What has been your longest running campaign?

[kitsune9]

Hi,

Just a quick poll because I'm curious

What has been the longest campaign you have played in terms of hours?
For example - my longest was about 3 years of weekly sessions of about 3 hours each - so 468 hours total.

What kept you coming back? What made it such a long running campaign?
I'm looking for more in-depth answers then plain "we had fun so we came back".

Thanks,
Roger the Jolly

I'd say about 3 years. Once every two weeks for 8 hours so 624 hours. We went from 1st to 24th level. This was 3.0 not 3.5. Most of my campaigns go for about 2 1/2 years from 1st to 20th level.

 

[thundershot]

While we've had different goals and characters over the years, the first setting started with the D&D Basic Set (the magenta one) and then went to BECMI, where the climax was the main characters (and their arch villain) became immortals. We took a break and started with 2nd Edition. It wasn't until later that it was established to be in the same world at the BECMI group, and even incorporated those characters into the campaign. At the end of 2nd Edition, we played "The Apocalypse Stone" and destroyed reality as we know it. When we started 3E, we used a few characters from before, but they were back to 1st level, and had no memory of what had happened, only that things are different. They slowly started tracking down members of the old party and tried to piece together what happened (such as Halflings no longer having hairy feet). At the end, they faced their arch nemesis Baba Yaga (who, in 2E, had become a vampire Bionoid, and I converted her over to 3E) and won.

The new campagin starts with new characters (or variations of old characters) without any connective tissue from the old one except for two things. 1) Baba Yaga is the God of Magic and replaces Vecna. This is the SAME Baba Yaga that the party from 3E thought they had defeated. 2) One of the core members of the party in 2E and 3E, a Sylph called Sprite is the Goddess of Illusion. She sacrificed herself to defeat Baba Yaga, and ended up with the same spark of divinity that Baba Yaga gained. She is aware that her former friends are cropping up on this world, but is letting them live their lives naturally...

So... how long? On and off 22 years, maybe?


Chris

 

[Nikosandros]

My longest campaign begun at the end of April or early May in 1989 and was completed early June 2008.

Finishing it gave me a strange feeling. Great satisfaction and pride, but also a bit of sadness... and also the knowledge that I'll never do anything even remotely as massive.

 

[drothgery]

Longest game, both in terms of hours at the table and calendar time, was Spatula's Eberron game which just wrapped up. 3-4 hrs/wk, almost every week, from Jan 2006 to Jan 2009, with a couple of side campaigns mixed in there. It's the only game I've ever played in that went from 1st to 20th level (though I went through three characters).

 

[Knightfall]

My longest running game was my Shackled City campaign set in my homebrewed world. It lasted about 2-1/2 to 3 years. (I don't remember "exactly" how long.) It was, by far, my longest running game.

I ran a 2e game in the mid-90s that lasted a while but I'm sure that one didn'r run longer than 6 months to a year.

Most of the other games I've been a part of haven't lasted that long. I'm hoping my Kulan PbP game lasts a while. It's only a one-shot module game right now but you never know.

 

[Tetsubo]

Mine was a 1E campaign that lasted six years. I took a 1st level Ranger and worked him up to a 26th level Ranger Lord. I still have his custom portrait on my office wall.

 

[Crothian]

We hade a 12 year Rifts campaign, no idea how many hours of game time that was.

 

[Jhaelen]

That's very difficult to say. My current (3E) campaign has been running for over 5 years now, but we only meet every 3-4 weeks for a long (~ 10+ hours) session. So that would be about 750 hours. I hope we'll be able to finish it until the end of this year, but it might go longer.

Previous campaigns have lasted for 2-3 years each, but we've been playing more often back then. Considering the maximum levels my players reached, they were about as long as the current one.

 

[Desert Hare]

Ptolus game that ran from August of 06 to December of 07.

My group was meeting once a week back then, for one nine hour session (with a one hour downtime for a meal break). Thats 576 hour of game play.

Characters capped at 30th level. Very long, but very fun game.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I played in a game that took about 2 years. We played regularly during highschool days. We'd play for an hour (or so) every day at lunch, 8 hours on wednesdays (it was a "pick your own class" day, and we cheated the system) and about 10-20 hours on the weekends. sometimes we would set up a "start friday night, end when we pass out sunday afternoon" session.
I honestly can't remember how many hours that game took, but it was beyond epic.

My 3.5 campaign ran for 18 months or so, about 10 hours every weekend for a total of arround 720 hours. It ended when 4E was coming out and I wanted to start somthing completely fresh for the new edition.

The 4E game I'm running is going off of the same basic end point of my 3.5 game, set 100 years in the future (FR setting shift) and is using refferences and storylines built by that campaign.

For those of you who have stated years numbering in the double digits, My hat's off to you. You are truly hard core!