Short campaigns: breaking out of the Farmboy to Demigod model

[Hussar]

Of course, as I say all this, I'm also begining work on rebuilding the World's largest Dungeon for 4e. :/ Sigh.

I wanna keep it short and sweet, but, I just keep adding more stuff!!! ARGH!

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Echoing other people's comments, I think the bounded campaign can be a really fun thing. As you say, it lets you focus on telling a single compact and integrated story, rather than "whereever this wanders off to." I've had some success combining a story limit with a real world time limit. For example, one campaign I ran was defined as being 10-12 roughly monthly sessions over the course of one year of playing time. Having that deadline kept me focused on advancing the story, and helped prevent bloat. I think that made the game run more smoothly.

One thing that I would suggest is being less fixed on what the subsequent stories are--this may not be your intent, but it's the impression I get. For example, if story 3 isn't a huge success, you may not want to continue with those characters for story 4. Or if story 1 is made of win, you may want to add a story 2 (or a story 3) that uses the same characters as in story 1, but gives them a different story/new set of goals.

 

[Mercurius]

I like it, although it seems more in the "novella" range than a short story or novel.

One slight downside is that a lot of players enjoy developing a single character whether "from farmboy to demigod" or simply novice adventurer to seasoned veteran.

One nice thing about is that you start accruing a stable of characters to use. I could very easily see your players saying "Let's play the dwarves again, that was fun."

Anyhow, good ideas.

 

[LostSoul]

Why do you want to use D&D to run this campaign?

 

[On Puget Sound]

Because it's the system I know best; I'm comfortable with it. I do have other games I would like to run someday, but Ars Magica is definitely not for short story arcs. Talislanta might work for this, but it requires a total abandonment of the concept of "balance", and that would not work well with the players I have available. And I would not GM Pathfinder/ 3.5 beyond level 7 or so.

 

[alms66]

Even when I ran D&D, I never did follow the "must get to highest level" philosophy. The campaign ended when the story ended - and that was that. I never set a level to end a campaign at, I just let the story naturally end itself and then we'd move on to another campaign.
That "must get to highest level" philosophy fuels my general dislike of leveled systems, so I tend to stay away from them or make it clear to the players that I don't swing that way when I do GM leveled systems - so the players either have to take it or leave it.

 

[Haltherrion]

Even when I ran D&D, I never did follow the "must get to highest level" philosophy. The campaign ended when the story ended - and that was that.

All of my campaigns have a clear "done" point. It might be something planned from the beginning or it might have been a more open campaign where the players found their own goals but at some point they accomplished something big enough and important enough that it felt like a good place to stop.

I do some level planning though. For each campaign, I have some idea of about where I'd like to end it level wise and will run level progression accordiningly. If I think a campaign is good for 25 sessions and I want them to be level 10 at the end, I may start them at level 5 and set a target of a level every 5 sessions.

 

[havard]

We have tried some variants of this, though not exactly how you describe it.

The main problem you need to deal with is that most players don't really care about the story, or the campaign. What they always care about is their character. Not just in terms of levels and XP, but also it is their anchor into the setting.

Take that away and you have to know what you are doing.

-Havard