What do you prefer? Long home campaigns or Adventure Paths with an end?

[Lanefan]

I think I'm in the minority here when I say I prefer the long campaign...5 to 10+ years (see sig, below; I play in games that long too ). *But*, I don't want to play the same character all the way through...I'd rather cycle various characters in and out of the party, and have others do likewise.

Also, I prefer there be *some* sort of over-arching storyline, but that not every adventure necessarily ties into it. I find planning an "adventure path" more than a few adventures ahead is often just frustration waiting to happen...the party decides to go off elsewhere, or all get themselves killed, or a change in characters and-or players shifts the balance in the party, or whatever.

Ditto as a player...I often lose sight of whatever the overall story is because I'm too busy trying to survive getting clobbered by whatever's clobbering me at the time.

Lanefan

 

[Wombat]

I want, and have had on three occassions, campaigns that have lasted 3+ years (one ran a glorious 6 years!) ... but not necessarily with the same characters all the way along.

What I like is the concept of a consistent world, more than anything else. And, for my taste, that means I need to make it myself -- I have yet to find a readymade world that fits my notion of what is good/necessary in a setting.

Now within this semi-persistent world, I am happy to have longer and shorter story arcs involving particular characters. That is a different matter, however.

 

[Aaron L]

I've been playing one character for 15 years. I see no reason to stop playing him for some arbitrary reason. Campaigns with a preset end point seem to me to pretty much defeat the purpose of D&D; you may as well play a video game with a built-in ending.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I would say, for me, the reality of five-six people getting together to play a campaign *dictates* a change almost at least once a year. Lives change, and that's usually a great opportunity to try out a new idea, since the old one won't be the same.

 

[William drake]

Hybrid

My games have paths, and goals...but the game isn't over once they're meet. It's once they're met, that the players find out what else has been going on, what new things they must do, or avoid or w/e. Now, playing a Set game, with a built in start and finish might be fun, but most of the pre-made games that I've read, never sounded to interesting to me, but, that's just me. And I understand that time is a factor for some groups, and that's cool...however you get your game, just get it and have fun.

Example of play: (goal) kill Mr. White....a book for this game might say that 7 nights of gameplay, and the players should be able to take him. If I ran this, it just depends; I could go outside of the boxs and make it so that Mr. White left the country, he found out that the players were gunning for him, and so he left to return later. Or he left for an all-together different reason unrelated to the players, and only if they track him down, will they find out what that reason was. If they don't, then one day he will return, or someone in his stead, to carry out what evil and dark things he was earlier working on. Perhaps now his motives have changed......

I could go on an on pushing a game, taking it left and right and I don't feel that premade games have that free-play feeling that I enjoy. That's just me.


Game On.

 

[Desdichado]

Shorter. As a player, I tend to get tired of the same character all the time, and I also don't like the power progression--higher level characters aren't as much fun to play for me.

As a DM, I also don't like higher level characters, and I get bored with running the same plotlines for extremely long campaigns.

I guess I prefer mini-campaigns of 30-40 total sessions or so tops. I'd like, if I had my druthers, to run a number of mini-campaigns in the same homebrew setting; starting at different places on the map, or at least doing completely different things each time.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Adventure Paths / Modules for me as a DM.

Less actual time spent on prep prep or more focused prep, I dont know which but both are good. My group only gets to meet about once a month, We started meeting in Oct and skipped Jan & Feb, and were just at the tail end of AOW:Whispering Cairn about to move into AOW: 3 Faces of Evil.

Most of the important prep work is done for me, all that's left for me to do is familarize myself with encounter areas, print out the visual aides like maps and NPC pictures, flesh out the details of NPC motivations and so forth.

 

[Emirikol]

QFT or Me too!But then, we played with xp for gp.

I still do that for my players. It keeps them from wanting to spend it on magic items. The value in our game is 1xp:4gp.

Works great!

jh

 

[KB9JMQ]

Even a year is pushing it. I like to organize games into seasons - when I pitch it I'll give a rough estimate for how long I think it will take - say 6-8 for a short one, 10-12 for a longer one. After that we can decide what to do, another season with the same characters or a whole new game.

Exactly the way I feel. I just can't imagine playing the same characters for years.

 

[Greg K]

I chose years and years. However, I despise D&D beginning somewhere around 11th-13th level and want much slower advancement from levels 5-10.