What's a "typical" campaign length?

[Storm Raven]

in ye olde dayes.... it was measured in years if not decades.

For you, maybe. For many others, it didn't work out that way. WotC did some research and determined that the typical campaign seemed to last for a year, maybe two. That's basically how the advancement rate for PCs was developed.

 

[Arnwyn]

Anyway, it got me thinking, how long do you typically run a campaign? Does playing a game system once or twice suffice? Do you have years-long story arcs that take all of your time specifically in one game world, or do you run a half dozen shorter games just a few times each before moving on?

We've played the same campaign world (more correctly "campaign multiverse") for the past 13+ years.

Our "campaigns" consist of 'keep going until a TPK'.

 

[the Lorax]

Defining "campaign" is indeed important in this regard. I've been running games in the same world, based upon a single time-line for over 25 years. Adventuring parties and players have come and gone, but the world moves on, and the quests of the past become the ledgends of the present. Is that one "campaign" or many?

 

[punkorange]

Defining "campaign" is indeed important in this regard. I've been running games in the same world, based upon a single time-line for over 25 years. Adventuring parties and players have come and gone, but the world moves on, and the quests of the past become the ledgends of the present. Is that one "campaign" or many?

I personally see this as multiple campaigns in teh same campaign setting.
In my oppinion a campaign is like a book, two books in the same setting is still two books.

As for how long they last, mine generally last untill either a TPK or we all just decide to do something more. I think my longest running campaign was about a year.

 

[edemaitre]

Campaign length

The average "campaign," meaning a series of linked adventures including many of the same Player Characters and a defined face-to-face group of role-players, typically lasts about three years for me.

Beyond that, people move around, graduate/get married/have children, or drop out of the gaming group for other reasons, including personality conflicts, exhaustion, spin-off groups, or (very rarely) their P.C.s reaching demigodhood. I'm right now between campaigns in the Boston area, and I've been recruiting new gamers to round out my group...

On the other hand, if you define a campaign as a setting where numerous P.C. parties pass through but that has long-term plot threads, Non-Player Characters, and location-specific encounters, my worlds are all linked and are independent of rules system, although I've preferred D20 lately. For example, here's a timeline:

-c. 1982 to 650 B.C.E.: "Vanished Lands" (heroic fantasy)-typically run with "Dungeons and Dragons" (started with AD&D1, now on D&D3.5, borrowing heavily from published worlds)

-c. 1787 to 1930 A.D./C.E.: "Gaslight Grimoire" (steampunk/fantasy)-typically run with GURPS (now in Fourth Edition), "Castle Falkenstein"; could also use D20

-c. 1930 to 2050: "U.N. Task Force/the S.J.I." (espionage/comic book superheroes)-run with several systems, including Top Secret SI, DC and Marvel RPGs, and GURPS; considering using D20 Modern, Spycraft, Silver Age Sentinels, or Mutants & Masterminds

-c. 2050 to 2150: Cyberpunk era-typically run with "Shadowrun" (Fourth Edition coming), but GURPS, D20 "Big Eyes, Small Mouth," and "Jovian Chronicles" also suitable

-c. 2150 to 2500: "Vortex" (space opera)-run with eponymous homebrew rules and GURPS, but considering various D20 science fiction supplements

-c. 2500+/-: "Immortals/Voyagers II" (time/dimension travel)-co-ran this, mostly with GURPS, but "campaign" is setting-neutral, enabling cross-genre and G.M. collaboration, as well as high-level adventures across the Multiverse...

If one takes all of these as a continuum, I've had close to 400 Player Characters use various rules systems explore my "campaigns!"

 

[loki44]

Don't know what "typical" means. "True" campaigns are forever. They never die.

 

[ThirdWizard]

It's going to partly depend on how often I play.

Right now, my group can get a session together about every other week. At our 11th session of the current campaign, we've been gaming for over 6 months in this particular campaign. If we were able to have a session every week, then the same 6 month timeframe would be somewhere around 22 sessions thus far, which is a very big difference.

A good campaign length is probably for us going to be somewhere around 40 sessions, about a year and a half's worth of games at the current rate. That's a lot lower than it used to be, but being older, less time can be devoted to gaming, and after a year and a half, its fun to pick up something fresh and start over.

 

[Emirikol]

...

 

[Izerath]

Guess I am still old school.....

Well, to me, a campaign is one major story arc, with a few smaller subplots intertwined, usually rotating around 2-3 of the PCs and getiing the others tied into it.

I DM for a group of 8, so XP spreads a little thinner occassionally.

That said, I have been running the Shackled City Adventure path for something like 3.5 years (give or take). And the group just finished Zenith Trajectory! (If you're wondering, the PCs are 8th-9th level.)

30 days after the first adventure came out, I knew I wanted to run it. I ran my own living dungeon scenario first to set the stage and get the players involved, (which itself took nearly 12 months!) then I moved them to Cauldron.

With some near TPKs (including the infamous Kazmojen finale) and some 5 character deaths, there are still some of the original PCs lingering. Players have arrived and left (mostly arrived tho - I started this thing with 4 players!) and the story continues to develop. The dwarves have returned to the Malachite Hold. They wonder where their hero and heir to the throne Zenith Splintershield has gone. The gnomes too have the spark of hope after Jzadirune was cleansed. They too seek to resettle their enclave. Vhalantru schemes, Celeste ponders her next move and the Demon Skar awaits.

My last session was so intense that it ended at 1AM. To put this in perspective, we game once every two weeks on Wed for 4 hours (7-11). Since this past Wed, I have had calls from nearly every player expressing that they can't wait for the next session. Not a peep about it running late. And a couple in my group had a babysitter to be concerned about!

So - how long is a campaign? It's one story. How long should it last? As long as everyone is having fun. Should we go epic? I don't know - ask me in another 3 years.

 

[Runesong42]

And that's how i think i'll approach it. Rather than suffering the loss of yet another storyline, if i see a potential "endgame" coming up, like players leaving, etc., i'll wrap the story up and drop it. Not finishing a campaign for me is like not finishing a book you liked reading because someone borrowed it and didn't give it back.

I hear you. One thing I am trying to do for lost campaigns is to continue them as I would have liked to see them, possibly as short stories, maybe even someday as a novel. It's ambitious, I guess, which means I probably wont, but I can think of a few games I ran I'd like to see in print, or in comic books, or even as anime! *LOL*

Keep the dream alive.