What is a D&D "campaign"?

[Quasqueton]

When you refer to a D&D “campaign”, what are you thinking? For instance, does a campaign end when the whole party dies and everyone brings in new characters? Does a campaign continue, even with different Players, so long as you are playing the same game system/rules? Does a campaign end when a story is complete, but the PCs may continue into a new campaign?

Quasqueton

 

[Shade]

All of the above, for me. I probably focus most often on single party's adventures, wherever that may take them, but we have picked up with "the next generation" before.

 

[el-remmen]

I would say both three and four fit my definition, depending on the specific situation - but I chose #3.

To me a campaign is a group of stories/adventures played by a group with an on-going continuity even if all the characters at the end are not the same as those at the beginning.

However, in my book a TPK always ends a campaign. Even if a later group of heroes takes up the same quest/cause - they have a different set of events that led them there and will likely go on to do different things afterwards - and thus it is a different campaign.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm with the Brooklynite. A campaign is basically one "plot" that is seen through to it's end. While this may include many different characters, usually, they death of all characters means that it's time to start a new plot.

For a running theory, the basic component of a D&D game's continuity is a session. An adventure is made up over several sessions dedicated to a single narrow objective. A campaign is how those objectives link together in a cohesive plot. A campaign setting is the world in which those plots occur.

 

[Henry]

Campaign = One DM, running one specific setup for a game, players and characters may rotate in and out, but a new DM usually means new campaign.

Campaigns have more to do with the storyline to me, rather than the participants.

 

[Odhanan]

Voted "Other". For me "Campaigning" is defined by a feeling of continuity. This may be because the story is on-going over several adventures, or maybe because the two campaign arcs, even though using different systems, players and game worlds have a sort of conceptual link between each other (for instance, Eternal Companions types of dual games). Players may change but the overall set-up of the adventures and arcs keep on going with different players and characters, and so on and so forth. Even the DMs may change over the years, if the campaign is a homebrew run by a particular association and to become a DM there, you ought to run the signature homebrew of the association. I've seen this before.

So as far as I'm concerned "Campaign" means "continuity", whatever this may particularly mean in each Campaign instance. Campaigns that are linked by some type of continuity may themselves be part of an Uber-campaign of sort.

 

[Glyfair]

I use campaign in two sense. The first is as described by most above, a storyline typically with a core group of characters (although not necessarily).

The other sense is the "campaign world." In this sense a campaign can have multiple "storyline campaigns" within it. Typically those storylines will have some interaction with each other (characters hear mention of the other exploits, characters can meet, characters might even leave one storyline and join the other).

 

[Allandaros]

I voted "one set of PCs", with the understanding that this doesn't count dead'n'replaced PCs, or things like that.

 

[lukelightning]

I say it's based on the party. If a DM is DMing multiple parties in the same world, I would refer to them as different campaigns, even if they interacted.

 

[Lanefan]

Campaign = One DM, running one specific setup for a game, players and characters may rotate in and out, but a new DM usually means new campaign.

Agreed, along with that one DM might be running more than one party at the same time in the same setting, with the parties occasionally meeting, exchanging characters and-or players, joining together for a mass adventure, or whatever.

The analogy I often use is that a campaign is like a sports franchise - players and characters may come and go but the franchise (campaign) carries on.

Lanefan