Intended Length of the Campaign at the Beginning

[Ed_Laprade]

Write some stuff for a 1st level party. If they beat that, make up some new stuff for the party, and so on.

This. What most people consider a campaign is something I'm lucky to stumble into with the above method. When I was able to play regularly it was always with groups that had several GMs, so about the longest 'campaigns' I ran lasted 9-10 months.

 

[Piratecat]

My last campaign was supposed to be 5 or 6 years and turned out to be 16. I'm trying to avoid that this time! Hell, I could only run another two or three of those long campaigns before I kick off from old age. That's nowhere near enough gaming.

Nowadays I have two 4e campaigns and both will last six years and cover levels 1-30. We play about 25 times a year, so I level them every 5 games. The timing should work out nicely.

 

[Jacob Marley]

When you start a campaign, how closely do you plan for when it will end?

It depends. If I am running a dungeon crawl -- such as my current campaign is -- I'll have a general idea of what the end game will be as well as an idea of what encounters the party will face along the way.

However, if I am running a wilderness exploration-based campaign then I don't have any idea of how the campaign end. It will run until the PCs die, retire, or if the players are ready to move on to a new campaign.

Do you expect the PC's will get to a certain level? Do you run for a set number of months?

Again, it depends. My dungeon crawl, for example, I am expecting that the party will be in the level 7-8 range by the time they reach the nadir. They average about four to five encounters a session and we play monthly so I am looking at a two year campaign. I didn't intend for it to happen this way, though.

Generally, I play under the expectation that the campaign will end when it ends (i.e. the PCs die, retire, or the players are ready to move on to a new campaign).

Do you create at least one Uber-Plot and when that is complete the campaign is over?

Not plot as in the LotR's journey to Mount Doom and toss in the One Ring sense. I build games with NPCs who have agendas with which the players may (or may not) find themselves entwined.

My dungeon crawl, for example, has an over-arching goal of explore the dungeon. Inside the dungeon there are numerous factions that the PCs can interact with. Depending on the decisions the PCs make they may find themselves with enemies whose machinations they are trying to thwart; allies who have goals that they would like to see accomplished; or neutral entities whose agendas they are indifferent to.

Understanding the desires and tendencies of my players does allow me some ability to predict the road my players will take; though they do tend to surprise me from time-to-time.

 

[Lord Ipplepop]

Although, I don't usually plan out my campaigns for any particular level ending, I start with an idea of an overall theme/mission/etc and let it work from there. I sketch out a few missions I would like the party to undertake during their stay, and fill in the rest depending on what happens from adventure to adventure. That way, I can incorporate people/adversaries/etc from past missions without having to railroad the characters.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Eventually, all the hooks they gave me will have run their courses. At that point, the characters have played through the personal stories the players started with, and at that point it'll probably time to move things on to some interesting/climactic end.

And then you'll kill all their characters, right? Isn't that how it's supposed to happen in the Undead West?

My last campaign was supposed to be 5 or 6 years and turned out to be 16. I'm trying to avoid that this time! Hell, I could only run another two or three of those long campaigns before I kick off from old age. That's nowhere near enough gaming.

I have heard that your players are taking up a collection to have your head put in a jar so you could [-]live[/-] DM forever.

 

[Heathen72]

My longest running game started off as a one shot Ravenloft Vignette. But we liked the characters, and the nature of the setting allowed me to run more 'one shot' style games with the same PCs. It was a while before they emerged into my newly built campaign world as Strangers in a Strange land. They are now level 20ish.

 

[Lanefan]

Open-ended all the way.

I plan for 5-10 years (60-odd adventures) and try to come up with enough stories and-or side adventures to keep it in play that long, then see how far it gets. I'll always have one significant story in mind right from the start, to get things going, but it's always an open question whether that story will still even be relevant 10 adventures in.

Lanefan

 

[Olaf the Stout]

In previous campaigns I didn't plan a specific end point, apart from the fact that I aimed for the PC's to get at least level 15+.

I am currently running the Shackled City AP so that gave me a relatively definitive end point, a pretty good idea of what level the PC's would reach and roughly how long the game would last in terms of real world time.

My next campaign will also probably be an AP.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Stormonu]

For me, it lasts as long as it lasts. The first few adventures usually have no plot stretching beyond the end of the module or adventure I've put together. However, as the characters do things and react to events and NPCs, I often start to get a sense of "things happening in the background". By about the time characters reach 5th level the group starts to notice that something big is going on. Usually by the time they hit name level (9th-12th), I've strung together an uberplot and the big plot has revealed itself and the characters try and tackle it (and I always seem to fool the players into thinking the whole thing was planned from the start....).

By the time the big climax is resolved (I like to roll the game up no later than 15th level - just don't like games at levels beyond that), most of the players are satisfied with the results one way or another and are ready to move on to new characters. I usually pick up the new campaign 6 months to a year's game time since the last game, where the full repercussions of what the previous characters did comes to fruition. Often, the new characters get to meet the former group at some point and see how their lives turned out. And in the process, the whole cycle repeats again...

 

[wedgeski]

I have heard that your players are taking up a collection to have your head put in a jar so you could [-]live[/-] DM forever.

Is there a PayPal account for that or...?