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

[Umbran]

Has this been your experience? What do you think actually kills most campaigns?

Scheduling.

Back when we were in school, everyone always had a surplus of free time, a limited number of responsibilities, and not all that much in finds to spend on entertainment. RPGs are perfect for that situation - you play every week, for entire afternoons and evenings, or late into the night.

Adults have less free time, and a ton of responsibilities and priorities and conflicts. getting folks at a table regularly is just hard to manage.

 

[prabe]

I concur. I don't think that's how the majority of games go, though.

I don't think it's how the majority of games go, either--but I think the majority of even homebrew campaigns are modeled on the big published campaigns, and people are more likely to A) look at big campaigns where everything's pre-written and think that's what they need, than they are to B) work out they can start a campaign with some big-picture setting stuff, some local details, some information about how the PCs relate to the starting session, and an inciting incident, and run for over 100 sessions and get people to level 20+ and resolve at least the arcs the PCs fully engage with. I think GMs who go with that A) are more likely to be frustrated by players who don't engage with their fully-written story than GMs who go with B).

 

[Umbran]

I think GMs who go with that A) are more likely to be frustrated by players who don't engage with their fully-written story than GMs who go with B).

So, I think there's a presupposition here: That a GM adding new elements as they go will generally get more engagement from their players.

I would say that you are mistaking having clear opportunites to retune your offering with successfully executing a retuning of the offering.

There's a bit of a painful truth here - the overwhelming majority of GMs... aren't great writers. We are not churning out a constant stream of stunningly creative worldbuilding, genius villain plots, gripping tactical scenarios, and emotionally engaging NPCs. Most of us are going to present mostly workmanlike content. We depend on the players to find and create their own fun within what we present.

Swapping out one workmanlike offering for another isn't really a guarantee of engaging players.

 

[prabe]

So, I think there's a presupposition here: That a GM adding new elements as they go will generally get more engagement from their players.

In my experience, both as GM and as player, it does.

I would say that you are mistaking having clear opportunites to retune your offering with successfully executing a retuning of the offering.

There's a bit of a painful truth here - the overwhelming majority of GMs... aren't great writers. We are not churning out a constant stream of stunningly creative worldbuilding, genius villain plots, gripping tactical scenarios, and emotionally engaging NPCs. Most of us are going to present mostly workmanlike content. We depend on the players to find and create their own fun within what we present.

My actual point is that I think GM burnout--a reason given by other posters for why campaigns end before they resolve--is much more likely to come about if the GM is trying to write the whole story ahead of time, and trying to make the campaign follow that pre-written story. GM burnout seems much less likely if you get the players to carry more of the creative load; this seems especially like useful advice for GMs who on their own aren't going to produce anything better than "workmanlike." Depending on the players to add content and direction seems to me at least in line with "depending on them to find and create their own fun within what we present."

Swapping out one workmanlike offering for another isn't really a guarantee of engaging players.

I think people will be more engaged with things they feel they helped shape or drive, even if the final outcome is just "workmanlike."

 

[prabe]

Exactly this.

Do a parallel poll about how many consider their game to be at least partially "sandbox style". Then subtract all those answers from the people who claim their campaign never finished.

I'm going to disagree with this somewhat mildly, because a sandbox (or something in that direction) campaign where nothing ever gets resolved will--I think reasonably--feel "unfinished." I mean, I don't run anything like pure sandboxes, but after the starting situation the players are absolutely in charge of the direction things move--what things they choose to engage with--and I've always felt things have resolved.

Also, of course, there are the tables that fall apart for social reasons within a handful of sessions, which will definitely have a feel of campaignus intterruptus.

 

[Li Shenron]

I came across this striking Enworld post the other day, and I have been thinking about it a lot. Apparently, 37% of players basically never finish a campaign, with around half of the total participants rarely finishing games overall.

That's crazy, right? That would almost imply that fizzling is the norm for campaigns, not the exception. There are, of course, some obvious answers. Some campaigns are open-ended and run for years. Life stuff gets in the way. Scheduling. But it doesn't seem to paint the full picture.

As I read more of the thread, a recurring theme kept showing up. Campaigns kept fizzling because people just didn't want to continue the campaign anymore. Commitment wasn't there, chemistry wasn't there. It's easy to say you'll join a year-long campaign, but way more likely you'll flake out along the way.

