D&D General How long do you like your campaigns?

[Reynard]

When it comes to a D&D campaign -- a series of connected adventures with a consistent cast of player characters -- how long do you prefer it go on for?

A note before the discussion really starts: it doesn't matter to me for the context of this discussion whether you ar eplaying an AP, pre written adventures, totally homebrew content, Westmarches style, an absolute railroad or any of those other details. they may matter to you, of course, so please include them if you desire. I am more interested what folks feel is a good length for a campaign to go on for before moving on to something new.

I have two answers and they are pretty close in my preferences: forever, and brief. To expound:

I have an ongoing campaign that started in AD&D 2E and moved through 3.x, then Mutants and Masterminds and now switching to the Hero System (although we have been stalled out at that last one for a few reasons, not lease coronavirus). Now this campaigns is actually 3 from the perspective of talking about player characters, my my players and I agree that because things are so intimately connected by both PCs (many are descendants of the original PCs) and setting (their actions build the next version of the setting, generationally speaking) it is one long campaign.

Aside from that game, though, I prefer shorter campaigns, ranging from a few months to maybe a year and a half. This is primarily as a GM. I like trying new things and I get GM ADD, etc... If I am running a prewritten adventure (I am currently running Avernus) I definitely want it to be complete in under a year. If I am running a homebrew game or one using smaller prewritten adventures, I have more patience since it is easier to change things up with a singular adventures.

What I don't particularly like is the 5 year campaign that just sort of drags on.

So, what length campaign do you prefer?

 

[Oofta]

Personally I like longer campaigns with multiple story arcs. The campaign I'm currently running just passed the 1 year mark and they're going to hit level 8 after next session so I envision at least another year.

If people get tired of a character, I let them swap out. If they want to change the mode a bit we go off on a different tangent. I enjoy playing from levels 1-20 and sometimes we only meet once a month, so it takes a while.

It might be different if it were a weekly game, but I don't have time for that.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I would estimate 300-400 hours. That's a 4-8 hour game every week or two over the course of one to two years. Enough time to thoroughly enjoy the campaign and explore its various facets.

At that point another DM will generally offer to step in and run a new campaign. Which is nice because I'm ready to just play for a while at that point.

 

[prabe]

I'm DMing two biweekly campaigns. One just had session #54, the other just had session #22. I like campaigns that resolve multiple arcs that tie in with the characters' backstories and (once things are going pretty well) the characters' actions and decisions. In principle I like to have multiple goals pending so the characters can decide what they want to do next; in practice that kinda depends on the group allowing things to pend.

 

[Richards]

I like the longer campaigns, running from 1st level all the way to 20th and then finding a nice way to wrap it up at the end. My first successfully completed D&D 3.5 campaign ran for 9 years (but that was with most players having 2 PCs and running only one of them per session, so that dragged things out). Today we're scheduled to finish off the follow-up campaign, which has run for 5 years. The first campaign had 100 adventures (mostly Dungeon adventures at first, then transitioning to homebrew), while the current campaign consisted solely of adventures I wrote, 80 in all. Our next campaign is planned to be 100 adventures long exactly, 5 adventures each for every level from 1-20. (I'm experimenting with ignoring XP.)

But my son also runs a separate, weekly campaign in his own game world, so I get a chance to be a player as well as a DM. Those tend to last about 2 years, due to the advanced playing schedule.

Johnathan

 

[delericho]

About a year. Which obviously means something very different if we meet for one hour per week than it did when we met for six.

 

[iserith]

80 to 120 hours, which is 20 to 30 sessions. Then we're off to the next thing.

 

[Reynard]

Number of hours is an interesting way to measure it. My Avernus campaign plays mostly weekly for about 3 hours per session (playing by way of Fantasy grounds). It looks like we just finished out 30th session (thank goodness one of my players likes to take session notes for me) so that means we are at hour 90. Based on where I would like to bring the game to a close I am guessing 120 total hours. Now, that might not be it for these PCs, but it will be about my limit running the same adventure/campaign.

 

[iserith]

I think it is very useful for the DM to set a limit for the length of the campaign. Not only does it avoid things just sort of petering out in an unsatisfying way, it forces the DM to think about pacing which improves the game experience in my view. Real time is the most valuable resource we have in our finite lives as well and knowing the commitment one is going to get into on the front end is important.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

The campaigns that I have been satisfied with and reached an end rather than being cut-off because of schedule changes or not being as exciting to continue as starting up some recently-released game seems tend to fall in the 50-60 sessions of about 4 hours each length of time.

I also like running things which are kind of more like a single long adventure for about 16-20 sessions of about 4 hours each and then storing those characters away to potentially continue the campaign some time later. It's a lot easier to be happy with and "complete" the tale when doing that, and also stops me from getting quality sag as I try to push on with a campaign "because it's not done yet" while my brain is screaming "You want to run [completely different game]!"