D&D General What Style of Campaign Do You Prefer?

[Li Shenron]

Preference implies something rises to the top, no?

Yes, and I played along, but not all choices are in competition or mutually exclusive. For example plot driven VS episodic is a bit of an independent/orthogonal choice compared to the others.

 

[Lanefan]

Another vote here for 'other'; as any half-decent campaign is eventually going to include all of the above and more. You'll start with a lot of exploration, intrigue will show up now and then, some parts of the campaign will be episodic while others will be plot-driven, and world-building arrives later once the PCs get some power and wealth. Action is an ongoing undercurrent all the way through.

Missing option: relationships and interactions between the PCs, which are every bit as important as any of the elements listed. This can include romances, fights, rivalries, friendships, campfire chats, and so on.

This is a bit like asking what part of a hamburger do you like: Bun, meat, lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion.

Ketchup.

And mustard.

A burger is merely a messy way of ingesting both.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Another vote here for 'other'; as any half-decent campaign is eventually going to include all of the above and more.

Definitely!

I voted plot-driven because of all the other elements, when I'm playing a D&D-variant specifically, that's what I enjoy the most (other RPGs vary a bit). I say this in part because as a player, I've often been DM'd by my brother, who is exceptionally good (way better than me) at slowly unfolding plots in a way that is very entertaining and makes you want to know more.

Missing option: relationships and interactions between the PCs, which are every bit as important as any of the elements listed. This can include romances, fights, rivalries, friendships, campfire chats, and so on.

Yeah, and between PCs and NPCs as well. I feel like we were missing "character-driven", where it's this sort of thing that is the main force propelling the PCs forwards. I've had some amazing campaigns like that.

I know when I'm DM I'm strangely good at creating NPCs the players become like, obsessed with (not in a romantic way), and talk about a lot. And most of my main group gets bored if there are no NPCs to interact with. Dungeons crawls thus always need a few lunatics wandering around to keep them into it.

 

[Rhenny]

I voted for plot driven, but action works hand in hand with plot. I love a campaign that has story elements of rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.

 

[prabe]

Went with "plot-driven." The PCs have goals, and they go attain them. Sometimes by kicking in the door, sometimes by research (then kicking in the door), sometimes by conversations, sometimes by interacting with the world, sometimes by finding parts of the world new to them. About the only thing that doesn't really qualify is "episodic"; everything else is likely to show up.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Went with "plot-driven." The PCs have goals, and they go attain them. Sometimes by kicking in the door, sometimes by research (then kicking in the door), sometimes by conversations, sometimes by interacting with the world, sometimes by finding parts of the world new to them. About the only thing that doesn't really qualify is "episodic"; everything else is likely to show up.

D&D is naturally given to arcs, rather than strict episodic play I think, because of the typical structure of adventures, and I think it's only become more than way since 2E. In 1E, I get the impression a lot of dungeon-crawling was essentially episodic (happy to be corrected on this by actual players of course!), with a group going in, and usually coming out at the end of the session, and maybe not necessarily even going in with the same members next time.

Whereas with both 2E and more story-plot-oriented RPGs becoming a bigger thing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, arc-based stories became more and more of a thing. I always wonder how much this interacted with the move to arc-format TV, especially for genre shows (which had been typically episodic prior to the late '90s, indeed it didn't really fully swap until well into the 2000s), because I know several people involved with that changeover had been RPG DMs or players when younger (Joss Whedon being the obvious example). There might be no connection, but I find it interesting.

 

[prabe]

I'm not the market--I've never had great luck running published adventures or in published settings--but I wonder what to make of the shift from "modules" that were usually (more or less) a single location or event, and which seem generally expected/intended to be good for a session or three, to "adventures" (or "adventure paths") that had more locations and/or events and seem generally expected/intended to be a complete campaign (though one that some people/groups might think of that campaign as short). It could be related to the tendency toward longer/more involved story-arcs in TV (and in movies--see the MCU), or it could be more of a parallel development.

 

[teitan]

I like episodic because it allows for a variety of adventures and is one of my few criticisms of 5e, the advancement characters experience is very rapid which leads to more of a trilogy type approach. I tend to use milestones but my adventures play more like a comic book series than LOTR.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It could be related to the tendency toward longer/more involved story-arcs in TV (and in movies--see the MCU), or it could be more of a parallel development.

Yeah that's what I mean - certainly it comes before it happens in TV. For example, Dragon Mountain comes out in 1993 and that point the vast majority of genre TV was still largely episodic. And Dragon Mountain, whilst a good example of an "early Adventure Path"*, it isn't the first. Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989) was the first adventure I ran which felt like later APs (it's shorter but it's not short, it had a strong storyline, and a large number of widely-separated locations). I didn't play the original Ravenloft, but did it play out like that too maybe? Like a series of essentially linear-ish adventures coming to a climax and so on?

And from many accounts loads of people's campaigns in the 1980s ran that way. Some people were running pure sandboxes with no plot except what the players made, and some were all dungeon-crawl, all the time, but some definitely has these arcing campaigns. So I think the whole thing goes back a-ways. It's not really reflected in published adventures reliably until 2E - but by mid-late 2E, it's become absolutely the norm for adventure design.

Other RPGs were certainly doing long arc-plot stuff since the very late 1980s, I note - not all of them. An interesting comparison is Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun. Shadowrun has long, complicated adventures, some of which feed into other ones, from the get-go (certainly early 2E SR), where CP2020 is much more episodic in design in terms of official adventure and so on, until the very late 1990s.


*= It does have the titular location, but there's looooooooong run-up and the location itself isn't designed like a dungeon, it's more like neighbourhood, with factions which can be turned against each other, and various possible outcomes.

 

[atanakar]

Plot driven but with an Elliptic and Episodic treatment. I fast forward the story by skipping long treks and periods of time. Ideally, each session of 4 hours is one Episode of the story as in tv shows but with a long arc story. Think Babylon 5 or Firefly (+Serenity movie).