How many campaigns have you finished?

[Nagol]

There have been a fair number of mini-series / single story mini-campaigns I've run lasting from 4 sessons to 4 months. Those typically reach a natural end.

Few campaigns I've run have ever had a definite expected end. Several reached a 'natural' end (TPK or players saying "Time to settle down!"). Most did not.

 

[Argyle King]

Wow, good question. I'm not 100% sure, but I'll do my best to count/remember.


D&D 4th Edition
as player: Four completely by going from 1-30; four which were completed in other ways. 8 total

as DM: 2 (I'm currently running a third, but it has not yet been completed)

10 for D&D 4th Edition

D&D 3rd Edition
as player: Honestly, I have no idea. I know it's been more than my time with 4th Edition. Offhand I can count 6 which are fresh in my mind, but I know there have been more than that.

as DM: 3

Palladium Rifts
1 as a player

GURPS 4th Edition
as player: 2

as DM: 4



Because I'm sure this will seem like an unbelievable amount to some, it seemed reasonable to explain.

The meager 1 I have with Rifts was my first foray into rpgs; I was on a rather uneventful UN mission in the Balkans which meant I had a lot of free time. The story is actually somewhat amusing; the short version being that I bought the D&D 3rd Edition books, found out I was being deployed and shipped out a few days later, and ended up playing Rifts as my first rpg experience via one of the other guys in the unit being experienced with the system. When I got home, 3.5 had been released.

The large amount of D&D 3rd edition and D&D 4th edition can be explained simply by saying I've been involved in multiple groups for a few years. For sure a small area, there's a surprising amount of gamers where I live. Part of the boost in D&D 4th Edition's numbers is also due to the group I most regularly game with (the 'Saturday group' in other posts I've made on Enworld) being rather zealous about playing the new system when it was new. Regular sessions occurred on multiple times per week for about a year.

GURPS has mostly been with the Saturday group. They welcomed a break from D&D after spending so much time with it. I was originally the only person who had any familiarity with it (at the time that mostly meant I owned the books and had read them.) I GMed a supers game which went surprisingly well; surprising because I was still fresh to the game myself and because I was flying by the seat of my pants for the first few sessions.

Afterward, one of the other players showed a greater interest in learning the game, and he became the GM for the next game which was loosely based on Dead Space; that same person GMed what I suppose you could categorize as a space marines game as well. Other games I've run included a Horror game which I based on one of the Betrayal at House On The Hill scenarios, a dungeon fantasy game, and a fantasy game.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Not that many, really, thinking about it. As a kid we rotated though several long-running campaigns interspersed with one-offs, but none of them were really meant to end. Revolving door of PCs, adventures and DMs. Rather than ending they faded into the abyss of disinterest.

I think it was when I got into the WoD games that campaigns started to end, and then it was more of a hurried TV series finale. When we were starting to lose interest/itching to try something new, we would wrap up all loose story threads in a abrupt final session, rather than putting the current campaign on ice like we used to do. I have no idea how many of those we did, they all just kind of blend together.

Structured campaigns, that felt like they were heading somewhere, grew out of those WoD games. I can count about seven of those, but can't remember how three of those ended (which may mean they didn't). So somewhere between 4 and 7.

 

[megamania]

Officially?

None.

 

[megamania]

I posted before reading through the other posts. I thought I would be the only one.


So why do we finish so few?

My early games fell short either because there was no "central plot" to the the campaign. We played until we were bored with those characters and would try new ones. That was about 5 sets of 2nd ed and two sets of characters for Torg.

CoC, and other non-DnD games fell to the wayside as time went and friends went to college or started familys elsewhere.

3rd ed I have played two sets of charcters that ended with group breakups or general falling apart.

As for my DMing, several sets with my kids but they would want to try new characters / settings. The Creation Schema group went strobng for about three years but as we were about to finish it up the group imploded.


Wow. Makes me wonder why i try to set up big campaigns instead of many unrelated adventures.

 

[Pour]

I started with my friend's 3e home brew, entirely online via mIRC and FreeDraw, back in the early 2000s. It was my first real campaign, as before that I'd more or less just dabbled with the random 2e books my parents bought me every Christmas (which was always fun and exciting, how to make the odd supplements work on top of my 1996 starter set [I still have it, and yes, still listen to that cheesy CD sometimes and laugh]). I'd run my dad, or my brothers, through rules-bonkers scenarios, but nothing cohesive.

Back to 3e, I started out as a half-elf druid who accidentally ended up queen of the human empire, after comforting a man on a balcony who turned out to be the crown prince. Go figure. My second character in that campaign was more motivated by frustration, as the PC dragon disciple barbarian or whatever he was had built his character in such a way it was broken, broken, broken. His grossly better skills and combat prowess left a lot of us feeling inadequate (though, idiot that I was, I never checked a forum to see if I could make a druid more powerful in 3e... lol, well, I was young and the prestige class synergies didn't quite make sense to me). So I rolled up a ranger arcane archer (again, what did I know hehe) and earned a magic bow string which gave me the equivalent to a +5 bow with added enchantments... but even then I didn't measure up. We finished the campaign with my PC and the disciple's PC as bitter rivals and I kind of wondered if the system was for me or not, spurring jealousy, frustration, and competition in building skills as it had.

