Is your Gaming situation Stable or Unstable?

[Rechan]

Setting aside the obvious "stable, who's stable?" joke.

Stability in this situation means: "I play with the same group of people campaign to campaign, those campaigns last a long time". Unstable means: "Every group I have is different, those games don't stay together long".

I always game with different people - I've maybe had 3 people stick with me from one campaign to the next. The game rarely if ever lasts more than 3 months. Primarily because I game online and that does not breed reliability. Of the (few) games I've been in RL, it disintegrates because of personality/style differences.

So when I hear that some people here game with the same people for ten, fifteen, 20 years, and have 6 year long campaigns, I just can't process that.

 

[Pentius]

Unstable.

Mainly it's due to me moving around a lot, that tends to necessitate finding a new group(and has also led to me pursuing online gaming). I was in a "Stable" group for a few years during college, in that it never distinctly became a new group, but people rotating in and out meant that by the time I moved, I was the last original member. Even then, the campaigns were short, because we always wanted to try something new, and because we always wanted to stick to the "sweet spot" of levels 3-7.

 

[Crothian]

Our games are stable. We've basically had the same group for almost a decade now. One of the players I have gamed with for almost two decades. The only time we lose players is when they move out of state. Campaigns generally last about a year or so. We don't have attandance problems and when people do miss it is usually for reasons like "Work is sending me to Germany" or "kids have the flu".

 

[Cor Azer]

For the most part, my group is stable... In that the core 5 players stixk together, with about 3-4 casials floating in and out.

It's a little unstable though because most of our campaigns collapse before too long due to scheduling, and then it could be weeks to months before our stuff starts aligning again.

 

[carmachu]

Current one is stable. 4 years and counting although summers are infrequent playing, over all we have the same folks and the same game...

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've only ever had one group, and while the membership has hsitorically been somewhat fluid, the same guys that I have now have been together for a little less than ten years. While we do run shorter games, we have done a number of campaigns lasting up to about a year.

All that said, by my own definition, the situation is pretty unstable because our schedules so rarely allow us to meet these days,

 

[Kobold Boots]

I'd add another category:

My campaigns last a long time but I do rotate players save for the group's core.

 

[Umbran]

Define term, "long time".

My current Deadlands game has been running twice a month for a year, with the same group of players. I don't see it stopping soon.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

For me, the answer is "pretty stable except for the consequences of moves, which have made it highly unstable face-to-face but still pretty stable electronically." I play online reasonably regularly with a group of people I've mostly played with for years, playing in campaigns that last for years. They're not perfectly stable--a player will drop out (or take a break for a year or two) or another player will join--but they're pretty stable. But my face-to-face gaming has been pretty unstable because I just moved cross country, and moved cross-country 3 years before that, and again 3 years before that. I sorta had a stable gaming group by the time of my last move, but now they're three time zones away.

 

[Rechan]

Define term, "long time".

My current Deadlands game has been running twice a month for a year, with the same group of players. I don't see it stopping soon.

The longest game I was ever in was about 1.5/2 years in length. So anything around there, to me, is a long term campaign.