What rpg system would you use for a 60+ session fantasy campaign?

[billd91]

D&D, probably 5e due to general ease of running it. I've run 60+ sessions of campaigns before. I have a hard time imagining something well outside the D&D-verse (including PF and other D&D-variations) keeping PCs (mostly) alive and players interested quite as long. D&D is well-suited to doing so in my experience.

 

[jdrakeh]

Fate Accelerated is a good choice. It will specifically let you do any subgenre of fantasy with a little modification, whereas most dedicated fantasy systems are somewhat locked into doing a very specific subgenre of fantasy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’d either be running D&D 3.5, Pathfinder or HERO 4-6Ed

 

[Autumnal]

Fate Accelerated is a good choice. It will specifically let you do any subgenre of fantasy with a little modification, whereas most dedicated fantasy systems are somewhat locked into doing a very specific subgenre of fantasy.

And in my experience, the most successful campaigns pretty much all go unplanned directions along their way.

 

[BenjaminPey]

City of Mist, Vampire 5th, without any doubts nor trouble. Could go into the hundreds.
DnD 5e24 close third, but sixty sessions is somewhat a maximum for me with this kind of stories where adventure is the main point and vertical progression of skills and powers the only mechanical changes occuring around the characters.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Pendragon and The Great Pendragon Campaign! At least, most of it anyway as ideally it would be one year per session and the campaign is 80 years long...so yeah, that would be my first pick. Of course there would be the caveat that rule #4 would probably be broken as players would definitely have multiple PCs as their original PC will age out if they are really lucky, but is more likely to die in glorious fashion and need to be replaced. If nothing else, PCs could at best be restricted to members of the same extended family.

My second option would be Mythras and the Mythic Britain setting. I can't state enough how much I love Mythic Britain as a setting with it's a-historical "Dark Ages King Arthur" and Saxon invasion in post-Roman Britain deal. It would also be dependent on being able to break rule #4 as Mythras also has a lethal combat engine.

Honorable mentions would go to a long running Burning Wheel campaign. Though I'm not sure if I could sustain such an endeavor as a GM as BW is an much more intense experience than most TTRPGs offer. Perhaps a long running Mythras game in a homebrew setting, where I would go for more of a Game Of Thrones vibe instead of the typical fantasy adventurers. The PCs would all be folks in positions of power and influence, so politics and intrigue over combat and exploration. Or, just for something different, a Samurai Of Legend game, set in the Heian period. It would be fun to play a long campaign in a setting that is not eurocentric.

Anyway, my rambling answer. Cheers!

 

[John R Davis]

Easy to do with various DND. This week will be session 52 of ghosts of Saltmarsh / Vecna. It might just reach 60 sessions.

Other games with long legs that have reached 60+ in my past are MERP and RM.

Many systems/campaigns do their thing and end way before session 60, which is all good.

 

[dbm]

For me this would say GURPS, full on rather than ‘just’ Dungeon Fantasy but pulling heavily from those assets for inspiration on the character side and for monster stats.

GURPS allows for small amounts of progress to be awarded each session without ending up at Demi-god status when the GM doesn’t want that to be reached. Its rules also provide lots of support for diverse concepts and in a campaign of that length I would anticipate the characters to get into hijinks like politics, magical research, social influence and more. So a system where characters can adapt to different challenges and grow horizontally as well as vertically would be highly desirable. A campaign of that duration would also have room for sessions which focussed on a single epic combat from time to time, and GURPS can again provide that.

 

[Distracted DM]

I'd like to say Dungeon Crawl Classics, but not sure on that right now. I gotta say, I am so tired of running high-level 5e, so unless I started using my E9 rules I can't say I'd want to do it with 5e again; I've already run so many 5e games of 50+ sessions. The only one that I wasn't tired of after 2+yrs was West Marches, cuz I'd slowed down leveling so much in it, but COVID ended that :')

 

[aramis erak]

It's a hypothetical question, with the following stipulations:

1. The campaign you'll be running will be at least 60 sessions long, more if you wish.
2. It's a fantasy campaign but the subgenre is whatever you want it to be. Heroic, grim-dark, military, whatever.
3. Can be any rpg system since the beginning of the hobby, out of print or currently published and you and your players have access to the materials.
4. Putting aside character death and character retirement in the course of playing, the intention is to run with the same characters for the entire campaign.
5. You have adequate time to read rules and prepare. Miraculous, i know... but for this hypothetical, you don't need to worry about that. You have the time.
6. Also don't worry about getting players - let's say you have them and they want to play and will learn the game if they don't already know it.
7. Let's say there's good online VTT support for whatever system you choose. I know, not realistic, but it's not a factor you need to consider if you would run this online.

So that's it. What system would you choose for a fantasy campaign of considerable duration given the stipulations above?

60 sessions? I generally get 40-49 per year. 1⅓ years, so 16 months.

Personally, I can only think of one I have tolerated that long in a single run: Pendragon.
The 9 months crowd (about 30-32 sessions) adds WFRP 1e, WEG Star Wars, FFG Star Wars and Prime Directive 1e... And Classic and MegaTraveller.

Of those, I'm only willing to run that long on Pendragon or Star Wars (either)...
Perhaps also Daggerheart or L5R 5. I'd run Alien that long, but... they're unlikely to survive that long unless I don't use XX121-derived xenomorphs.