D&D 5E Length of peoples Campaigns?

[pming]

Hiya.

I was perusing a few threads this afternoon and one about campaign settings of old semi-tangent for a few posts with folks commenting about the old 32-page detachable-cover-with-map-on-back 1e modules and how many folks want to see them return. My brain, for some reason, drew that into the whole "D&D is now about story, Story STORY!" post from that brand manager guy at WotC.

Of course, this made me think of campaign length (...er...yeah...crazy brain...*mumble mumble mumble*...).

I'm getting the distinct impression that folks "nowadays" (re: started RPG'ing after, say, 1995'ish) have campaigns that consist solely in a bubble. That is, they roll up new characters and the DM says"For the past several days, you have been traveling a road that winds lazily across the rolling grasslands of the Greenfields. ... ...and so begins the Hoard of the Dragon Queen hardback "adventure campaign story". They play it for the next 6 to 8 months and defeat Tiamat.

Then they all roll up new 1st level characters and start the Prince of the Apocalypse, with no mention or reference to what just happened with the whole Tiamat thing. That is, if the PC's, for whatever reason, go to Greenest (is that what it's called?), it will be perfectly fine. It was never attacked by a dragon and dragon worshipers, and Tiamat never showed up to be defeated. In short, that "campaign" was a "bubble story" with no consequences or lasting effects to continue an ongoing "actual" DM's campaign.

Maybe this is an old grognard thing (re: someone who started playing this RPG thing prior to 1e), but stories generally become part of the campaign narrative history. Not always, for sure, but that is the default assumption and not the exception. So, playing through HotDQ, successfully or not, the events would reverberate throughout the campaign setting. Players creating a new PC after said adventure should, by default, assume that "all that dragons, cultists and Tiamat thing" did happen. Greenrest is still recovering. Cultists are still lurking about trying to find out what went wrong and how to get revenge, etc, etc, etc.

Am I alone in thinking of a "campaign" this way? I haven't always done it like that...but mostly I have. However, I always mention to my players anything that is "world changing/noticing" that didn't happen (ex: Queen of Spiders - the giant incursion, the black bubble over Istivin (?), etc) if I deviate from the default "it's all connected".

My campaigns generally last a few years, each character coming 'after' another (or, at best, concurrently). There are exceptions, but those are just that...exceptions. When we want to do something 'new' we start a new campaign; all "PC histories" are wiped from the collective campaign, we pick a campaign world year to start in and off we go again.

Thoughts?

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[not-so-newguy]

It sounds like you're referring to Adventurers League Expeditions play that's used for the "official game store" campaign. It's one of the drawbacks of A.L. expeditions, but it allows a person to stop by any FLGS supported by WOTC and start playing. Others here can explain it better than me.

 

[Mouseferatu]

This isn't remotely an either/or thing. I run some campaigns that are connected, part of the same world and/or shared history. I run others that are totally standalone. It completely depends on the nature of the campaign and group.

I don't go for multi-year campaigns; mine tend to run anywhere from six to 18 months. But if you count campaigns that are linked by shared characters or just a shared setting/history, I've reached multiple years a couple of times.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think you are alone.

However, for me, successive campaigns probably don't use the same game system, much less the same game world. I am not building up decades of history, where what group A did impacts the world Group B sees.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

I have tried to do the progressing campaign world thing in the past and am trying it again via Play-by-Post, but most of my campaigns have jumped around from one setting and/or game system to another.

That said, I've used older campaigns for reference and borrowed from them in the same way I borrow from published settings. So, NPCs, organizations, and locations often find their way into otherwise unrelated settings.

 

[Olfan]

For my groups, I tend to run multi-year campaigns that interweave. So everyone plays in the one universe, and affect the future stories of the other group. I'll have one group finish a huge three year campaign, then my other group will start a game that deals with the after effects of the first one. The first group then deals with what happens from the second group and so on. Sometimes I'll set a campaign in the past because I want to tell a story involving people who are dead in a more current game, or set things far in the future.

I even had a game that had two endings, my official one that was bittersweet and one that was a sort of epilogue that had a more happy ending for the players who prefer that sort of thing. Then the group that played in the repercussions got to pick which one they considered cannon. If I wanted, I could multi-verse that ending and have some campaigns play with the happy ending and some play with the bittersweet ending.

