Lots of short games or one long game?

[Morrus]

I'm curious about the gaming behaviour of other groups. This is what we've played over the last few years:

• D&D 3.5 Age of Worms (18 months)
• D&D 4E Keep on the Shadowfell -> Pyramid of Shadows (3-4 months)
• D&D 4E War of the Burning Sky (2 years)
• Pathfinder Campaign (6 months)
• Traveller Secrets of the Ancients (6 months so far; ongoing)

Interspersed in that are the occasional one-shot or boardgames, but those are the significant chunks. Another group I know tends to sequentially play short 2-3 month campaigns up until GM burnout, I think (I'm not a member of that group).

 

[scourger]

I prefer to change games and genres frequently--about every 3-6 months. I think I just get bored and want to move on to or return to something that is not immediately familiar. Even if I am really enjoying a game, I know that I need to let it lie fallow for a while and then return to it. I find this is the same whether I am a player or game master. When I return to it, I actually enjoy it more than if it had continued indefinitely.

Even as a DM, I want to complete a discrete story arc in a campaign and then leave it. We can pick up the same game for a new story later or move the same characters to a new story in a new genre (if the system is flexible enough), but I can't just grind the same grist in the RPG mill indefinitely.

I think this is largely the way my group plays, too. The other member who runs games has the same basic style but he runs a game intensely for a while and then puts it down to go on to something else. Sometimes, it is years later that we reprise a game.

The players in my group that profess to love playing something for years don't recognize that they kill those games by doing so, in my opinion. The last D&D game someone ran for about 2 years ended badly from where I stood. I took a long break from it and returned just in time for them to burn it out. I don't think it's a coincidence that both the game and the DM are finished, likely forever.

 

[Gilladian]

My face-to-face group plays long-term campaigns, mostly. We've been doing Dragon's Delve since April 2011 and have just passed 6th level. We're going strong on that one. Before that, we played a Ptolus game for over a year, and before that RotR adventure path for about a year (I burned out on that; not enough scope for my Dming imagination in a straight adventure path). The homebrew campaigns before that each lasted over 3 years.

My online group (where I both DM and play) seems to be much more intermittent. We play 4e sometimes, and those campaigns last months or even a year or more. Other games, 3-6 months and we seem ready to try something else. I think more than anything, we're searching for the right combination of rules and game interface. It isn't that we CANT play longer, just that we get frustrated with some inadequacy of method.

 

[Elf Witch]

My groups tend to like long running games. And I do to. Short campaigns bore me. Now we do like to switch around with DMs so no one is getting burned out. My roommate Age of Worms has been running since 2008 and so has my campaign though because of me breaking my back we had almost a year off.

 

[Lanefan]

We run 'em long. Anything less than 2 years is considered either very short (if completed) or a failure (if not), with the main ones usually getting into the 10-year-plus range; the longest was 12.5.

That's campaigns, mind you; and while any given campaign has only one DM the players slowly come and go. Characters come and go much more often, which keeps things fresh.

Lanefan

 

[Votan]

Multiple year games seem to be the rule rather than the exception in my gaming experience. I would consider a short campaign to be anything less than six months in duration. This is also influenced by frequency, as many groups have have been a part of only managed to meet every 3 to 4 weeks.

 

[S'mon]

For me it tends to be a mix of longish (2 years or so) and shortish (maybe 6 months) campaigns, with occasional one-shots etc.

 

[Balesir]

We tend to play infrequently but prefer long campaigns, these days. I think we preferred long games in days of yore, too, but either the system broke down, or we reached GM burnout, or some social upheaval interrupted things.

The games I am currently running are definitely intended to run long - the 4E one to epic levels and the Hârn one as an ongoing saga involving the exploration of some character aims and plans.

 

[delericho]

I think my preference is for a campaign to last about a year (with one 3-hour session roughly every 2 weeks). That seems to be long enough to tell a meaningful story, but short enough that fatigue doesn't set in.

We also have a smattering of one-shot sessions, and perhaps the odd "mini-series" in the course of the year. But I, at least, don't really have the time to commit to more that one ongoing campaign at a time.

(My current campaign has been running for 18 months so far, with another 6 months or so to go. But it's something of an outlier in that regard, and I doubt I'll do something quite like that again.)

 

[MerricB]

Both, but then I'm blessed by knowing a lot of players and having the time to devote to games.

My Greyhawk 4E campaign has been running since 4E came out, and has now reached 20th level. (My other 4E campaign completed the H-P-E sequence after three years or thereabouts). When this particular campaign ends, I'll start another campaign in the same world, which I've been running games in pretty continuously since 1998.

Meanwhile, the AD&D Saturday game has been running a year, and looks like continuing long beyond that.

Alternatively, I've been taking a group through Pathfinder APs; it's taking about 4-5 months per AP. And that's good.

Back in the 3E days, my standard campaign would last 2-3 years, then we'd reset in the same world, but in a different part.

Our Friday sessions alternate between my DMing (Greyhawk) and Martin's games, and Martin tends to run more one-shots and mini-campaigns with other systems.

Cheers!