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Message: <blockquote data-quote="scourger" data-source="post: 5768895" data-attributes="member: 12328">The best answer I can give is based on my GMing.  The most successful campaign I've run is for Savage Worlds.  It started as a Tour of Darkness game, and the players really invested in the setting of the Viet Nam War.  Plus, it was about 90% less preparation work than d20, so I was able to really focus on the story.  I used the basic campaign outline and many of the encounters but really made it more my own story than the book's.  At the end of that campaign, the heroes were transported to Necropolis.  That segment was less successful because the players really didn't understand or particularly like the setting.  I think it could have worked if they were more into sci-fi crusading vs. the undead (almost like 40K), but one of the smartest things I did was abandon that phase once they let me know that they weren't into it.  Now, I am running it as my own version of Weird War Rome.  The players love the idea of their characters leapfrogging through time to different conflicts, and it is fun for me to craft the story from various existing sources.I think this Savage Worlds campaign has been successful because it is designed to be simple enough to GM easily but remain complex enough to give the players plenty of choices for character advancement.  It is very easy to incorporate the extras and the give all the characters plenty of story.  I've had long-running campaigns of D&D 2e & 3.0, too; but those games required so much time & effort to prepare & run that they weren't sustainable.  Plus, it is not easy to allow fluctuating numbers of players from session-to-session.  I did have good success with an Omega World d20 mini-campaign using the Alternity Gamma World adventures, but I think that was because the game really streamlines the d20 rules engine to a different genre.  My experience is that any game of D&D is easier to run and more fun to play if restricted to the core rules.  Otherwise, the complexities get too great at higher levels--even a core game is hard to maintain.    For adventuring, the best game I've used was a type of the D&D Miniatures skirmish campaign.  I gave the players a bunch of minis to use as characters & allies.  Then I based a series of encounters on an island to which they traveled.  At each location was a set of opponents drawn from minis I had on hand.  The PC mini could be advanced at the close of each successful encounter.  It was fun, but very war-gamey.  I also think highly of the game ORK! for 1-shots.  We played it once, and it was very fun for what it was intended to be: a beer & pretzels game.</blockquote>

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