allow players to choose the direction of the campaign but you choose when to make those choices available to them and build that into your one shot game session.

l also find that embracing the campaign as if I created it myself helps a lot in keeping track of current events. It's not the past events I have trouble remembering so much as names which isn't as important as their function in the campaign along with future milestones and how they tie-in with current game play. Usually if I can just keep track of current events without focusing too much on what I think will be future events, I find it easier to improvise if it becomes necessary to keep the campaign moving forward.

So all this to say I try to prepare each game session as a one shot. When I have trouble figuring out how to approach it in this way, I ask myself how would I set-up this session if it were intended to be a stand-alone one shot? When I look at it in this way it is far less intimidating.

 

[TwoSix]

Anything more than 20-25 sessions starts to feel like a slog to me. I can't keep a coherent storyline going much past that, and if I'm playing, I usually get the "new character" itch way before then.

 

[robus]

In my experience, most players love character continuity; if you give them the chance to stop and do something different, hardly any will want to take it. So as a DM, it's up to me to try and help make that fun. For example:
1. make sure your session recap doesn't just go over what happened last week, make sure it covers what's relevant for the session that's actually about to start; this means you might remind them of stuff that's way old but relevant to 'what's next', and leave out some more recent stuff that is not important going forward.
2. when you do your planning, make sure you do your own 'recap' to remind yourself of what's happened earlier, and how you can use that to make the next session interesting, not just what's written in your adventure / book. That's actually quite a challenge, but a good one IMO (I found Curse of Strahd especially challenging to run, but in a good way).

I've run adventure paths from 1st to 20th level in 3.5 and 5e, and to 30th in 4e. None were perfect, but all were epic events the players and I got a lot out of. Each had a mix of variety in adventure styles, and a 'meta plot' that didn't really appear clearly until the second half. Now, I'll probably never run one that big ever again, but something at least ten levels gives enough of the same kinds of continuity and development that people love, and it's less work for you as DM not having to try and keep high level play interesting.

The key to success in a long-running campaign is simply ensuring:
1. every session is as relevant and interesting as possible (if it's just filler, hand-wave it to the interesting part).
2. every adventure (in an AP), or chapter (in a book-style), is as interesting as possible, and is different from the previous ones.
3. you follow the two pieces of advice earlier i.e. solid, relevant re-caps to kick off each session with your players minds on the job; solid planning to keep you and the players interested and the adventures relevant not just grinding through the pre-written 'script'.

Agree 100%. Recaping is so key to retaining player interest. It reminds them of the exciting events of the past (recent or otherwise) ands whets their appetite for the upcoming session. Players forget pretty much everything from session to session )) it's the DMs job to reimmerse and resituate them at the beginning of the session.

I played in a PotA game where the DM just expected the players to leap back in where we left off (sometimes after a monthlong gap) and it quickly became a pointless slog as everyone (except the DM - I hope!) forgot what we were doing and why.

That's how campaigns die, when the connective tissue of the recap is neglected.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I ran an AD&D campaign from '85 through '95, a shared-world Champions campaign from '84 through 92, a shared WoD campaign from '93 through 2002, played in two concurrent 3.x campaigns from 2000 to 2008, ran Champions again from 2002 to 2010. Finally, the D&D campaign I'm currently running started in 2011, and the one I'm currently playing in started in 2010.

So, yeah, long campaigns, I guess.

I've also run for AL, for Encounters before that, and one-offs at conventions since the 80s. So /really/ short is also fun.

 

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

And anything that has not yet come up in the world is subject to rewrite to match player interests, including - nay, especially my big plots. Where we are right now plot-wise I never could have imagined at the campaign start because so much of it is based on how my PCs have interacted and changed the world. This is very different then following an adventure path and keeps it focused and relevant for them.

I guess the best way to describe it is I'm pseudo-sand-boxy. I come with ideas based on what the players and characters seem interested in and do, and they are free to pursue those or something else. But stuff they don't pursue doesn't just drop unless the players aren't interested - it grows and that helps keep the world dynamic. I had one campaign where I was asked to have a definitive beginning, middle and end before the start and even with rewriting that wasn't as much fun for me to write. I'd rather throw out huge amounts of foreshadowing that I have no idea what it means, and then tie it in three months later as things become clearer.

This.

Having just the seed of a Campaign and letting the player's ideas/background/interactions drive the story keeps them interested and invested and makes me look like a genius writer.

 

[DemonSlayer]

I really like a game that has a good story arc, especially a good ending. Length isn't so important. It is nice to play higher level characters though.

Way too often our campaigns burn out after 7th or 8th level (when starting at 1st). The DM gets tired of running the game and we as players barely get to a power level where our character can really shine. We started rotating game masters to give them breaks, and that helps somewhat, but some games get left high and dry with no ending.

I love longer campaigns that take my character to higher levels.

 

[Lanefan]

Agree 100%. Recaping is so key to retaining player interest. It reminds them of the exciting events of the past (recent or otherwise) ands whets their appetite for the upcoming session. Players forget pretty much everything from session to session )) it's the DMs job to reimmerse and resituate them at the beginning of the session.

I played in a PotA game where the DM just expected the players to leap back in where we left off (sometimes after a monthlong gap) and it quickly became a pointless slog as everyone (except the DM - I hope!) forgot what we were doing and why.

That's how campaigns die, when the connective tissue of the recap is neglected.

Or an online game log, that you can then remind players to read a day or two before each session to both get themselves in the mood and remind themselves what's going on. (of course, the old saying about leading a horse to water comes to mind...but that's on the players if they don't read the log)

That said, even then it's almost invariably true that in the rare instances where 2 sessions of the same game get run on back to back nights the second session is way better than the first.

Lanefan

 

[Caliban]

I think campaigns can be of any length and still be a lot of fun. I just can't seem to run anything short. I always end up with a storyline that stretches into epic levels (and the campaign runs until real life stuff causes the group to break up).