D&D General How often do you complete a campaign as a player?

[Hex08]

But, you're missing my point. It's not that pacing is causing problems. It's not. It's that DM's seem unaware that their campaigns are on a ticking clock and then spend considerable time on things that are not necessarily needed to spend time on.

The probem isn't that the DM's are running slow games, so people quit. It's that real life steps on the neck of games so often that, for someone like me, the odds of me actually completing a campaign is very, very small. So, I would prefer the DM picks up the pace, maybe skips over some of the not so necessary stuff, and get to the conclusion before real life steps on the campaign.

Again, I never said anything about causes. I frankly don't really care why the campaign ends. It's the fact that the campaigns very often do. So increasing the pacing is a solution to the problem of time limits.

If that's the case then there is a communication breakdown somewhere because I am pretty sure (although I admit to not going back through the thread to find quotes) pacing was specifically mentioned as a problem but if you don't think that's what's causing the problem then that's fine. My confusion is that you then, in the post I just quoted, once again talk about pacing, or slow games, and want the DM to pick up the pace because of the potential of real life interfering. As I said before, I can't speak to your experiences and I certainly can't speak to your play style preference but the "not so necessary" stuff is probably pretty subjective. I would rather get the chance to role-play talking to city guards to gain entry to the city and the like rather than finishing the campaign but others would consider that not necessary to the overall campaign/story. From my perspective, I would rather have my character interact with the world around him so I feel like the campaign world is a real place whereas others (even in my regular group) just want to get to the dungeon and start rolling dice and killing things. Both are fine but "necessary" becomes ambiguous.

You may not have specifically said anything about "cause" using that word but not being able to participate is a campaign that completes is going to have a reason for it not completing so "cause" seems to be implied.

Buy hey, in the end you are the only one who can speak to the games you have been involved in so I am willing to let it go since I don't usually have your experience.

 

[Hussar]

The problem with that is that its just as easy for that to turn into compression that doesn't give the campaign time to breath.

Given that for me the most likely end of a campaign will be somewhere at the mid point, that’s a risk I’m personally willing to take.

If I managed to get satisfactory conclusions to the majority of campaigns I play? I’d very much feel differently.

 

[Hussar]

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You may not have specifically said anything about "cause" using that word but not being able to participate is a campaign that completes is going to have a reason for it not completing so "cause" seems to be implied.
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Then I was not clear if that’s the implication you got. Sorry.

Pacing is the solution to the problem not the cause. If you know from experience that campaigns have a half life of X months (for whatever reason and there are many potential reasons) then keeping that in mind when running a campaign seems to me to be a good idea.

And I find it frustrating to play with DMs who refuse to recognize this. Because I know - again because this happens time and again - that the most likely result of not paying attention to pacing is the campaign will end on the midd

 

[Hussar]

I do actually want to clarify my position here, because I think people are reading things in that I'm not intending and taking implications away that are not meant.

I do consider myself a good player. I've been gaming a long time. When I sit down at a DM's table, I will create a character that fits with the campaign and is embedded, to the best of my ability, into the DM's setting. I will read the setting background material that the DM provides and even might go beyond that and do some research on my own, depending on the setting. My characters will be part of the setting - they will have families and ties to the setting and the group. I make an effort to learn the goals of the other PC's (both in character and out) in order to better work with them so that we can all have a good time. I don't power game (well, not much anyway ). I make characters that I hope will give the DM lots and lots of hooks to hang stuff from to make the game more interesting. I'll go out and buy books for the character - maybe rule books, or commission a character portrait, maybe buy a custom mini. Things like that. I put a lot of effort into someone's campaign.

I do that because I want to be the kind of player that I would want to have when I DM.

Now, I do all that and... six months later, the campaign fizzles. So, hope springs eternal, I do it again. And three months later that campaign fizzles. And again. And again. And again.

For nearly FORTY years. In forty years I can count on my fingers the number of campaigns that have come to a conclusion and still have fingers left over.

Why have these campaigns ended? All sorts of reasons. Many, many reasons and I won't bore you with the details. Doesn't matter. They ended. They didn't end at the end of an adventure. They didn't end at a point where it made sense. No, they ended in cliffhangers nearly every time. In the middle of a campaign. In the middle of an adventure. In the middle of combat in a few cases. They all ended unsatisfactorily.

So, yes, the solution I propose is to speed up the game. If that results in a "compressed" game? I don't care. I really don't. I WANT THAT ENDING. A compressed game is FAR superior to a game that fizzles in the middle of the action. So, no, the journey isn't it's own reward. It's not "the friends we made along the way".

I want that conclusion.

 

[Maxperson]

The way I do Reincarnation, your roleplaying opportunities would be highly limited: if reincarnated as an ordinary animal then that's all you are - in this case, a simple mundane badger with the brains of a badger, the temperament of a badger, the hit points of a badger, no prior skills-spells-abilities-languages from your old life, and maybe - if you're lucky - some fast-fading memories of who-what you were before.

Why the change to the spell?

 

[James Gasik]

Why the change to the spell?

More pain points for daring to be brought back to life? Death has to be meaningful?

 

[Maxperson]

More pain points for daring to be brought back to life? Death has to be meaningful?

I mean, having to live as a normal sized badger seems to qualify as both "pain points" and "death being meaningful."

 

[James Gasik]

I mean, having to live as a normal sized badger seems to qualify as both "pain points" and "death being meaningful."

Alternately, the idea of talking animals might be too ludicrous for one's serious fantasy TTRPG.

 

[jmartkdr2]

More pain points for daring to be brought back to life?

I think people sometimes forget that Lanefan doesn't play 5e where raise dead is cheaper than reincarnate so having the more expensive option be less reliable seems like a strange choice.

If you can pay half as much to not risk it, the risk seems really stupid.

Death has to be meaningful?

Does it? Doctor Who doesn't lack any drama and he's explicitly immortal.

Failure has to be meaningful, or it isn't really failure, but if death can be healed than trying ot tie too much meaning beyond "you have to spend money" seems like a stretch.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Given that for me the most likely end of a campaign will be somewhere at the mid point, that’s a risk I’m personally willing to take.

If I managed to get satisfactory conclusions to the majority of campaigns I play? I’d very much feel differently.

I've had a number of cases of Terminal Campaign Failure, but I can only think of one where it was because of excess planned campaign length, and that was because of systemic failures in the Dragon Age RPG that progressively kicked in at and above level six. I've absolutely had ones from me rushing things, however.