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

[payn]

The quiz does also not aline with me at all.


I tried to take it and it just soo much feels "Oh clearly made by a GM not a player" that half the questions I cant really answer at all.


Like if a teacher makes a quiz with questions asking students for feedback and the options mostly read out as what the teacher wants to hear not what students would actually say.

Not my quiz and I'm not saying it's great. I just like the fact its got folks thinking about the topic and discussing it. Its good food for thought, less a tool to end all your RPG group problems.

 

[prabe]

Showing up to the conversation late, but this is very much a key point.

Did the group ever actually agree that there was an "end game" to begin with?

Like, "This campaign will continue until one of 3 conditions are met: A) Players achieve primary goal X, B) Villain achieves primary goal Y, or C) secondary campaign meta-narrative reaches condition Z."

If not, how does one determine what the appropriate "end state" was supposed to be?

Most "fizzling" in my experience is a result of the group simply not stopping to talk about what their goals are for the campaign, and when they would feel satisfied that play had reached a natural or narrative conclusion.

The fizzles in my experience haven't had the same root cause/s as those in yours, but I can see this causing some--though I'll point out that the discussion you're gesturing at doesn't have to happen before the start of play, there's no reason I can see that a group wouldn't be able to have it midstream (as it were).

 

[Tigris]

Not my quiz and I'm not saying it's great. I just like the fact its got folks thinking about the topic and discussing it. Its good food for thought, less a tool to end all your RPG group problems.

Why? If the discussion ends as just as a waste of time why would that be good? Time is limited and having inefficient tools will just reduce time people have to spend for better things.


Having something is bettet than nothing, but we already have the ability to discuss campaigns, so having more tools only is good if the tools are good/better. Each inefficient tool existing above 1 is making things worse.

 

[payn]

Why? If the discussion ends as just as a waste of time why would that be good? Time is limited and having inefficient tools will just reduce time people have to spend for better things.


Having something is bettet than nothing, but we already have the ability to discuss campaigns, so having more tools only is good if the tools are good/better. Each inefficient tool existing above 1 is making things worse.

Well, for example your campaign short hand looked good to me. However, having some discussions with you has led me to believe I have very different interests than you. That tool doesnt work in this case. Conversely, im not putting faith in the "personality" gaming quiz either. I've not found any tool to be reliable other than actually getting to the table and playing. That experience cant be shortcut, IMO.

 

[Committed Hero]

Gamer ADD is a real phenomenon. But, if you define "campaign" as a series of adventures with the same characters, very few games assume that there is a climactic end baked into play (I can only think of Night's Black Agents and 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars off the top of my head).

You may set out on an adventure path with the intent to finish it, but even then you can still have a meaningful game that stops in the middle of one.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

I personally believe there are two main reasons. One is GM burn out especially for games with complex rules like DnD5e the second is that long campaigns are inherently unnatural as most stories are relatively short and have well defined beginning middle end structure. If you look at the vast majority of media (movies, TV, novels, etc) “campaigns” are generally pretty short and the long running multi season/novel/-verses are far less common. I believe natural stories tend to be shorter and move faster through the plot than people realized. I like to look at media and break down how many scenes they would be at the table and most of them are around 4-6 per modern short (10 episode) tv season, novel or movie, that works out to about 3-4 sessions (a couple hours each YMMV). Building a long campaign requires 100 maybe 200 scenes and 10 or 15 novels worth of material, thats a lot more than most people realize going in.

 

[payn]

I personally believe there are two main reasons. One is GM burn out especially for games with complex rules like DnD5e the second is that long campaigns are inherently unnatural as most stories are relatively short and have well defined beginning middle end structure. If you look at the vast majority of media (movies, TV, novels, etc) “campaigns” are generally pretty short and the long running multi season/novel/-verses are far less common. I believe natural stories tend to be shorter and move faster through the plot than people realized. I like to look at media and break down how many scenes they would be at the table and most of them are around 4-6 per modern short (10 episode) tv season, novel or movie, that works out to about 3-4 sessions (a couple hours each YMMV).

I dont think so. Many TV shows get numerous seasons when they ought not to. They go incredibly long, have winding plots and sub plots. Much of that is to blame for the need for content filling streaming, but also the nature of the business side of running a show until the funds get cut off. Even for novels its not uncommon to have a myriad of books published under any particular genre or character.

I think this is likely more about preferred length of media than any particular standard that is common.

Building a long campaign requires 100 maybe 200 scenes and 10 or 15 novels worth of material, thats a lot more than most people realize going in.

I dont think this is true at all. Take a Paizo AP for example. An entire AP is just under 600 pages and half of that is maps and supplemental fiction. An entire adventure path is like 2-3 film scripts. Closer to a trilogy of movies than a full season of a television show.

 

[prabe]

I personally believe there are two main reasons. One is GM burn out especially for games with complex rules like DnD5e the second is that long campaigns are inherently unnatural as most stories are relatively short and have well defined beginning middle end structure. If you look at the vast majority of media (movies, TV, novels, etc) “campaigns” are generally pretty short and the long running multi season/novel/-verses are far less common. I believe natural stories tend to be shorter and move faster through the plot than people realized. I like to look at media and break down how many scenes they would be at the table and most of them are around 4-6 per modern short (10 episode) tv season, novel or movie, that works out to about 3-4 sessions (a couple hours each YMMV). Building a long campaign requires 100 maybe 200 scenes and 10 or 15 novels worth of material, thats a lot more than most people realize going in.

I might differ with you about present-day media and story length: It's really difficult these days to find anything that's not made with the intent that to open up to at least a longer series of things, if not an indefinite series--at least, if you're looking at genre fiction. However prevalent that might be in actuality (my experiences might be skewed) the difference between writing a novel and GMing a long campaign is that the GM doesn't have to write the whole thing ahead of time, on their own; the interaction between the people at the table can go a long way toward propelling and generating the narrative, IME.

 

[prabe]

I dont think this is true at all. Take a Paizo AP for example. An entire AP is just under 600 pages and half of that is maps and supplemental fiction. An entire adventure path is like 2-3 film scripts. Closer to a trilogy of movies than a full season of a television show.

Out of curiosity, do you have a sense of what the word-count tends to be, like as a range? (That'd make comparisons to novels easier, if still possibly wrong.)

 

[Staffan]

I dont think so. Many TV shows get numerous seasons when they ought not to. They go incredibly long, have winding plots and sub plots. Much of that is to blame for the need for content filling streaming, but also the nature of the business side of running a show until the funds get cut off. Even for novels its not uncommon to have a myriad of books published under any particular genre or character.

I think this is likely more about preferred length of media than any particular standard that is common.

I dont think this is true at all. Take a Paizo AP for example. An entire AP is just under 600 pages and half of that is maps and supplemental fiction. An entire adventure path is like 2-3 film scripts. Closer to a trilogy of movies than a full season of a television show.

I'll note that these days they're mostly doing 3-part APs, which would be approximately 200 pages of actual adventure and 100 pages of supplementary but related material. My guess is that this is related to the subject of the thread: they noticed sales of later AP installments falling off, so they made them shorter.