For me personally, I have had the benefit of finishing some long campaigns. But I have equally had my fair share of fizzled campaigns, as both player and GM. I've always been happy to develop these deep character arcs and narratives for campaigns, only to sit down at a table where people just want to kick down doors and loot stuff. I have GMed campaigns where the players were more interested in fighting each other than the plot hook in front of them. These weren't bad players or GMs, but I think we all just fundamentally wanted something different from the game. Nobody had asked the right questions before the campaign started, and honestly, I'm not sure any of us even knew what questions to ask. I just didn't know how to say what I wanted.

Without that shared language, I think we end up at tables hoping for the best, and quietly disappointed when it doesn't happen.

Has this been your experience? What do you think actually kills most campaigns?

Unlike most of the problems at the gaming table, I blame this on the DMs rather than the players. IMO the culprit is often a DM's megalomania of wanting to run something too big and long in the first place.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

I'm going to go with real life stepping on the neck of campaigns.

Trying to not only commit but actually follow through spending hundreds of hours with the same four or five people over the next year or two is not easy. And, often group membership can get pretty fluid - particularly for students. IMO, if a group of (say) five players starts off a campaign, and then six months later, you've replaced 3 of those 5, well... often it's just easier to start over.

A lot of people are not in terribly stable points in their lives where they are going to be able to have a set schedule for the next two years. There are just too many things that can step in the way of that.

 

[Deset Gled]

I'm going to disagree with this somewhat mildly, because a sandbox (or something in that direction) campaign where nothing ever gets resolved will--I think reasonably--feel "unfinished." I mean, I don't run anything like pure sandboxes, but after the starting situation the players are absolutely in charge of the direction things move--what things they choose to engage with--and I've always felt things have resolved.

That's fair.

My bigger picture POV is that you can never really get 100% finished in a sandbox game, because there's always something else you could do. Someone you could revisit. Another quest to complete, another thread to follow. But you are correct that there can be times that feel like a resolution is achieved.

 

[GrimCo]

The first type (failed) is that which never really gets off the ground in the first place: three or four sessions in, if not fewer, it's clear this thing has no future be it due to apathy, player-GM misfit, scheduling, arguments, or whatever. The metaphorical RPG beaches are littered with these wrecks.

I've seen my fair share of these, both as a player and as a DM. Sometimes, you watch cool tv show or read interesting book and go "Wow, this would make cool game". So you pitch it to your buddies, you play couple of sessions and it just doesn't resonate with group. Or it goes in completely different direction than one you wanted it to go and just don't feel like running it at that point.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I’ve run maybe 20-30 year+ long campaigns, and only three I abandoned. One was when I found that the material I was using was by an abusive person, and I felt incapable of continuing to read it. One was killed by Covid, and one was a Doctor Who campaign that I found just too hard to keep coming up with plots that felt sufficiently whovian.

I don’t run open-ended campaigns. I run ones with clear goals so the players know what they are getting into and have a rough idea of the plot. Like reading a book, if the plot has no direction but is pretty meandering, you are more likely just to give up on it. It may have other good qualities, but the lack of direction is a negative that needs to be overcome. My longest campaigns have had very clear end goals — The Dracula Dossier (kill Dracula), The Great Pendragon Campaign (death of Arthur) — but that doesn’t mean they are time-limited. DD I originally thought of as about a 20 session campaign, but we loved playing it and ended up running about 50 sessions. But if we had tired of it, I’d have wrapped it up in 6 sessions.

I also don’t start campaigns without a 6 session trial. I run an arc that can finish comfortably in 6 sessions, and then poll my players to see if they want to continue. That guarantees at least a degree of interest and commitment.

If you start a campaign without trialing to see if it’s actually fun, have no direction and don’t plan how it’s going to end, then yes, you are going to have a high chance of failure. You can happily run a sandbox game (I am running a One Ring game sandbox-style), but it still helps to have direction. You can plan endings in sandbox’s games just as easily too — you just do so when the campaign begins to flag or you feel it’s a good ending time.

And if people move away or real-life intervenes, you may have to finish in a hurry. But if that happens, why not try and wrap up as much as you can in your last 3-4 sessions? Better a hurried ending than none at all!

So I guess my thought as to why a high proportion of campaigns fail is that the GM fails to plan for how to end, or keeps going even when they know they should end. Wrap it up and move on!