D&D General How do you deal with long breaks in your campaign?

[pogre]

So how do you deal with long breaks in your campaign? Do you do anything to keep interest up?

For campaigns I am going to continue I have done a couple of things:
(1) In one instance I sent out updates from the point of view of the campaign villain. It was a lot of fun and had the players itching to get back to the table.
(2) For other campaigns I have sent out surveys on the direction they would like to see the campaign go and world updates. I also had the players who were interested flesh out certain areas of the campaign world.

Good luck! I know it was probably a tough call to go on hiatus when a campaign is rolling, but sometimes real life dictates these things.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Just like everyone else, a month isn't bad. Ask for a volunteer to come up with a "town crier" or gossip gazette version of your adventures, toss in some light roleplay by post, or just keep the talk up about the latest changes to your favorite 3rd party product. It's all about keeping the contacts up, and when you're back together, it won't seem like that much time passed.

 

[Faolyn]

Welp, I had to send this message out today:


I'm grateful we got a chance to play in-person as long as we have, but I'm putting the campaign on hiatus. I said a month, but it may extend beyond that. To be clear, VTT is impossible for us.

So how do you deal with long breaks in your campaign? Do you do anything to keep interest up?

Is it just that VTTs are impossible, or is any internet communication impossible? My group has been doing just fine via discord and google meet and going fully theater of the mind.

 

[S'mon]

I don't see 4 weeks as a long break. I typically have 4-6 week breaks over Xmas. When I restarted my 5e Primeval Thule campaign again recently - it had run 41 sessions in 2019, then a 4 session epilogue in 2021 - I did a 7 year time skip and levelled everyone up to the highest existing PC level, 17th. It seems to be working very very well. Making it a Tier 4 game now of "Thule's Mightiest Heroes" definitely makes the setting feel fresh and gives free reign to use all the plot threads that had been building up from 1st level.

 

[jgsugden]

Option 1A: Move the game virtual until you're ready to get together. Roll20 is pretty easy to use.
Option 1B: Play via Zoom. I've done it with the DM running Zoom from both the laptop and from the phone (to show the battlemap).
Option 2: Share good notes on where they are, and then play board games online for a few weeks. Boardgamearena.com and Steam are two good option.

 

[Blue]

We play every other week. A single session missed is a month between sessions. It's nothing, don't worry about it. Just do a good recap when starting back up.

 

[iserith]

A VTT and a practically infinite pool of players on the internet means never having to take a break.

 

[robus]

Hell when we switched the twice a month, a month long break happened regularly when someone couldn’t make the session!

 

[Zardnaar]

Gonna have to figure it out. Most likely new campaign.

 

[Lanefan]

A VTT and a practically infinite pool of players on the internet means never having to take a break.

Well, other than that the OP has already said online play isn't an option for that group.

And that's fair enough. For some, no gaming is better than online gaming.