Still, it was the only game my friends played and were running, and I ran a few short-lived (but quite fun) campaign start ups of my own in 3.5e, levels 1 - 6.

Around 2005 I actually managed to stick a campaign, which lasted 2 1/2 years and took the group from 1 to 18. I learned to LOVE DMing and pretty much hate the edition I DMed in. Some players were build-minded, others entirely rp minded, and still others a crossbreed, but towards the end we kind of found a happy medium enough to close out the game. People came and went, but the majority stayed on for an epic demonic climax in the northlands. Good times, good times.

Congruently, I played in a Ravenloft game as one of my favorite characters of all time: Brak. He was a chaotic evil imp wizard and servant of Asmodeus trying to earn favor with Big A by wresting power in Barovia from Strahd. He was crude, conniving, filthy of mouth and much filthier of deed (the game definitely ran into the NC-17 category). Not your typical Ravenloft experience, but so much fun.

By the end of my 3.5e campaign, 4e had come out and I immediately jumped on ship, as did all my players and friends. I began a home brew game at the tail end of 2008 which I'm still running today, which I guess makes it, besides a 3 month hiatus, a 4 year endeavor. We're just now getting to Epic. I've played around 120 6-8 hour sessions with one group, and an additional 25-30 6-8 hour sessions with a side group, completely online via mIRC and Maptool. I can honestly say it feels as if this edition was build specifically to my needs.

I tried playing in a few 4e games run by friends, and though I did have fun, various group drama and my own time constraints and child-like attention span for anything I'm not actively creating sort of ruined that. I'm kind of a problem player, anyway, always pushing the button or inciting group conflict for fun's sake. I do make for a memorable PC, though, as friends who recognize the name Preyth know well. He was my longest go at a 4e PC, level 1 - 6 or 7.

 

[Crothian]

All of our campaigns get finished, but none of them ever finish were we expect them to when the campaign starts. I consider a TPK a finish.

 

[the Jester]

This week my Shackled City AP campaign came to an end after over 3 years of fortnightly play. The final session count was around 80-odd sessions....

>snip<

So how many campaigns have you finished? How long did they go for and what level did the PC's reach?

Olaf the Stout

I run an older style of campaign, where the term doesn't mean "a planned sequence of events or adventures". Instead it means "the world in which the action takes place", the 'action' being composed of many different groups of pcs over time.

So, I guess I would say I have played one campaign to comlpletion, since the pcs failed to stop Tharizdun from consuming the multiverse in my old campaign.

As far as "planned conclusions", I've had many groups reach natural end-points, but I can only recall two times when I had anything like a plan for it at the start.

 

[S'mon]

Most of my campaigns reach a planned or natural climax point. They often tootle on a bit after that then fade out. Trying to recall specific significant campaigns:

'80s & '90s:

1. AD&D age 12-13, I don't recall a climax ending. Actually, there was barely a consistent world, either. But plenty of fun. We played Fighting Fantasy, too.
2. Paranoia age ca 14-15, don't recall any climax, just lots of fun.
3. AD&D age ca 14-18 & subsequent to ca 22, but the main campaign ended when the PCs defeated Graz'zt's champions and saved the world.
4. & 5. AD&D ca 16-21, two single player AD&D campaigns where the PC reached demigod & then quasi-deity level before getting killed.

All of those but the Paranoia 1 were same-universe & same rules stuff though, they could be seen as a single mega-campaign. Things back in the days of childhood were a lot less compartmentalised.

Post 2000:

6. 3e Gaxmoor campaign(s), climax at ca 17th level when PCs turned back the Mongali Horde.
7. 3e Lost City of Barakus, climax at 7th/8th level when PCs killed Devron the Lich.
8. 3e Willow Vale campaign, climax at 6th-8th when PCs destroyed the Master of the Desert Nomads.
9. 4e Vault of Larin Karr game, again ending ca 8th level, the Battle of Pembrose was sort of a climax, but game ended in bathos when 2 PCs got burnt up by some hell hounds & the 3rd ran away.
10. 1e AD&D City State online game was a picaresque, no real climax.

That must be leaving out tons of campaigns though, like Sector Antaris, a Traveller PBEM I ran in the late '90s, or the Ea: Time of Chaos pbem.

 

[S'mon]

How long did they go for and what level did the PC's reach?

'80s-'90s:
1e AD&D longest running campaign was about 12 years from 1986, and Upper_Krust's PC Thrin reached 117th level Lesser God, AIR.

Post 2000, tabletop only, roughly speaking:

3e Gaxmoor campaign 4 years, though 2 groups of players and only 1 player crossed over, nobody in the start group was in the end group; it could be seen as a 1.5 year + a 2.5 year campaign in the same area. Highest level PC at end was 19th. Resolved never again to run 3e past 10th level!

3e Lost City of Barakus: 2 years, highest PCs reached 8th.

3e Willow Vale: 1.5 years not counting a 3-session postscript, highest PCs reached 8th.

4e Vault of Larin Karr: 2 years, PCs reached 8th.

It looks to me that the natural lifetime of a successful campaign these days is typically around 2 years.