Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7881848" data-attributes="member: 29398">It's all about your and your players' mindset when you start out: if you all go in with the expectation that the campaign will last for the rest of your life it'll go a lot longer than if your collective expectation is that it'll last a mere year or less.And as DM there's numerous things you can do to prolong the campaign, here's a few ideas:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">slow down the level advancement rate!  Make it so it takes at least couple of adventures to level up each time, and make it clear (if necessary) that level-up isn't the focus of this campaign.  Oh, and start at 1st level...or even 0th!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">have multiple long-term stories ready to go, such that once they play through one they can ease into the next; or even have those stories overlap.  Corollary: also have some standalone adventures handy as a change of pace, as any story can get boring.  Sceond corollary: avoid published adventure paths as the level-advance they demand is far too fast (that said, APs are good places to mine individual adventure ideas from; you just have to strip out all the written backstory)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">strongly encourage character turnover and cycling, and-or have multiple parties within the same campaign who can meet and interact now and then; this both slows down the advance rate overall and gives players a chance to play different characters as time goes on.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">expect, and be ready and able to handle, some player turnover as the game goes along.  Eventually one or more players will leave for whatever reason; always have an idea as to who you might want to invite in as replacements.  Also, sometimes a player who leaves now might want to return a few years hence so unless you don't want that player in the game, don't burn any bridges. <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=":)" /></li> </ul>All that said, it's very possible 5e isn't the best system for this sort of thing.  If you find yourself fighting it too much, take a long look instead at (pre-splat!) 2e or at a 1e-2e hybrid.</blockquote>

Verification