Essentially, what started out as by-the-book Forgotten Realms has been changed and altered by the players so much that it's more our own thing now, and everything is affected by everything else. So my games tend to run for years, and definitely not in a vacuum.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Of course, this made me think of campaign length

How long campaigns last has a lot to do with how long groups stay together, how busy people get, and how well the system holds up at higher levels.

I've run a number of campaigns over the years. The longest was AD&D - spanning 1e & 2e - lasting from '85 to '95, so technically 11 years, though with less frequent sessions the last year or two, and most characters going from 1st through 14th. I've run a Champions! campaign that also started in '85, ran through '90, picked up again from '93-98, and again from 2004-2010, each time with new players and new plot lines. I ran an oWoD Mage/Werewolf campaign from '94-2002 (and played in two others concurrently). I played in two concurrent 3.x campaigns from 2000-'08, then converted to 4e (with new characters) for a couple of years before the group broke up, and am currently running a 'casual' 4e campaign that started in 2011, and playing in a more serious one that started in 2010 - and running 5e at conventions and Encounters (no 5e campaign yet).

Along the way, though, I've started or played in many other campaigns that quickly fizzled, played & run plenty of one-off convention games, etc.

So, when a campaign really gets rolling, it can go for many years. But, if group dynamics break it up, people move, drop out of the hobby, whatever, they can be a lot shorter.

I'm getting the distinct impression that folks "nowadays" (re: started RPG'ing after, say, 1995'ish) have campaigns that consist solely in a bubble. That is, they roll up new characters They play it for the next 6 to 8 months and defeat Tiamat. Then they all roll up new 1st level characters and start the Prince of the Apocalypse, with no mention or reference to what just happened with the whole Tiamat thing.

That's in AL-associated play, sure. It happens I'm running 5e that way, atm, but when the existing campaigns I'm running & playing in wind down, who knows?

Maybe this is an old grognard thing (re: someone who started playing this RPG thing prior to 1e), but stories generally become part of the campaign narrative history. Not always, for sure, but that is the default assumption and not the exception.

I don't know if I'd call it a default assumption, I'm not even sure a persistent campaign world is a default assumption - you could run a campaign in Greyhawk, then one in Kara-Tur, then one in Dark Sun, for instance.

But, yes, in every campaign I've run or played that stayed in the same world - even if the system changed - there'd be continuity, both within a campaign with the same set of players, and in terms of one or more of those PCs maybe leaving a legacy of some kind behind that later characters might run into.

It than long, intermittent Champions! campaign I ran, for instance, the continuity created by the first group was still there in the history of the setting when the next group started up, and the last time I ran it, the previous supers were all retired/powerless at the start of the campaign, but they, and their accomplishments were known.

One of the D&D campaigns I was in for 10 years with one group included carrying things over from 3.0 to 3.5 to 4e, as well. The 3.x characters were part of the history in the 4e world. So were events that caused magic to change for the half-ed and full-ed transitions. "My granfather's spellbook mentions memorizing Tenser's Floating Disk, but I've never been able to manage it - fortunately it works fine just reading it straight from the text..."





So, playing through HotDQ, successfully or not, the events would reverberate throughout the campaign setting. Players creating a new PC after said adventure should, by default, assume that "all that dragons, cultists and Tiamat thing" did happen. Greenrest is still recovering. Cultists are still lurking about trying to find out what went wrong and how to get revenge, etc, etc, etc.

Am I alone in thinking of a "campaign" this way? I haven't always done it like that...but mostly I have. However, I always mention to my players anything that is "world changing/noticing" that didn't happen (ex: Queen of Spiders - the giant incursion, the black bubble over Istivin (?), etc) if I deviate from the default "it's all connected".

My campaigns generally last a few years, each character coming 'after' another (or, at best, concurrently). There are exceptions, but those are just that...exceptions. When we want to do something 'new' we start a new campaign; all "PC histories" are wiped from the collective campaign, we pick a campaign world year to start in and off we go again.

Thoughts?

