How Long Is YOUR Campaign?

[I'm A Banana]

I just recently did a blog post about how I crunched some numbers on how often and how many levels I actually get through, and how long it takes me to get through them.

By "get through them," I mean use them, from levels 1 to 30, all-inclusive. I mean, that's what you're paying for, with the books. 30 levels of all-inclusive goodness. That's why we need so many pages and why information density is such a huge deal.

I've gotta say, as a busy adult with Stuff to Do, some of these numbers kind of depress me.

If you spend 4 hours per session, that's an entire afternoon or evening. Most of the day is vapor.

Because of that, gaming doesn't happen every week. There are birthdays or holidays or times when people can't make it. But let's be a little optimistic. Let's say, 3 times a month (that's once a week, minus one week).

Let's say you level up once every four sessions. Maybe have 2 or 3 combats per session. Gives you some time to make use of your shiny new abilities in a variety of contexts.

How long does it take you to use all the "content" the rules have provided for you?

Over three years. The time people spend getting a college degree, the time people spend in high school (not counting summers), you spend taking a 1st level elf to being a 30th level elf.

That is 480 hours.

That is a crap-ton of gaming. Not to mention a HUGE commitment. I haven't worked many jobs for longer than two years. I haven't even lived in NYC for as long as it would have taken me to go from level 1-30, assuming that the group actually met that regularly.

I am a busy adult. I have Stuff to Do. Ladies to seduce and all that.

I can't help but think that there is a more efficient use of page space than spending a little over three years of my life getting to, not to mention holding my attention for that long.

In comparison, the longest I've spent playing a videogame has been about 70 hours. Then I move onto the next game.

To fit those 30 levels into even one year of gaming, you will need to almost gain one level at every single session. As someone who has done that before, it seems...fast. You don't get to use your old powers before you get new ones.

With the rate above, WotC could have put out core books with only the Heroic tier in them, and we would all be playing it until the PHB2 came out. Maybe the PHB2 could have been Paragon tier.

Man. It's kind of weird to think that I only use one third of the game in an entire year of scheduling these little playdates.

So much of the core rules are useless when you have this attention span.

But, to the point, how goes it in your games? Do these calculations hold up? How many levels do you get through before everything goes all wahooni-shaped and you start over again? How many months does that take you? How many years? How many hours of game time?

And don't you kind of wish D&D took that into account when making rule books? 'cuz I do.

 

[robconley]

I have run the same campaign for fantasy, the Majestic Wilderlands, for 27 years. (since 1981). The average long-term campaign is about a year and a half of sessions averaging 16 hours per month (split between 2 or 3 session per month). The longest I have run was Four years in three distinct phases. The longest I played was 5 years in two distinct phases.

During these years I played AD&D 1st, Fantasy Hero 1st, GURPS 3rd, D&D 3.X, GURPS 4th, Harnmaster, and now D&D 4.0. Seems to work out the same regardless of what leveling or points scheme the game has. Either the campaign fades because of real life issues or it stops because you reached some point where the character doesn't need to adventure any more.

 

[Mercule]

My current batch of (3.5e) PCs has been in action for 5 years or so -- I remember waiting to start the campaign for a couple of weeks to wait for Unearthed Arcana to be released and see which variants we wanted to use.

Currently, the PCs are 15th level. And that's after I started doubling XP awards at 10th level. There have been some side tracks and one-shots in there, but I'd say we've been doing this weekly game for 75% of that 5 years, in 3-4 hour sessions.

 

[Sanzuo]

I have run the same campaign for fantasy, the Majestic Wilderlands, for 27 years. (since 1981). The average long-term campaign is about a year and a half of sessions averaging 16 hours per month (split between 2 or 3 session per month). The longest I have run was Four years in three distinct phases. The longest I played was 5 years in two distinct phases.

During these years I played AD&D 1st, Fantasy Hero 1st, GURPS 3rd, D&D 3.X, GURPS 4th, Harnmaster, and now D&D 4.0. Seems to work out the same regardless of what leveling or points scheme the game has. Either the campaign fades because of real life issues or it stops because you reached some point where the character doesn't need to adventure any more.

