Have you ever felt like "restarting" a campaign?

[the Jester]

Being a dm, in some ways, is like being a rock star.

If you screw up your lines, you just gotta keep on goin'!

 

[Psion]

Being a dm, in some ways, is like being a rock star.

Still awaiting the nubile young groupie chicks...

 

[der_kluge]

Welcome Spoon.


I don't think I've ever ran -any- game that I thought was as good as it could have been. I make mistakes - big and small - every session I run.

That said, my players continue to invite me back every week. So, it must not be awful.

 

[the Jester]

Still awaiting the nubile young groupie chicks...

Really??

Clearly you're not playing with the right crowd.

 

[barsoomcore]

Clearly you're not playing with the right crowd.

Yeah. I guess Psi never got the "nubile young things for DMs" memo. Geez, you'd think he'd reviewed it by now....

On topic: the danger with restarting the campaign is that it sets a precedent that will lead to player uninvolvement.

Most DMs who restart campaigns are what I call "serial rewinders" -- they don't just do it once, they do it over and over again. Every time their concept of their campaign changes, they revamp it all and start over. Do that just a couple of times (I suspect even once is enough) and your players will start to invest LESS in your campaign, and that way lies death, madness and drunken revelry with nubile young things.

No wait. Strike that last one. That was in the memo.

I suggest you carry on with the current campaign and either A) follow everyone's fine advice about gradual changes, or B) run the current campaign as a "limited-run" campaign -- a couple of tightly-integrated adventures, take the PCs though a couple of levels and then wrap it up -- and then start ANOTHER campaign in the same world, with the changes you want to make.

The reality of any campaign I've ever run has been that by the time I'm wrapping things up, I'm cursing myself for decisions made back at the beginning. But you know, if you knew exactly how it was going to go when you started the campaign, you wouldn't have needed to run the campaign.

 

[dreaded_beast]

Thanks for all the responses.

Any other insights would be helpful.