D&D General What's your Campaign Success Rate?

[Zardnaar]

My campaigns are opened ended. I've just started my third one since 2019.

Covid lockdowns ended first one at level 9, I wrapped up the last one after 9-10 months as it wasn't fun for me to DM or run.

My goal is usually to make it to level 8 or so maybe as high as 12 but it's unlikely to get there.

The pre Covid one was likely to get to 10 or 11.

 

[Dragonsbane]

We almost always finish campaigns. Over the last 40 years an unfinished campaign is because it's been when a player critical to storyline leaves for whatever reason or when the high level game gets too absurd, but that really rarely happens. I always have a good campaign flowchart showing the adventures, a campaign background, and campaign synopsis typed up too for reference after some months have gone by.

 

[Richards]

For AD&D 1st and 2nd editions, we didn't run campaigns so much as a series of random adventures, sometimes with the same characters and sometimes with new ones. Since 3.0/3.5, though, I've been at 100%:

• My initial campaign with my two sons went for years until my oldest (and then later my youngest) went away to college. We picked it up later, though (years later), and finished it off. Based on occurrences in the latter part of that campaign, it became known as the "Orcus Must Die" or simply the "Orcus" campaign.
• My first 3.5 campaign ("Wing Three") with my current group went from 1st-6th level before we restarted with new 1st-level PCs because we added a new player who had never gamed before. Then, when this second wave hit 6th level, we let the new player make a second 6th-level PC and from that point on they each decided, adventure by adventure, which PC they'd run. That campaign lasted 100 adventures (over the course of 9 years) and ended with some (but not all) of the PCS at 20th level.)
• My second 3.5 campaign ("The Kordovian Adventurers Guild") had the same group of players, this time each just running a single PC. That campaign went for 80 adventures (over the course of 5 years), with each of the PCs at 20th level when we concluded.
• My current campaign ("Dreams of Erthe") has the same group of players and is only 7 adventures in, but it's planned to have 100 adventures total and run from levels 1-20.

My youngest son also runs 3.5 campaigns (with the same group of players, only I get to run a PC instead of DMing).

• His first campaign ("The Durnhill Conscripts") lasted 2 years of mostly weekly sessions, with the PCs retiring at the end at 20th level.
• His current 3.5 campaign ("Raiders of the Overreach") is currently 34 adventures in and we're at 11th level. It's planned that we'll all be at 20th level when the campaign concludes, but my son's not sure how many adventures that will take.

An interesting thing about his campaigns is that they both take place not only in the same hombrewed game world, but cover the same period of time. So we've already met up with people and events from the previous campaign and will likely do so again over the course of the rest of this second campaign.

Johnathan

 

[Lanefan]

Note first that there's a big difference between "success rate" (as per the thread title) and "completion rate" which ain't the same but is what you seem to be asking about. The below is based on completion rate.

Short answer: one.

That said, non-completion comes in many forms.

If you're referring to how many proto-campaigns actually get off the ground and keep going awhile as opposed to those that do not it's rather few; as those that do get going keep going for ages and are usually open-ended. I'd guess maybe 30% last longer than 25 sessions or so (i.e. six-ish months).

So, those that don't get going obviously aren't completed. Of those that do get going, as DM I've only ever hard-ended one and called it complete. The rest are/were open-ended and thus in theory can never be "completed", though I'd call them all successful.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Note first that there's a big difference between "success rate" (as per the thread title) and "completion rate" which ain't the same but is what you seem to be asking about. The below is based on completion rate.

Short answer: one.

That said, non-completion comes in many forms.

If you're referring to how many proto-campaigns actually get off the ground and keep going awhile as opposed to those that do not it's rather few; as those that do get going keep going for ages and are usually open-ended. I'd guess maybe 30% last longer than 25 sessions or so (i.e. six-ish months).

So, those that don't get going obviously aren't completed. Of those that do get going, as DM I've only ever hard-ended one and called it complete. The rest are/were open-ended and thus in theory can never be "completed", though I'd call them all successful.

Yeah I don't agree with this "success = finished" approach. I've always run open-ended campaigns. Maintaining largely the same group for 30+ years seems pretty successful to me (as well as playing with quite a few others), but I could count on one hand the number of campaigns we got to the end of and stopped. Only one of which was run by me - an Aeon/Trinity game in the early 2000s which I have weirdly little recollection of, despite running the whole entire series of adventures (they were pre-gen ones) which was across like 2-3 books (I didn't go on to the ones on the alien world because they felt like a different campaign). All the rest were either entirely open-ended, or reached a natural stopping point or even intended conclusion and... kept going... because it was too fun to stop. Then RL factors or edition changes or just wanting to run a different game will get us. In the 1990s we played dozens of different RPGs for like 3-10 sessions. My brother took it so far the players rebelled and stopped being willing to create new characters until we played a game "a decent amount" - which is actually when I started the Aeon/Trinity campaign I think.

 

[payn]

When I GM the chances of completion go way up at my tables. I like to complete my stories.

 

[el-remmen]

As a DM: Um. .. once in 35 years?

I had one campaign that lasted just shy of 5 years with a definitive end (but open for future reunions - of which we played one).

As a player? Never.

I have had campaigns have to end b/c people move or move on or b/c of a TPK - but I also would not call those unsatisfying. . . Then again, as I have written in some of my scholarly work, "Endings are overvalued." I had a ton of fun in most of those games while the play was happening and that is what matters to me.

 

[jayoungr]

I usually finish mine if they have a clear endpoint.

With the other major DM in the group, I give each of his campaigns 4-5 sessions before he loses interest and starts a new one. Though in fairness to him, he does finish them sometimes.

 

[Mort]

full Completion:

As DM: 1 - 3e/3.5e campaign that ran from Level 1 to level 20 over around 5 years.

As a player: 2 way back in college and under 2e, both under the same DM 2 campaigns completed in 4 years (though I joined the 1st one about 25% in).

But my current campaign is ongoing and I'd consider it a success, in that everyone is having fun. That and we've been on about a 4 month break because things have been crazy and I've gotten multiple emails asking when we are resuming (which is, hopefully, soon).

 

[Shiroiken]

Pre-5E, I'm probably about a 75% success rate as a GM, but a lot of early games really didn't have anything you could consider a cohesive story. As a player I've probably experienced only a 50%, but again, a lot of that was early stuff. My campaigns in 5E are running 2/3 as a DM and 3/4 as a player. Both the "failed" campaigns just ended because of a new book (GoS and BGiA).