Why do so many campaigns never finish? Genuinely curious what others think

[Toe Knee Nose]

And since this is ttrpg general, not d&d, some games don't have levels.

I ran WoD game for 1.5 year. It was inspired by Supernatural early seasons "monster of the week" format and Dresden Files books. It was 6 players + ST (me) group. They started as normal humans that slowly dipped more and more into WoD and then, inspired by Block by bloody block supplement, game changed more into city territory reclaiming and protecting normal people from predators. By the end, we had 3 Hunters, 2 Mages and one Werewolf. Most sessions were standalone adventures, so it was very flexible scheduling wise.

Most sessions, they would get 2-3xp, and +4xp for every "milestone" they achieved. So after 60 4-5h long sessions, they had around 160xp on average ( some more, some less, depending how many sessions someone missed). It may seem a lot, but when for example raising STR from 3 to 4 costs 20xp and from 3 to 5 costs 45 xp cause you need to pay for every dot separately ( its new dot * 2 for merits, *3 for skill, *5 for attribute, *7 for supernatural ability), it does 2 things. First, it stops characters from becoming ridiculously overpowered. Second, it encourages horizontal growth more than vertical ( new skills, new merits). While characters don't necessarily get more powerful, players still feel and see their characters growing and evolving.

I can see longer campaigns when you don't have levels. Like you said, lots of games have a much, much flatter progression - progression tends to be broad rather than high. I can see that pretty easily. Games like GURPS or other percentile based games can also have really, really flat progressions as well. Although, thinking about it, I have never heard of anyone playing the same GURPS campaign for a decade. I'm sure it exists, but, it doesn't seem to be so much of a thing.

 

[el-remmen]

I've been lucky that in most of my adulthood playing RPGs, starting in college (so discounting middle school and HS days), I have had a pretty dedicated core group of players (though that core group changed about once per decade). So while occasionally one person dropped out or disappeared, we otherwise played for years until there was a big life change (a baby, a job move, grad school, etc).

It is also depends on how you define "finishing." I have never run "one big overarching plot" to the exclusion of all else type games (tho some of them do have one big overarching plot), but a mix of short term and medium term adventures that can be line up into the shape of larger narrative (but the narrative is not the point) and this also means that even when campaigns come to a satisfying end (and even a TPK can be a satisfying end, depending on the context) there are usually a handful of threads that are left dangling - and we can imagine characters either separately or together going on to pursue those once the things we ended up focusing on have been resolved.

For example: I played in one campaign that ended with all but 2 of the PCs killed and of the remaining 2, one finally gave into his evil corrupting dragon helm, becoming a bad guy and my character was captured for a sacrifice to free some ice giant demi-god. It felt like a perfect ending because we got into that position by underestimating our foes.

In my Out of the Frying Pan campaign, the PCs resolved the world-shattering possibilities of planar bleed and temporal distortions, but there were still local political issues to be handled, which we ended the game with PCs going their own way to address the ones that were the best fit for them and a promise of reuniting someday.

 

[el-remmen]

Something I don't get about these sprawling multi-year campaigns when using D&D (any edition).

How are the PC's not like 100th level?

If you play, say, 40 sessions/year (weekly sessions planned with 12 weeks off per year, so, like 3/month) of 4 hour sessions, that's 160 hours of play per year. Times 10 years, that's 1600 play hours. If the PC's are 16th level, that means that the characters are leveling up once ever 100 (?!?!) hours of game play? Like one level up ever six months of play? Even if you're concurrently running 3 characters, that's still only leveling up every 33 hours of play.

My players would strangle me if I tried to slow things down to that much of a crawl. Eight or ten sessions to get from level 1 to level 2? And that's the fastest pace? Yikes. How do people do it?

This is funny to me because I often have the opposite question. How can people play 1 to 10 or even 1 to 20 level D&D campaigns in a year or so?

I give what seems to be above standard XP to my groups (unless I am totally misunderstanding how 5E wants you to give out XP in terms of amounts) and in one group playing monthly 3 hour sessions since mid-2020 is only now on the verge of 7th level (playing session #70 next Saturday). Obviously if we played more often (if only!) we'd be further along, but the pace would be about the same in terms of sessions per level.

I can only assume people speed through anything that isn't combat? Or are using milestone leveling with very frequent milestones?

 

[prabe]

This is funny to me because I often have the opposite question. How can people play 1 to 10 or even 1 to 20 level D&D campaigns in a year or so?

I give what seems to be above standard XP to my groups (unless I am totally misunderstanding how 5E wants you to give out XP in terms of amounts) and in one group playing monthly 3 hour sessions since mid-2020 is only now on the verge of 7th level (playing session #70 next Saturday). Obviously if we played more often (if only!) we'd be further along, but the pace would be about the same in terms of sessions per level.

I can only assume people speed through anything that isn't combat? Or are using milestone leveling with very frequent milestones?

At least the poster you were responding to was presuming weekly--not monthly--sessions. Frequency of play will matter in terms of real-world time to get through a campaign.

 

[el-remmen]

At least the poster you were responding to was presuming weekly--not monthly--sessions. Frequency of play will matter in terms of real-world time to get through a campaign.

Yeah, I guess if we were playing weekly 3 hour sessions, then 70 sessions would be a year and half. Except of course, that if we played that frequently we'd probably slow down a little more and enjoy some the things we do gloss over now just for the sake of "expediency" (with "Expediency" clearly being very relative).

 

[prabe]

Yeah, I guess if we were playing weekly 3 hour sessions, then 70 sessions would be a year and half. Except of course, that if we played that frequently we'd probably slow down a little more and enjoy some the things we do gloss over now just for the sake of "expediency" (with "Expediency" clearly being very relative).

I don't particularly disagree. The games I run are both fortnightly, and there's indubitably some sprawl, but I don't see how someone can go 1-20 in like 80 sessions (which in-game often seems to be like a month--a different quibbling point).

 

[payn]

This is funny to me because I often have the opposite question. How can people play 1 to 10 or even 1 to 20 level D&D campaigns in a year or so?

I give what seems to be above standard XP to my groups (unless I am totally misunderstanding how 5E wants you to give out XP in terms of amounts) and in one group playing monthly 3 hour sessions since mid-2020 is only now on the verge of 7th level (playing session #70 next Saturday). Obviously if we played more often (if only!) we'd be further along, but the pace would be about the same in terms of sessions per level.

I can only assume people speed through anything that isn't combat? Or are using milestone leveling with very frequent milestones?

Once a month for 3 hours is maybe less frequent than the average game. A few folks in the thread mentioned playing multiple times every week! Thats a speed thats going to level faster regardless of XP and session time.

My games typically call it quits around level 12-14 and that takes about 1.5-2 years for 4 hour sessions twice a month. I use milestone.