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

[Gilladian]

I mentioned in my first answer that we switch to “new areas and new characters” every few years. But we play in the same campaign world, and often go back to the same general places, a few years later. Right now I’m working on moving forward 5 years in my favorite kingdom, where a new ruler has just inherited after a war. Pcs in that world have established that kingdom, overthrown one ruler, placed another on the throne, fought in a war, saved a Pprince from doom, etc... Current plans on my side include the new Ruler being an ancient evil lich magic jarred into the true Prince’s body. Who knows if the PCs will want to mess with that, but it will put a darker, more evil tone into the power structure than in the past. We shall see!

 

[Blue]

The last three completed campaigns I ran were 4 years (D&D 3.0->3.5), 7 years (D&D 3.5) and 4.5 years (13th Age). I have multiple 5e campaigns going, none are over. Those are playing bi-weekly, and are all homebrew.

The last couple of completed campaigns I've run in have been <1 year for hardcover APs, 2 years for homebrew. All 5e. If you go back to 4e campaigns we had two that fell apart without completion at the >2 year mark and one at the <1 year mark.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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

Similar here. I prefer either campaigns which have a pretty well-defined start and end point (and in D&D, might cover a relatively short span of levels), or campaigns which aren't specific campaigns at all, but just sort of go on and on until people get bored of them but which we tend might come back to.

What I have some difficulty with, myself, is the common like, 1-15, or 1-20-type campaigns. My experience, and this is strictly personal observation, not something I am claiming as a fact, is that they're long enough that they often lose focus, or stop being as interesting as they could be, but not as free or possible to leave and come back to as "forever" campaigns.

 

[prabe]

What I have some difficulty with, myself, is the common like, 1-15, or 1-20-type campaigns. My experience, and this is strictly personal observation, not something I am claiming as a fact, is that they're long enough that they often lose focus, or stop being as interesting as they could be, but not as free or possible to leave and come back to as "forever" campaigns.

What I've been running, effectively, is campaigns that are probably 1-to-20-ish, but are in principle "1-to-people-get-tired-of-or-otherwise-retire-the-characters" campaigns. I don't do published adventures, so they're centered around goals the characters have, either from backstory or previous in-campaign events. I don't know that they're as unfocused as you are talking about, but I'll concede that leaving and coming back would be ... difficult, if only as a narrative thing.

 

[Coroc]

Ideally, open-ended and slow-advancing enough to, if interest holds and the rules system doesn't collapse, last for the rest of my life.

In practice the good ones always make it past ten years. This of course means loads of character turnover and also less-frequent but still significant player turnover as time goes by. Interweaving parties and stories and dramas - think Game of Thrones style - where each "chapter" (adventure or adventure-series) might focus on a different party than the one before.

My current campaign is approaching 11.5 years. There's been a total of 12 players, not including the person who lasted for exactly one session, of which two have been in all the way through from start to now. Something like 200+ PCs have seen action, quite a few of which died quickly, a number more of which "sailed into the sunset" when their players left the game, and about 30-ish of which are still out there either currently* active or available to become so.

* - or would be were it not for disease-caused hiatus.

Wow, what world do you use? Some official or homebrew, and did you switch editions ? I am absolutely curious, has there been one goal defined that 11,5 years ago which is still not met? Or is it more an open world simulation?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Wow, what world do you use? Some official or homebrew, and did you switch editions ? I am absolutely curious, has there been one goal defined that 11,5 years ago which is still not met? Or is it more an open world simulation?

Im going to guess the answer is the latter. See, that’s how a lot of campaigns used to be. You create adventures or drop in ones you buy, there isn’t a theme, goal, or plot defining the campaign overall.

I continue to find it tragic how the more recent publishing model has made this type of campaign seem so foreign to so many players.

 

[Lanefan]

Wow, what world do you use? Some official or homebrew, and did you switch editions ? I am absolutely curious, has there been one goal defined that 11,5 years ago which is still not met? Or is it more an open world simulation?

The setting is completely homebrew, the "edition" is modified 1e which is by now (almost 40 years into its 'development') also mostly homebrew, though the 1e underpinnings are still visible.

There's been several story lines come and go during that time, but underneath it all have been two parallel (but not really connected) plot arcs which parties brush against now and then without realizing it and sometimes intentionally delve right into; both of which have a fair amount of untapped material yet remaining. There's also been lots of standalone adventures and a few standalone adventure series (e.g. 1e's Slavers A-series, considerably modified so the players familiar with them wouldn't be).

Once we get back to regular play my guess is there's at least 2 to 5 years left in it yet; more if I then reboot from level 1 and run an adventure path in the same setting based on some other things they've brushed against over time.

 

[Coroc]

The setting is completely homebrew, the "edition" is modified 1e which is by now (almost 40 years into its 'development') also mostly homebrew, though the 1e underpinnings are still visible.

There's been several story lines come and go during that time, but underneath it all have been two parallel (but not really connected) plot arcs which parties brush against now and then without realizing it and sometimes intentionally delve right into; both of which have a fair amount of untapped material yet remaining. There's also been lots of standalone adventures and a few standalone adventure series (e.g. 1e's Slavers A-series, considerably modified so the players familiar with them wouldn't be).

Once we get back to regular play my guess is there's at least 2 to 5 years left in it yet; more if I then reboot from level 1 and run an adventure path in the same setting based on some other things they've brushed against over time.

Amazing, your amount and quality of book keeping hast to be tremendous.

 

[Lanefan]

Amazing, your amount and quality of book keeping hast to be tremendous.

Maybe it is and I'm just used to it, but I'm not sure it's any more than anyone else does.

To me the key is up-front prep, as in spending a lot of time on setting design and history etc. before the campaign even starts such that once the puck drops you only have to worry about the day-to-day stuff and the background will largely take care of itself. The only time I have to revisit this later is if-when some PCs go into a whole new region of the world (or worse, a whole new world) and stay there long enough to oblige me to provide local info e.g. maps, pantheons, cultures, etc.

After each session I type up the game log (takes half an hour maybe, largely done from memory) and put it online as the record of the game. My during-session bookkeeping is atrocious as I just can't talk and write at the same time and I don't want to stop every little while to make notes.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To the end and no longer. I've just written up an account of a six session Apocalypse World campaign I ran that was awesome and almost exactly the right length - even ten sessions would have been far too many for that campaign. On the other hand my current D&D campaign is far longer and works well that way.