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<blockquote data-quote="willpax" data-source="post: 144107" data-attributes="member: 1602">About a year and a half ago, my brother bought several copies of the 3rd edition rules in an attempt to get our old group from the 1980s back into roleplaying. It worked, to a certain extent: we have revived our old campaign world, and are currently taking a band of adventurers through my too-subtle, over-clever, nefarious world-spanning plots that hint at secrets-man-was-not-meant-to-know (TM, H.P. Lovecraft). Unfortunately (and unlike back in high school), our lives are much more complicated. Most of us are married with young children, our homes span three separate urban areas, and we all work full time. In addition, several are fanatic college football fans, meaning that most weekends in the fall are busy. In that year and a half, we have played four 5-6 hour sessions. The characters are all third level (I bumped them up to handle some more interesting encounters; they have second level experience and will probably not reach L4 for a while). My worry is that we play much too infrequently for any sort of campaign coherence. There are several things we do between sessions: we have email exchanges and phone conversations to help me know character ambitions and other useful types of information; I have sent out several &quot;ongoing plot hook&quot; newsletters to try to refresh their memory from session to session (If I ever have time, I might try to turn them into a story hour); and a &quot;previous episode&quot; review at the beginning of each session. Two questions for the board: 1) How infrequently is it possible to play before it seriously undermines the gaming experience (especially when one is attempting to run rather dense, plot-based campaigns as opposed to more encapsulated and/or combat oriented sessions); 2) What inventive tactics/story pacing/creativetechniques have you developed to help maintain some continuity between longer breaks from gaming?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="willpax, post: 144107, member: 1602"] About a year and a half ago, my brother bought several copies of the 3rd edition rules in an attempt to get our old group from the 1980s back into roleplaying. It worked, to a certain extent: we have revived our old campaign world, and are currently taking a band of adventurers through my too-subtle, over-clever, nefarious world-spanning plots that hint at secrets-man-was-not-meant-to-know (TM, H.P. Lovecraft). Unfortunately (and unlike back in high school), our lives are much more complicated. Most of us are married with young children, our homes span three separate urban areas, and we all work full time. In addition, several are fanatic college football fans, meaning that most weekends in the fall are busy. In that year and a half, we have played four 5-6 hour sessions. The characters are all third level (I bumped them up to handle some more interesting encounters; they have second level experience and will probably not reach L4 for a while). My worry is that we play much too infrequently for any sort of campaign coherence. There are several things we do between sessions: we have email exchanges and phone conversations to help me know character ambitions and other useful types of information; I have sent out several "ongoing plot hook" newsletters to try to refresh their memory from session to session (If I ever have time, I might try to turn them into a story hour); and a "previous episode" review at the beginning of each session. Two questions for the board: 1) How infrequently is it possible to play before it seriously undermines the gaming experience (especially when one is attempting to run rather dense, plot-based campaigns as opposed to more encapsulated and/or combat oriented sessions); 2) What inventive tactics/story pacing/creativetechniques have you developed to help maintain some continuity between longer breaks from gaming? [/QUOTE]

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