D&D General Kitchen sink setting or narrow genre focus for long-running campaigns (2,5,10+ years)

[Jacob Lewis]

@earthsea_wizard

Fair enough, I get that you wanted to leave the question open for people to bring their own definitions. But even then, how you frame the question matters. When you set up categories like “long campaigns” and “kitchen sink vs. narrow settings” without definitions, you’re not just leaving things open — you’re shaping the kinds of answers you’ll get.

The risk is that the thread becomes a pile of anecdotes, each based on different personal assumptions, without any common ground to compare them. Which is fine if the goal is just to trade stories, but if the goal is insight, then clarity on the front end makes for a stronger conversation.

That’s why I pushed back a bit: I think there’s a more interesting question under the surface, which is less about the setting itself and more about the group culture. What actually makes a campaign last isn’t whether it’s set in Forgotten Realms or Dark Sun, but whether the players want to keep returning to the same world and narrative year after year. That’s where the real longevity lives.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

@earthsea_wizard
That’s why I pushed back a bit: I think there’s a more interesting question under the surface, which is less about the setting itself and more about the group culture. What actually makes a campaign last isn’t whether it’s set in Forgotten Realms or Dark Sun, but whether the players want to keep returning to the same world and narrative year after year. That’s where the real longevity lives.

I think that's probably the truest answer underneath it all, coupled with DM investment in whatever the setting is. But kitchen sink vs narrow setting does matter to some groups for their version of what long term campaigns are, and that's what I am curious about. The people who feel it matters, and why.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

A long-running TV show and a long-running campaign are very similar. After a while you do run out of all the plots you could potentially tell with all of the storytelling building blocks that you have available. After a while, long-running TV shows tend to get a little wacky, and they tend to start drawing from other genres. Baywatch naughty word fought vampires and werewolves. After a while Family Matters became a sci-fi comedy because the mad scientist child who joined the cast gradually became the main character.

By the same logic, once you've hit level 15, maybe your heroic fantasy tale starts to get a little cyberpunk because the DM started dating a chick with a pink mohawk and everyone agrees, that's kind of badass.

 

[AlViking]

A long-running TV show and a long-running campaign are very similar. After a while you do run out of all the plots you could potentially tell with all of the storytelling building blocks that you have available. After a while, long-running TV shows tend to get a little wacky, and they tend to start drawing from other genres. Baywatch naughty word fought vampires and werewolves. After a while Family Matters became a sci-fi comedy because the mad scientist child who joined the cast gradually became the main character.

By the same logic, once you've hit level 15, maybe your heroic fantasy tale starts to get a little cyberpunk because the DM started dating a chick with a pink mohawk and everyone agrees, that's kind of badass.

I've run campaigns for decades in the same world, many of them up to the highest level. I don't know why you think I'd run out of stories to tell. I have an entire world and multiple planes of existence to work with. Almost every campaign leaves some threads dangling, things that were only hinted at or a bad guy that was defeated by not destroyed. Those things go into the "unresolved" pile and sometimes they get pulled out other times they don't. But meanwhile the world gets fleshed out and becomes a living changing place.

Do what works for you but I reject the idea that you can't have persistent worlds or campaigns that remain interesting and vital.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

I've run campaigns for decades in the same world, many of them up to the highest level. I don't know why you think I'd run out of stories to tell. I have an entire world and multiple planes of existence to work with. Almost every campaign leaves some threads dangling, things that were only hinted at or a bad guy that was defeated by not destroyed. Those things go into the "unresolved" pile and sometimes they get pulled out other times they don't. But meanwhile the world gets fleshed out and becomes a living changing place.

Do what works for you but I reject the idea that you can't have persistent worlds or campaigns that remain interesting and vital.

Yeah. To me, this is a campaign, and something worth striving for.

Also see: Lord Gosumba

Same campaign in Greyhawk for 45 years with the same group. There are dozens of PCs making up adventuring groups all over the world.

On the flipside: Joël's campaign (Servants of Darkness! - HAGS!!!) - Café de Nuit

Same Ravenloft campaign for 21 or so years so far, same characters, same storyline.