^_^

Paul L. Ming[/QUOTE]

 

[Sunseeker]

I tend to get the feeling that campaign length is more a measure of socio-economic stability of the group. People who can afford the time to spend playing instead of working, people who don't move very often, etc...

The younger generations enjoy less and less of this.

 

[Hussar]

Hiya.

I was perusing a few threads this afternoon and one about campaign settings of old semi-tangent for a few posts with folks commenting about the old 32-page detachable-cover-with-map-on-back 1e modules and how many folks want to see them return. My brain, for some reason, drew that into the whole "D&D is now about story, Story STORY!" post from that brand manager guy at WotC.

Of course, this made me think of campaign length (...er...yeah...crazy brain...*mumble mumble mumble*...).

I'm getting the distinct impression that folks "nowadays" (re: started RPG'ing after, say, 1995'ish) have campaigns that consist solely in a bubble. That is, they roll up new characters and the DM says"For the past several days, you have been traveling a road that winds lazily across the rolling grasslands of the Greenfields. ... ...and so begins the Hoard of the Dragon Queen hardback "adventure campaign story". They play it for the next 6 to 8 months and defeat Tiamat.

Then they all roll up new 1st level characters and start the Prince of the Apocalypse, with no mention or reference to what just happened with the whole Tiamat thing. That is, if the PC's, for whatever reason, go to Greenest (is that what it's called?), it will be perfectly fine. It was never attacked by a dragon and dragon worshipers, and Tiamat never showed up to be defeated. In short, that "campaign" was a "bubble story" with no consequences or lasting effects to continue an ongoing "actual" DM's campaign.

Maybe this is an old grognard thing (re: someone who started playing this RPG thing prior to 1e), but stories generally become part of the campaign narrative history. Not always, for sure, but that is the default assumption and not the exception. So, playing through HotDQ, successfully or not, the events would reverberate throughout the campaign setting. Players creating a new PC after said adventure should, by default, assume that "all that dragons, cultists and Tiamat thing" did happen. Greenrest is still recovering. Cultists are still lurking about trying to find out what went wrong and how to get revenge, etc, etc, etc.

Am I alone in thinking of a "campaign" this way? I haven't always done it like that...but mostly I have. However, I always mention to my players anything that is "world changing/noticing" that didn't happen (ex: Queen of Spiders - the giant incursion, the black bubble over Istivin (?), etc) if I deviate from the default "it's all connected".

My campaigns generally last a few years, each character coming 'after' another (or, at best, concurrently). There are exceptions, but those are just that...exceptions. When we want to do something 'new' we start a new campaign; all "PC histories" are wiped from the collective campaign, we pick a campaign world year to start in and off we go again.

Thoughts?

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I started playing in the early 80's and my campaigns have always existed "in a bubble". One campaign was, by and large, (I can't think of any exceptions) completely divorced from the next campaign.

Then again, it was pretty rare, up until recently, for me to play with the same players from campaign to campaign. So, there was no point in continuity. They aren't going to care what the previous group did.

 

[Shiroiken]

While not as much of a grognard (started in the 80s), I remember those days well. I noticed that the trend changed during 2E, not only because of the emergence of many more campaign settings, but because DMs started running "epic" campaigns that pretty much ruined the setting for future use (see the Prism Pentad for a great example). The idea that each campaign took place on the same world, thus keeping continuity and letting players see the results of their actions, eventually faded away to a reset/reboot mentality.

Not all have changed however. Many DMs who enjoy one particular setting (FR, Greyhawk, etc.) often incorporate aspects of previous games into their campaign. I played in a 3E FR game where the DM introduced some NPCs that were the PCs in his 2E FR game (one of the players was from that game). Our actions impacted his 3.5 FR game, which (slightly) impacted his 4E campaign. Now in his 5E game, I highly suspect that some of those old references may impact our current events. His FR is HIS FR, where we've affected the world, if only small parts of it.

I have not DMed continuously over the years, and have only recently rebooted my Greyhawk campaign. I plan to continue this tradition, and when we're done, my next campaign will have the events of the previous campaign impact it. I considered incorporating what I remember from my 1E campaign, but the details are fuzzy, and I've decided to take a more Gygaxian approach this time around. I may drop an NPC or two, but that's about it.