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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7948962" data-attributes="member: 29398">I'll hazard a guess that [USER=45197]@pming[/USER] isn't talking so much about planned end points, but instead of how soon those planned end points arrive.And I tend to agree.  Calling an 8-month AP a campaign to me cheapens the term "campaign" a bit, as after 8 months a campaign should just be nicely settling in and getting established with an eye toward its potentially decade-long future.This depends on what the players (and DM) signed up for in the first place.  Did they sign up for a closed-ended 7-adventure GDQ run, or did they sign up for an open-ended campaign in which the GDQ series just happened to arise?OK, so far none of this rejects an open-ended campaign.  Even with a - to use your term - linear, narrative stlye a DM can interweave many stories and plots (and PCs, no reason to restrict players to just one each!) and keep a campaign going for many years; and to prove my knowledge that this is possible I will simply plead guilty as charged. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Now here you lose me completely, as other than some basic setting conceits (e.g. it's starting in a Norse-based Human culture, and Hobbits are banned along with (as always!) Dragonborn and Tieflings) the players shouldn't have any knowledge of the intended story at time of char-gen.Which to me seems a rather self-limiting way of playing a character.Sure, I'm often the first to for whatever reason get bored with playing a character, retire it, and bring in something new; and who knows - someday I might later cycle the retired one back in.  But a character's "story" usually extends past any given adventure or series of adventures - sure you start out with the goal of driving the invading Giants back out of your home village, and eight adventures later you've done just that, but why stop there?During those eight adventures surely something else has piqued your/your PC/s interest enough to keep playing it - be it an opportunity to be heroic some other way, or a romance with another PC, or simply finding the high life is worth living and you'd like to finance more if it.But character turnover (or even player turnover) does not equate to campaign turnover; with the rare exception of a TPK but even there the campaign doesn't have to end if the players have other PCs floating around in the setting.The only type of turnover that kills a campaign dead is DM turnover: if the DM don't want to run it no more, there ain't no more campaign. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Unfortunately, some of those "other people" hold or have held paid positions as WotC game designers over the last 20-ish years.Agreed.Even in 0e-1e it's often worth distinguishing between RAW, RAI, and RAP* when discussing these things.* - Rules As Written / Intended / Played.In the days of 3e design, WotC were very much influenced by M:tG's picky-rule-for-everything and everyone-plays-the-same ethos, in part because that game was pulling in money by the boatload.Had 4e been more successful 5e - which would be a reality in some form by now no matter what - would almost certainly have continied the rules-uber-alles ethos; but it wasn't, and WotC decided to back off this philosophy a bit in 5e.  And going by the edition's success one has to say so far, so good.</blockquote>

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