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

[GrimCo]

Yep. The engine or game style I would want for a 1-2 shot, a game of a dozen sessions, a game of 60ish sessions, and a functionally unlimited one (at least 100+ sessions) would all be very different.

Same. System needs to be flexible enough to accommodate and mechanically support at least 3-4 game themes and genres so i can throw some variety of scenarios. 60+ sessions, by frequency of my group playing, is 3-4 years in real life. That's long time to keep someones attention and enjoyment.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

Nothing because I would never run a 60 session campaign. Longest campaign I ever ran was ~15 sessions and that was Teenage mutant ninja turtles and other strangeness. Next longest was Mega traveller or Cyberpunk 2020 but they were 5-6 sessions. My group never went in for long campaigns because we like to switch games and settings often.

 

[Elvish Lore]

Nothing because I would never run a 60 session campaign. Longest campaign I ever ran was ~15 sessions and that was Teenage mutant ninja turtles and other strangeness. Next longest was Mega traveller or Cyberpunk 2020 but they were 5-6 sessions. My group never went in for long campaigns because we like to switch games and settings often.

From my original post:

If you feel like you hate campaign durations of that length and wouldn't ever do this, good for you and there's no need for you to post in this thread.

 

[aramis erak]

I was just distracted by the thought of Marvel Super-Heroes (FASERIP) or the Awfully Cheery Engine (Ghostbusters) for a campaign in the Old World, maybe even Enemy Within. Don’t mind me.

Marvel FASERIP can, certainly, sustain that... even as I, as a GM, can't sustain a 6 month Supers campaign in any of the Supers games I have (chono order: V&V, MSH, AMSH, TMNT, Champions 3rd, Heroes Unlimited, GURPS: Supers, Champions 4, Mutazoids, Champions New Millennium, MSHAG, Good Guys Finish Last, HSR5 and 5r, MHRP, Sentinel Comics.)

A genre I simply run out of steam for at around 10 sessions.

 

[Autumnal]

Obvious answer is to plan on running each for five-session arcs, then reconstituting the characters in the next system and continuing. beams helpfully

 

[Cergorach]

Remember, it’s a hypothetical. Assume any game you choose has really good VTT support so don’t make it a consideration.

You dismiss some other choices as unrealistic, but I’m curious… What are they?

shrugs Even without 'good' (Foundry) VTT support, I could make most systems work, so that's just a consideration of time/effort, not of possibility.

No the unrealistic part comes from me running it with my group. While I love a TON of fantasy/sci-fi stuff, that is not universally shared in my group (of friends). Certain genres would be interesting to try, and maybe they would like the experience, but I wouldn't see a 60 session campaign in them happening (2.5 years for us).

And while this is hypothetical, I generally want to play with my friends, I want them to enjoy it, and I don't want to radically change them. So playing anything beyond the 'comfort zone' games is so highly unrealistic at that scale that considering that even hypothetical is counter productive to me and anyone else.

 

[aramis erak]

I was really interested in Spacemaster many years ago, but before I tried to introduce it to people I decided to create a couple characters--and crashed right into a wall. And I wasn't exactly hostile to complex character gen.

I also found RM/SM char gen a hurdle for my players. Of the 20-some I got to Character Gen, only 7 liked the result, and three of those didn't like the way it played. Then again, two of those had characters who died in first fight from an E66... one before even getting a turn. (13 actually played a few sessions.)

MERP was far easier to get players playing; I think it was very wrong for ME, but it's a great game in its own right.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I also found RM/SM char gen a hurdle for my players. Of the 20-some I got to Character Gen, only 7 liked the result, and three of those didn't like the way it played. Then again, two of those had characters who died in first fight from an E66... one before even getting a turn. (13 actually played a few sessions.)

MERP was far easier to get players playing; I think it was very wrong for ME, but it's a great game in its own right.

All fair enough. We wouldn't have automatically found early mortality offputting at that time, since we were still playing RuneQuest, but we had to, well, get there.

 

[dbm]

RM character creation is certainly its own thing. One time, a player joined our group so made something like a fifth level ranger and jumped in to play. Unfortunately they hadn't noticed you need to buy skill-levels in hit points (‘body development’) so they went down in the first round of combat. Hilarity ensued.