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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6596176" data-attributes="member: 996">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.   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? 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..." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> 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</blockquote>[/QUOTE]

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