Poor DM/ Game Advice

[Dausuul]

Dausuul I want to ask, have the players ever wanted to continue playing after the idea ran it’s course? It reads like it has from your post.

In my experience, players who are enjoying a campaign will happily keep going as long as the DM wants to keep running. It's the DM who burns out and wants a change. Not saying that is universally the case, but that's how it has always been in my groups.

(Of course, if the DM has burned out and exhausted the original campaign idea, the quality of the campaign is apt to decline and players may stop enjoying the campaign as a result. But it takes a little while for this issue to become apparent.)

This may or may not be connected to the fact that the groups I play in always have multiple DMs. I know there are groups where one person is the permanent DM, year in and year out; and maybe burnout works differently for those folks. I couldn't do it. After 12-18 months behind the screen, I want to step back and sling some dice and kill some monsters.

 

[Shiroiken]

I have read multiple times on this board advice to the effect “ if a story line is completed it is ok to end the campaign”.
Which to my mind is liking stoping a play, after a great First Act.
The key to a Long Running campaign is the same as having a long relationship....don’t end it.

It is natural, and sometimes beneficial to flounder a bit. It gives time for tensions to unwind, and for serendipity and inspiration to happen, on both sides of the screen.

It is ok for the second act to have a slow start, or a sudden start from nowhere.

Good games die for so many reasons out of one’s control, moving away, being deployed, births, deaths etc,
it seems a shame to just surrender the chance to have a long run.

As someone who regularly posts the advice you consider bad, I'll throw in my 2 cents. There's nothing wrong with having a long campaign... IF you design for it. It can have several acts and sections, possibly even unrelated to each other. However, playing a game past the DM's original scope, floundering along, is unfun for both the players and DM (have experienced it as both the DM and player).

If you don't have a plan beyond your original story arc, it's best to set it aside and end the campaign. You can always later revisit/restart it later once a new arc has been figured out by the DM! This way you skip the floundering "2nd movie in the trilogy that you have to watch to follow the 3rd" step.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Umbran]

Out of curiosity (and this is not a criticism), what happens when the campaign isn't designed?

You get Supernatural. Lost. The Young and the Restless. Most comic books. The Peanuts comic strip. Improvisational jazz. Your Uncle Lou who drones on and on about nothing at holiday meals after he gets a couple drinks in him. The original, unabridged Les Miserables.

Which is to say, moment to moment it can be incredibly engaging. But, taken as a whole, it may become somewhat repetitive, bland, or pointless.

If you don't care about what happens when it is taken as a whole, then this is zero issue.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Oofta]

Out of curiosity (and this is not a criticism), what happens when the campaign isn't designed?

If it's just, you know, a series of events that the adventurers do, with no particular connected plot, no BBEG. The story just being whatever the party ends up doing?

Much like @Umbran, I frequently look at it like a TV series. Just because one story arc ends, doesn't mean there's not another story arc to pick up. Hopefully one that ties in.

But I also try to drop hints here and there about an overarching meta plot that may never be resolved. Or cheat by using random stuff that I made up and pretend it was a hint at some genius level long term plan on my part.

Most of the time those meta plots don't have a lot of definition, I leave them vague until I need details and only use them if the players show interest. Hopefully I resolve them better than Lost did if they ever get pursued.

 

[aco175]

I'm running two campaigns right now off and on. One started off using the free part from PotA and I expanded it a bit. The PCs just finished the free adventure and are level 6. The campaign started last summer whn my son got out of school and could play with the people from my other campaign. We took a break from the other game and play this in the summer and on school breaks. They never got into the cults and missing delegation much and I think ok with that part ending. Now I'm moving the plot or introducing more with going to get the body of the knight and returning it to Summit Hall where they will need to help them out with some problem that hopefully leads to an arc of another few levels. Most will not have to do with cultists but with an orc clan that assisted the cultists in the attack on the delegation in the first placed.
I think the players enjoy the PCs and using this campaign as a break from the main game we play when my son is not around. Moving the game away from the cultists and to another story is fine by me and I try to keep options open for the PCs to explore. I tend to have more eposodish games and not a determined outcome with a planned game. Maybe this is why a lot of people like Phandelvar in that it only goes to level 5 and you can add another plot to continue the story rather than having a 20 level game that may start to slog after a while.
I could go for another box set that takes the PCs from levels 5-10 or 9-12 or somthing that is contained and can be wrapped up in a few levels. Better if it is tied to the first box. I see this is something that the new Essentials box is doing with the trilogy of modules dealing with Leilon and the death god. Hane not played them yet, but this is what I would like to see.

 

[iserith]

Out of curiosity (and this is not a criticism), what happens when the campaign isn't designed?

If it's just, you know, a series of events that the adventurers do, with no particular connected plot, no BBEG. The story just being whatever the party ends up doing?

I prefer these kinds of campaigns (having a general disdain for plot-based adventures and storylines), but I still put a limit on the number of sessions (20-30) before we move on to something else.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Out of curiosity (and this is not a criticism), what happens when the campaign isn't designed?

If it's just, you know, a series of events that the adventurers do, with no particular connected plot, no BBEG. The story just being whatever the party ends up doing?

It depends upon the players. While most, IMO/IME, like a certain structure to the campaign, if nothing more than to get them started, I've had groups who constructed elaborate plots all out of nothing more than paranoia and speculation, and kept a campaign going for a very long time.

 

[BrokenTwin]

In my personal experience, Real Life gets in the way of every campaign eventually. The vast majority of my games have ended due to things happening outside the game world. So it's nice when we're able to stop the story at a point where everyone feels fulfilled with their character.
Plus, as a GM, I have a LOT of systems I want to play in and run, so shorter games are fantastic in that respect. My most consistent group (that I am currently on break from) tends to rotate between a few campaigns with different GMs. I believe they're currently playing an Adventures in Middle Earth campaign, and are about halfways through a PF1 AP and a system-converted 5E campaign.
On that note: a LOT of people only run prepublished stuff, which tends to reinforce the idea that once the campaign is over, that the story is won. Pathfinder APs are big about this. Once you finish a PF AP, you're not thinking about where your characters are going next, you're thinking about which AP you want to play next. At least, that's how it tends to go in my experience.