I would like you to tell me something. What is it like to have a campaign run this long? Is it seriously a single campaign you've been running for 27 years? In your opinion, when does a campaign start and when does it end?

I think the longest campaign I've been a part of was about a year and a half. I believe I've run and played in campaigns that were about this long. But inevitably the players will get tired, loose interest, get married, join the military, die, or any number of other things and we'll try something new.

I find the idea of a single "game" running for such a long time unfathomable... close to mythic in proportion. I'm really genuinely interested to hear a summary of what has gone on in this epic lifetime-long campaign because it blows my mind.

 

[TerraDave]

Now, I have run some long campaigns...but still, this touches on my biggest problem with D&D.

It is designed to chew up gobs of time: in the core rules, in the adventures, in the whole approach. In a sense, that is a testement to its "robustness", but still: too much of a good thing!

 

[Sagiro]

I find the idea of a single "game" running for such a long time unfathomable... close to mythic in proportion. I'm really genuinely interested to hear a summary of what has gone on in this epic lifetime-long campaign because it blows my mind.

I don't typically like to "plug" my Story Hour, but since you ask: my game has been going continually for almost 13 years now. We started with 1st-level PC's in 2nd edition, and currently have 18th-level PC's in 3.5e, but it's been one, long, connected plot-line with very little PC (or player) turnover. If you have the time, you can read a full account of every game here -- it's a series of PDF's made by loyal reader StevenAC. The earliest ones are short and vanilla summaries, but if you stick with it, it becomes more novel-like in the telling, and with more actual dialogue. (And there are no embellishments. Everything you read actually happened at the table, with a couple side-bars about stuff happening "off stage.")

The Story Hour thread here on ENWorld is here.

It's been a blast to run a single continuous campaign for so long. Keeping continuity can be tricky sometimes, but I've always had a general skeletal plot arc, and I fill in details when they seem about to become relevant. I've managed to pull of a couple of "prophecy I showed you 8 years ago finally makes sense" kind of moments, and the players seem to enjoy it. I'd say I've got about another 1.5-3 years left before everything comes to a conclusion.

Leveling has been slow: a new level every nine months or so, or about once every 13 sessions. My players don't seem to mind, and it lends to the epic feel of the story. PC's who once got their asses kicked by ogres are now shapechanging into dragons, casting miracles and generally laying waste to near-epic monsters.

I've run about 220 times over 13 years, which is about once every 3 weeks. When we started, we were in all in our 20's and tended to have 6-hour sessions on Sunday afternoon/evenings. In the past few years, with busier lives and (in a couple of cases) growing families, we've played shorter sessions -- usually 2.5 hours -- on weeknights. Easily 700-800 hours of gaming, though.

Edited to add: the rule books have been fine. Some players like to use splatbooks and such, and the casters like the Spell Compendium, but really, squeezing value out of rulebooks is a secondary concern for us. It's much more about plot, characters, and spending lots of time with my friends.

 

[el-remmen]

Well, let's see. . .

My "Out of the Frying Pan" campaign met about every other week and lasted a month shy of five years. We had 103 sessions, each about 6 hours long, so that's 618 hours and the party got to 11th level (well, 1 was 9th and one was 10th, but they joined the game later). That is the highest level of any D&D campaign I have ever run or played in.

My current "Second Son of a Second Son' campaign also meets about every every week and began in January of 2007. The sessions are about 6 hours long and so far we have had 38 sessions, so that's 228 hours so far. The party just hit 5th level.

I get what I want out of the game, so how much I use from the books is not only something I don't concern myself with, I have never even considered it until this thread!

Part of the fun of D&D to me is monkeying around with the rules and doing things in my own style. I just would never expect to use all the rules.

 

[Olli]

well, the campaign is on hiatus right now, but my campaign has lasted for about 8 years and will eventually continue, when we getr comfortable with playing via the internet, cause we are six players in 5 different towns now.

But i have high hopes to continue this campaign, since it is now a very evolved homebrew with a lot of backstory.

i think the longer the campaign (or the enviroment of the campaign) the more get the players attached to things (love NPCs, loathe chirches and so on...)

 

[phloog]

There are some operational definitions issues - - when I saw your title I thought one thing, then your text made me think another.

