How often do you restart/change campaigns?

[bwgwl]

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.

ah. i hadn't really thought about this before, but this may be a factor in my most recent case of GM burnout. the characters the group was playing did seem a bit flat and uninteresting. also, most of them were the types of characters that have to be cajoled into an adventure and can't be bothered to come up with plot hooks to get their characters involved in the campaign.

right after Star Wars: AOTC came out, i told the group i wanted to run a Star Wars d20 all-Jedi game in the vein of the movie.

the characters i got: a tech specialist, a smuggler, a Wookiee mercenary, a noblewoman, and one Jedi. after much haggling on my part, i was able to get one player (with the techie) to switch to Jedi, but my hopes for an all-Jedi campaign ended with 2 Jedi and 3 other characters who not only had no reason to be involved with the action of the campaign, but seemed to be actively opposed to getting involved...

i've never understood the desire to create a character that doesn't want to go on adventures.

 

[Leopold]

never. I just take the same world and build upon that world. If another person wants to DM and try their hack at it then by all means they can go right ahead on my world or another world. I make sure that the world at hand allows the PC's to explore and roam about and find new places to see and go. Do they always start from the same place? No. They can start from other areas within the same world but I try to keep continuity and familiarity within the campaign. This allows the PC's to have some concept of what has gone on before and what has been done before. Each generation of PC's is built upon the last generation that has come and gone. Lineage is key. Makes the PC's feel that they matter and are a part of a larger world spanning event...

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I play in one game thats been going since the group got 3E players handbooks, we breaked from that to await ELH, and should be conitinueing in a month or so. Befroe that we had a campaign that lasted two or three years. There are always short tangents here and there. Those usually involve playing differnt games. We've done Star Wars, Spycraft, WOT, and Chthulhu. All of those lasted between a couple weeks and a month. D&D games usaully go on the longest, i'd say the avarge is probably six months.

The biggest problem is we loose a lot of games to what ever the DM's new cool idea or module is. There's seldom a good ending, and sometimes we don't even finish the module.

 

[Silver Moon]

Campaign Restart

Our game is now on its 21st year, and last night we played Game #833. Four of the founding members are still with the group, and two others have been around since our 3rd year. We have three different settings, each of which has its own playing character team:

The original group are the Silver Moon Adventurers, and they reside on an island off the southern coast of a small home-grown continent. A 36-game campaign that I ran in 2001 is currently being posted in Story Hour as "Chinese Take-out"

In 1995, to re-energize the group, I made everyone start new 1st level characters. This new group set up a base of operations on the same continent as the other team, but 400 miles north, in a large inland city partially based on the Judges Guild module Verbosh. This team named themself Da'Bears, and were played for most of the next two years using modules primarily from Dungeon Magazine. This team is now played in approximatley 1 out of every 4 modules, and we have also had two crossover modules using both this team and the other team.

Last month I did another restart, introducing an AD&D/Boot Hill hybrid game. Everyone created new characters for the western setting. The team is named Arcade's Gang, and their exploits are currently being posted in Story Hour as the thread "Promise City, Arizona". We have just wrapped up the 5-week introductory campaign. Everyone enjoyed it, and we will probably revisit this setting some time next year.

 

[digitaldark]

Ours usually end when someone accidentally put the dead body of a fallen party member into a bag of holding, and forget that he has a bag of holding in his pack...

(the last time it happened just sucked....cause it takes a full-round action to stuff a body into the bag...so I tried to use a Hold Person spell (standard action) to stop them because I knew!! and the DM wouldn't let me...the ending of that camp was such a let down!!! It angered me very much...but I'm running the next one..and its gonna go to epic levels (cause I want it to..and the players want it too....and for most of the group, this will be their second campaign..)

 

[Ruined]

Re: Campaign Restart

Our game is now on its 21st year, and last night we played Game #833.

Okay, I'll answer after I get over this case of campaign envy...


Whew, okay. Games I run have to make it past this two-month threshold. If we can successfully play through two months, avoiding problems with schedules, desire to play a different game, and maintaining avid player interest, it could last a long time.

My Planescape campaign was on-again, off-again for over six years. Other lengthy games tend to last for a year or two, as long as I don't get burned out. Sometimes we'll break for that, and then return when my mind is healthy.

And I'm playing in a Warhammer FRP campaign that started about twelve years ago...

 

[Umbran]

Re: Campaign Restart

Our game is now on its 21st year, and last night we played Game #833. Four of the founding members are still with the group, and two others have been around since our 3rd year. We have three different settings, each with their own playing charcter team:

I think most folk here would really count this as a number of separate campaigns for one stable gaming group.

My own campaigns tend to be one of two varieties - either they last only a few games, of they last for a couple of years. I've been workign wiht the same basic group of players for nearly a decade now.

 

[EricNoah]

It's been about a year and a half per campaign, with my current 3E campaign over two years now (it was my first 3E campaign). Playing somewhere around 1 session per month, sometimes a little more frequently, and playing approximately 5 hours per session. So, say 25 sessions over 18 months x 5 hours = 125 hours per campaign.

I say with some pride that most of the campaigns had an actual ending -- not one of those "we got bored so switched to something else" or "unintended total party kill" endings (though I did have ONE of those ...). I like endings, I like closure, I like "maknig the circle complete."

 

[Roland Delacroix]

About 6 months before changing campaigns. Usually we hop around between campaigns, coming back to one or another. My longest campaign was probably a year and a half long L5R campaign. Interspersed with Kobolds Ate My baby, of course.

After 6 months I start to burn out and run out of ideas. Dunno why. After a month or two off though i need to get back to DMing or my head will explode with all the nasty plot contrivances buzzing around Switching campaigns keeps the game fresh and new for everyone in the group.

 

[Fenes 2]

My campaigns tend to run for years. One of my two current weekly campaigns started back in 2E (at 3rd/4th level) and ran for over a year when 3E came out. We converted the PCs (to level 5) and kept playing. (We advance more slowly than the default setting, so the PCs are now level 11.

The other campaign was (re)started last year, also with PCs converted from 2E, at level 6 or 7, and has currently reached level 13. It was orginally slated to be set in a mystic homebrew china, but after dealing the invaders a blow the PCs ended up in a modified FR setting where one PC was trying to free his country and become (God)King. The player of that PC recently changed PCs, but the campaign is still running, the party just switched sides.

I am pretty tenacious when it comes to campaign, and don't give up or restart something easily, as long as the players are interested in continuing with their PCs I play along. OTOH, I am not keen on DMing epic, so I am slowing down advancement as we reach the higher levels.