What ruins a campaign?

[Crothian]

In the Deck of many things thread plus others we also hear about how such and such ruined their campaign. I feel that only players and a DM, the people playing the game can ruin it. Sure, there are some products athat might make one make a right turn away from where the campaign was headed. But I think players can do that to and only in the most railroad like campaigns do unexpected turns never happen. It might all fall in the people playing's ability to deal with sudden and unexpected twists.

So, in your opinion what ruins a campaign?

 

[DaveyJones]

So, in your opinion what ruins a campaign?

differences of opinion.


where the campaign should be headed. what makes it fun. what rules to use. how to deal with scheduling. keeping the players and DM from burning out. etc...

 

[Darklone]

Campaigns die when the group dies. At least that's my experience.

Trouble between gamers, gaming couples or simply trouble to meet regularly kill campaigns.

 

[WayneLigon]

Usually it's the people or the personalities involved.

One of the prime ways to ruin a campaign is to jerk the rug out from under me and change things about my character with no consultation or warning.

Two campaigns were ruined for me on the first night.

1. I create a superhero who is also a cop. He's an undercover vice cop, knee-deep in the scum of the city. Which also allows him to disappear into his costumed persona for long periods of time with no real questions asked.

GM reads and approves the character background.

Opening night, the GM tells me that my character has been transferred to a desk job in Missing Persons (because this suits his first plotline) where I'm lucky to be able to take a lunch without someone asking where I am, much less being able to disappear for three days because I've been locked in a makeshift prison cell in the sewers. I am soon fired from the police force.

2. Knowing we are doing a game that is very dark grey in tone, I create a character who has no real use for the humans around him. Any friends he has are temporary means to an end, and this includes any girlfriends he has. The emotion of 'love', since it is prettty much defined as 'caring about another person more than yourself' is utterly alien to him.

GM reads and approves the character background.

The GM, unknown to me, has a personality quirk: Women Can Do No Wrong. Literally. They can't be bad people, ever, nor can he stand to see them treated badly. Within two hours of the first night, I'm told I really do love my girlfriend and want to stay exclusively with her.

 

[Mallus]

differences of opinion.

And the inability, or flat-out refusal, to work through them and reach a compromise.

 

[VirgilCaine]

The GM, unknown to me, has a personality quirk: Women Can Do No Wrong. Literally. They can't be bad people, ever, nor can he stand to see them treated badly. Within two hours of the first night, I'm told I really do love my girlfriend and want to stay exclusively with her.

That's not a quirk, that's a lack of experience.

[Note: Not saying women are the scum of the earth, but if you have experience with women, you'll realize there's variation among them. ]

 

[el-remmen]

In my experience it is scheduling problems.

I have not had fundamental interpersonal gaming goups problems in 10 years or more.

 

[Mark CMG]

What ruins a campaign?

Anything that removes an inordinate amount of fun from the game. Scheduling problems can do this. Unbalanced or unfair rules that place a player at a particular disadvantage in relation to the other players can do this. Gamers not being sufficently respectful to one another at the table can do this. I'm sure there's more.

 

[GlassJaw]

The top 3 for me are:

Scheduling/real-life

Different gaming styles

Boredom

 

[Dragonbait]

GM and player burnout.

When the GM reduces the amount of time that he spends making the adventure. When the players would rather talk about their Warcraft character instead of their D&D character. When things start to become routine. The game dies a slow and painful death.

Changing up the storyline helps, of course, and can sometimes revive it, but there can be problems. I've witnessed players from the RPG video game and epic fantasy novel mentality who associate 1 PC tied to 1 storyline. New storyline means a new PC.

Also - bad campaign starts. Maybe the characters did not mesh. Maybe the GM was not on his game that night, maybe it was something else? In any case, a crappy campaign start is almost impossible to recover from.