My 'campaign' as I define it has been running for right around 15 years, and before that the previous one lasted about as long. The previous campaign was all 1st edition, this one has covered 1st and 3rd.

However, I'm defining campaign as 'a series of adventures in the same fantasy world, with a continuity of stories and links (whether strong or flimsy) between each adventuring group/character)' .... We've run CHARACTERS in this world for a couple of years, then run other characters in the same world for a few years, then gone back to old characters, etc.

Some characters in the current group are descended from characters or NPCs known to the original group. One religious sect is named for the cleric character in the first group....some adventurers are citizens of an empire that was once ruled by a player character. The current date in-game is 700 years or so after the first adventure run in this world.

The campaign is 'low power', and so generally speaking by about 8th level in the pre-3.x rule set they were ready to retire, lead a land, etc. The highest character level that has been reached is 12th under 3.x rules. And that really risked 'breaking' my world in terms of power level.

So in terms of your definition/question, I can't say that I have used all that much of the full breadth of the material. I have the 3rd Epic Level handbook, and have never touched it (even for NPCs).

COULD WOTC have put out 4e with just the heroic tier? For my group? sure, but I think that I'm in the minority. I havent' seen many epic levels in other groups, but I know many routinely hit 15+ under the 3.x rules.

My campaign for a number of reasons is incompatible completely with 4e - one minor reason related to this thread is that 1st level 4E characters start out so tough, and are fairly quickly doing wild and wonderful things. If you consider that in my world an 8th level FIRST edition character is fairly high on the power curve, you can see that 4e doesn't give me much wiggle room. I can't start out as Farm Boy and rise slowly to take my kingdom...in 4E I start out pretty tough, and go up quickly from there. So even if 4e just had the first tier, it would be out of whack with my world almost instantly.

this is NOT a knock of 4e, but a statement of compatibility with my campaign/style. 4e might well be great - - - Shadowrun is a great game, and a hoot to play, but I couldn't really run the stories I want to tell in my D&D world with that rules system.

 

[The_Warlock]

Let's see...I started my campaign in 1995, at the of 22, and it finished this year in February, having taken 13 years, and leaving me 35 years old.

Two of the players were original members of the group who stayed with it from beginning to end. The remaining players joined between 5 and 9 years ago (most closer to the 9 than the 5).

Two of my players got married and had two children, which eventually caused one to withdraw from the run to maintain that focus.

I've have couples who broke up, leaving one behind in my run, and married couples juggle priorities so one or the other could remain in the run.

But in the end, most were immersed in the major and minor plots running around. Despite the various life changes among various players, all retained an interest in my run, whether that was character development, plot and mysteries or pure action, and the mix of all of them.

Continuity of characters that they could sit down and just knew was of course part of the draw, as well as the fact that their interactions with NPCs made them care about the world and want to keep playing.

We played every weekend on Sunday from 5 to 11, with a few years with more sporadic 2 or 3 times a month bursts, and a month and a half Hiatus every year from halfway through December to the end of January where I looked at the player's actions and decisions over prior runs and sketched out the next years worth of likely scenarios. So, I have no freaking idea how many hours we put into it, but it was a lot, and it was years of comraderie and fun and socializing and imaginary ass-kicking.

The characters went from level 1 to level 20, first in 2nd ed D&D (with some 1E sourcebooks) til about 12ish level, and then finished out the remaining levels in 3/3.5/3.MyHouseRules over the final 8 years.

I, and my players, never felt like we were missing out on "mechanics," as that was never anything to desire. The value lay in the story and how they interacted with it and changed it, and what could be brought in with creativity. If there were rules to support it, I used them. Otherwise, I made them up.

We always viewed the various core rulebooks as a framework to hang a campaign off of to give a generally consistent set of common rules to play out actions. So, we used anything and everything we wanted that came up, and never felt jypped if we couldn't use the old Blade bard kit or cast a specific spell or prestige class power.

Those were secondary. Story and character were the meat, with doing cool heroic things about even, and "getting book value" was at the bottom, at least from the perspective of getting an opportunity to use everything.

I can barely imagine running a campaign for LESS than a couple of years.