Is your Gaming situation Stable or Unstable?

[Lancelot]

Stable.

I have 6 steady players (plus myself as DM), and 3 others who participate whenever they're in the area.

We use a homebrew campaign world that has been around for 25 years. Over 250 years of history have passed in the setting over that period, so events that my players triggered 10 years ago (in the real world) might have occurred more than a century ago (in the setting)

Some of their old characters (the rare few who survived...) are current or past rulers of dominions. One retired PC is the (puppet) ruler of a major empire. Two are worshipped as demi-gods in the setting's pantheon. More than a dozen have been corrupted by devils over the last decade or so, and are currently working on various chain gangs repairing the city streets of Dis on the 2nd layer of Hell.

A typical "campaign" within the setting lasts 6-18 months of real-time, with 5-6 hour sessions every week. But all of our campaigns tend to be somewhat interwoven. Due to the fact that it's all the same setting, events from a campaign that we played 5 years ago (real-time) might influence a campaign we're playing today. And, in some cases, the players choose PCs that are somehow related to previously-played characters. Kids, grand-kids, great great great great grand-kids, reincarnations, undead variants, you name it. It's a buzz.

One of my players has been playing every week for the last 25 years, excepting a handful of years where we've lived in different countries. The majority of my other players fall into the 3-10 years experience bracket, with 2 newbies who have only been with us about a year.

Hmm. Make that: "VERY Stable"

 

[EYEforanEYE]

2 damn stable...

I DM/GM four rpg groups that plays 1 a week every week. Been going on like that now for 3 years...

 

[Piratecat]

We just had game 240 of Sagiro's 15 year (real time) campaign. 2 more sessions to go before the campaign concludes! No player turnover since about 1998.

My own 4e campaigns are about 2.5 years through a 5-6 year run. No player turnover. Kinda awesome for plotting.

 

[Gronin]

we are very stable.

campaigns tend to last a year or two at least

players range from one guy I have playing with for 35 years to the newbs who I have only gamed with for the last 10 or 15 years

 

[Dykstrav]

Very unstable.

I work as a freelancer, so I'll usually get three or four jobs a year where I'm working intense hours, practically non-stop for about a month or so, then have tons of control over my schedule the rest of the time. Basically, every time I take a new job, it kills the current campaign and everyone else has moved on by the time I'm finished with the job. I can salvage a player here and there from the old groups, but I have to essentially start over every time I want to have a game. I have to start over from scratch with a new group twice a year or so.

I end up playing short campaigns where the group falls apart about the time we reach somewhere between 3rd and 5th level or so. I partially don't mind because I prefer low-level play, but it'd be nice to be in a stable campaign.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Stable. I play, primarily with two gaming groups. The first has been playing together since 1991. We have had a couple people come and go over the years, but the core five of us remain. Unfortunately, due to work and families, this group only manages to get together two or three times a year to play.

The second group is a larger collection of about a dozen or so players. We have two campaigns that are currently being played. One that has been running for about five years and the other for about one year. Not everybody plays in both campaigns, however.

I did recently begin a game with my fiancee's best friend's boyfriend. We played one session and have had the second session postponed twice now. I am not sure if this is because of the upcoming holiday or a harbinger of things to come.

 

[S'mon]

Depends what you mean by 'short time', and I tend to GM in seasons with breaks in between. There is usually some carry-over of players between campaigns. But I think different people/short time is the closest answer.

 

[wedgeski]

Stable. I have two main groups. One is a weekly game that's been going strong for three years or-so, running my own homebrew; we've had some turnover in that group but only because people kept moving away.

My other group harkens right back to my school days, about twenty years. We all dispersed to different parts of the UK after university but we still meet as often as we can around our other commitments, for a two-day role-playing fest. We get together maybe six or seven times a year.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Stable, and then some.

One game Pathfinder - for teens 'n' tweens. Every other week on Saturday.

One game Pathfinder - grown ups, including parents of some of the kids. Every other week, on Friday.

One game, Pathfinder, playing, the other Friday.

One game Spycraft 2.0, Saturdays. The setting will be Fallout, starting tonight.

An occasional extra game, typically showing how the game works. (Most recently for folks from Borders, before that it was for the management of a pagan retreat.)

Sundays, drop dead of exhaustion.

I had it down to two games a week, but....

The Auld Grump, between 10 and 12 hours a week, not including prep....

 

[Piratecat]

I'll add that while my games are stable, they're with different groups. My two 4e groups have 6 folks in one and 7 in the other; our MnM group is about 6 completely other friends. Makes for a lot of fun, as I get to game with lots of friends each month.