How often do you restart/change campaigns?

[Morrus]

I know that Piratecat has been running the same campaign for about 120 years now, but I imagine that this is somewhat abnormal. The longest campaign I've ever run was for about 18 months, but usually they only last for about 6-9 months.

So, on average, how long do your campaigns last? And why do you stop them?

 

[Paka]

I wish when I began games I started them with more defnite goals and thus with more finite endings.

The D&D game I am currently in started as a one-shot and has run into a campaign. It might've run farther than it should.


From now on I would want to run mini-campaigns with definite endings in sight.

 

[pogre]

Campaign length

My campaigns usually dissolve from players leaving the area, etc. The average campaign for me lasts around two and half years or so. Current Campaign is 20 months old.

I have run other genres as short campaigns with definite ends, but they just do not generate as much interest for some reason.

 

[Nightfall]

Before I started my online campaign, I probably had more character sheets (around 12,000 to 500,000 pages) than I had campaigns. So far this one has last me close to three months. Maybe longer.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

About every year give or take a few months, but we often run 2 or 3 campaigns continuously. The biggest problem is finding consistent players and a DM who can handle higher level challenges. More than a few of folks who DM our group start to become very frustrated when the players reach about 12th level, especially with caster characters.

The DM becomes frustrated for two reasons:
1. The party kills the enemy too quickly.

2. The enemy decimates the party.

At higher levels, it becomes increasingly difficult to balance encounters, especially when a few unlucky dice rolls can almost ensure a TPK.

This is one of the main reasons our campaigns end.

 

[Crothian]

My first d20 game lasted about 8 months, the next one about 6. Befroe that my second edition gcampaign lasted about 2 years. For the most part they end when we all get tired ofg what's going on. The first d20 campaign ended becasue advancement went faster then we anticipated and we were gaming about 20 hours a week.

Today, a game I play in ended. That was because we came to a stopping point and took a vote. The game had not been going as well as we had hoped, so we're trying something different and hopefully we will eventual restart that one later.

 

[Eosin the Red]

I have ended several games at their natural stopping point (climax), usually about 2-3 years. Frequently we hit a cog that derails the game with 3E it seems most often to be:

At higher levels, it becomes increasingly difficult to balance encounters, especially when a few unlucky dice rolls can almost ensure a TPK.

OR

Sometimes it is cause either I or one of the players go mad-crazy and smash the game. i.e. Player decides that the king is too pushy and off's him, then tries to take do the guard? or I put in something the party cannot hope to deal with and force them into an encounter.

OR

And the number one reason my games fail ~ The players build characters that have little to interest me and I get bored with running them.

 

[jdavis]

We usually game till we are sick of the sytem and want to try something new or till the party goes out in a blaze of glory, or blaze of giant spiders or the old "I didn't know a Kracken could do that!". The current campaign has been going on for 6 months now and we have started talking about a side campaign with different characters, which is always a sign that the end is near.

 

[Mark]

I've run a couple of campaigns that have lasted roughly a half dozen years and several for nearly that time but mostly I play one-off games. I've always had lots of convention/gameday/one-off games that were run even as those campaign games were running. I enjoy both for different reasons but I can't imagine playing or running a single long campaign game exclusively. I like meeting lots of new gamers and sharing a table with them.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Our campaigns tend to last one to one-and-a-half years, and we usually play on a weekly basis. Currently, we are playing a GURPS Warhammer campaign.

Since we take turns at GMing, we prevent GM burnout. The campaign usually ends when

(a) we get bored of the game system and want to try something new, or

(b) the PCs get so powerful that it is hard to come up with new adventures that will challenge them.