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

[el-remmen]

Indefinite, but four to six years usually feels right.

My current Ghosts of Saltmarsh+ campaign is at about two years, 32 sessions, approximately 156 hours - and my guess is by mid-summer, we'll be at a place approximately 8th level where we can decide if we want to continue with these characters, start something else in the same setting but different characters (working towards a stable of PCs to choose from), or play something else entirely.

 

[Yora]

My longest campaign yet was 19 games last year. I could absolutely go much longer than that. 40 or 50 sounds nice.

 

[beancounter]

Our last campaign went on for 3 years, and we reached 18th level.

 

[Stormdale]

I like 3-4+ year campaigns if i can manage it, my Saltmarsh/Greyhawk game entering year number 3 with charactres from 8th-11th levels.

I don't have nay overarching gals, jsut want advenures to grow organically out of the characters choices and adventures they choose to do. We continue till A we run out of steam/stories to tell for the characters, B we have a TPK, C everyone wants to retire their pcs and start afresh. The characters stories may end abut they add history to the fabric of the campaign (set in Greyhawk) and the players get a kick out of former pcs makng cameos in later games.

 

[Malmuria]

Real life concerns (scheduling, work, kids, etc) are a consistent problem for the people I play with, even playing online. So if I'm DMing, I'll plan on a 10 episode "season" and then reevaluate if we get that far. The other obstacle to a long campaign for me is wanting to play different games, different systems.

 

[S'mon]

Anything from 20 sessions to indefinite, depending on the campaign structure. I tend to find most Adventure Path campaigns unsatisfying, though it depends how well they're made of course. I stopped tracking sessions in my open world Faerun Adventures sandbox, but it started in August 2018 (initially 1e, now 5e) and must have had hundreds of sessions across several adventurer & player groups. It's designed to run indefinitely; currently the highest level PCs are 7th. My 5e Primeval Thule campaign has run 48 sessions and I'm guessing should run around 65 total, but I could be way off. Still it's definitely a 'live fast die young' setting, the PCs are currently 17th level and I don't really want to run more than 4-8 sessions at level 20, especially with 2 Moon Druids in the party.

My general experience of what works:
Linear, AP type campaign - maybe 35 sessions
Episodic campaign - maybe 60 sessions, my episodic 4e Loudwater game ran 103 sessions level 1-30 over 5.5 years Feb 2011-August 2016, but in hindsight the Epic Tier felt like a stretch, I think it would have worked better wrapped up at 20th after 75 sessions & 3.5 years Feb 2011-September 2014.
Open World Sandbox - no limits, but sometimes they come to a natural conclusion. I felt my original Wilderlands 5e game was done after around 130 sessions. I was down to 2 regular players and they both had level 20 demigods with a ton of Epic Boons.

 

[Lyxen]

We really liked long campaigns lasting a few years, exploring all levels. Our longest one was with 3e, about 10 years, 350 sessions with about 5 DMs with interlacing story arcs leading the PCs to divine ascension. About 100 PCs, 30% dead during the campaign sessions and about 30 more in the final ascension, the rest of the PCs are now the core pantheon of some of our campaigns.

 

[MNblockhead]

My first campaign for 5e lasted about a year and a half (homebrew with milestone leveling), my second campaign lasted about a year (modified milestone leveling - I used a system of exploration, story, macguffin, and defeating important bad guys mini-milestones from a doc I got off of DMs Guild), and my current campaign has gone on over two years and will likely be about 3 years by the time it wraps up (Rappan Athuk, a mega-dungeon campaign setting, using XP for GP).

We generally play once a month for an 8 hour session. Some months we have two sessions, and there have been months we missed.

 

[Blue]

Last three campaigns I ran lasted 4 years, 7 years, and 4.5 years. I've currently got one that's been going on for 1.5 years and we lost two players who are buying their first home, half the country away. Talking to the players, they overwhelmingly wanted to continue, even though it meant bringing in two new players. So we did it right, had a Session 0 for them, and are continuing.

But part of my formative years of gaming was with a DM who ran like over a dozen different AD&D 2nd campaigns based in different parts of the Forgotten Realms, with a lot of crossovers both temporary and permanent with characters in groups, and a lot of overlap in players. That went on for longer than anytrhing I ran, and could easily have continued on forever. New challenges came up all the time.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

This is my recent experience:

• Completed a 5E campaign from level 1-20 that lasted 122 sessions over 4 years. Candidly, I miscalculated the pacing of the campaign and we spent too much time at high levels -- particularly in Tier 4.
• Currently running a 5E campaign now at level 7 that's had 34 sessions over 2ish years. There's no end in sight for this campaign. I'm not sure if it will reach level 20, but if it continues it will go into Tier 3.
• Currently running a 5E campaign now at level 7 that's had 33 sessions over about 18 months. I expect this to wrap up at about 50 sessions with the characters at about 10th level.
• Currently running a Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign that's had 9 sessions over 3 months. Characters started at level 0 and are now 2nd level. I expect this to run about 50 sessions and the characters will cap out at 10th level.

I tend to be a longform storyteller. So about 50 sessions in 2 years or less is ideal for me. When I run another 1-20 level campaign I'll aim for that to be no more than 100 sessions and 3 years in length.