Aenghus
Explorer
There have been lots of good points in this thread so far.
Myself, I like to run long campaigns rather than short ones, and think the main requirement for this is to have the right players, people who want to be there and are willing to engage.
Campaigns, and in particular long campaigns, need continuity. High character turnover is one of the main threats to campaign length, whether from retirement, death, misadventure, or players leaving. Each character leaving may take with it all the subplots connected with that character, along with the associated campaign lore, investment, connections to NPCs etc. A point can be reached where none of the players can remember why their characters are there or are no longer invested in the original goals of the campaign, which can seal the end of the campaign. It can be possible to get out of such a situation by evolving the campaign away from original concepts to better fit the new PCs, but often the referee is too invested in the original concept to let go of it, even when it becomes obvious s/he hasn't sold it to the players.
Some players like to constantly change PC. It may be possible to tolerate a player, maybe two with such tastes, but not many, as the lack of continuity or investment in long term challenges negates the main advantages of a campaign.
Potential solutions are a commitment on the part of players to keep characters around for the long haul, low lethality due to low combat or less deadly dangers, organisations connected with the PCs to provide replacements and maintain institutional memory.
The other technique I have learned is not to overinvest in any single NPC or plot. I constantly through out potential plot seeds without detailing them much and see which ones interest the players. I then elaborate on the successful plots. I present lots of NPCs and see which ones the players feel strongly about, and survive the first meeting with the PCs. NPCs who players instantly hate make great recurring bad guys, especially when kept sufficiently in the background to persist for a while.
It can really sting when some of the players turn not to like the main plot of a campaign and start running away from it, especially when they do engage with interest in smaller subplots. Tastes are subjective and there are no guarantees that the players will fall in love with the plotlines that seize you. A conventional RPG campaign with a referee in authority has primary responsibility to make the campaign fun for everyone including themselves. Sometimes when a campaign isn't gelling, the appropriate action for the referee is to either call it and wrap things up quickly, or try and mutate the campaign into something that does interest the players while still appealing sufficiently to the referee. I've seen too many campaigns descend into a slow death spiral of apathy and lack of engagement, or crash and burn, to tolerate that sort of thing nowadays.
Myself, I like to run long campaigns rather than short ones, and think the main requirement for this is to have the right players, people who want to be there and are willing to engage.
Campaigns, and in particular long campaigns, need continuity. High character turnover is one of the main threats to campaign length, whether from retirement, death, misadventure, or players leaving. Each character leaving may take with it all the subplots connected with that character, along with the associated campaign lore, investment, connections to NPCs etc. A point can be reached where none of the players can remember why their characters are there or are no longer invested in the original goals of the campaign, which can seal the end of the campaign. It can be possible to get out of such a situation by evolving the campaign away from original concepts to better fit the new PCs, but often the referee is too invested in the original concept to let go of it, even when it becomes obvious s/he hasn't sold it to the players.
Some players like to constantly change PC. It may be possible to tolerate a player, maybe two with such tastes, but not many, as the lack of continuity or investment in long term challenges negates the main advantages of a campaign.
Potential solutions are a commitment on the part of players to keep characters around for the long haul, low lethality due to low combat or less deadly dangers, organisations connected with the PCs to provide replacements and maintain institutional memory.
The other technique I have learned is not to overinvest in any single NPC or plot. I constantly through out potential plot seeds without detailing them much and see which ones interest the players. I then elaborate on the successful plots. I present lots of NPCs and see which ones the players feel strongly about, and survive the first meeting with the PCs. NPCs who players instantly hate make great recurring bad guys, especially when kept sufficiently in the background to persist for a while.
It can really sting when some of the players turn not to like the main plot of a campaign and start running away from it, especially when they do engage with interest in smaller subplots. Tastes are subjective and there are no guarantees that the players will fall in love with the plotlines that seize you. A conventional RPG campaign with a referee in authority has primary responsibility to make the campaign fun for everyone including themselves. Sometimes when a campaign isn't gelling, the appropriate action for the referee is to either call it and wrap things up quickly, or try and mutate the campaign into something that does interest the players while still appealing sufficiently to the referee. I've seen too many campaigns descend into a slow death spiral of apathy and lack of engagement, or crash and burn, to tolerate that sort of thing nowadays.