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

[prabe]

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?

We play every other week, and (after the starting scenario) the PCs level up when they accomplish something. Every advancement feels earned, but there's no pointless bookkeeping (and D&D-style XP, that's nothing but a gauge telling you how close you are to leveling, is pointless bookkeeping). Takes us ~130 sessions to get 1-20, which works out to a little more than five years in real life.,

That's how we make it work, anyway, I'm sure there are A) other people who do other things and B) people for whom none of those approaches would work.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

We play every other week, and (after the starting scenario) the PCs level up when they accomplish something. Every advancement feels earned, but there's no pointless bookkeeping (and D&D-style XP, that's nothing but a gauge telling you how close you are to leveling, is pointless bookkeeping). Takes us ~130 sessions to get 1-20, which works out to a little more than five years in real life.,

That's how we make it work, anyway, I'm sure there are A) other people who do other things and B) people for whom none of those approaches would work.

This does nicely show how different definitions are making it hard to communicate.

For example, by the way I defined a campaign (40 sessions/year x 4 hour sessions), your campaign lasts about 3 years. Totally get that. 1 to 20 in 3 years? Yup, I'd have no issues with that. But, these ten plus year campaigns? Maybe the issue is measuring by years, rather than by sessions. My full campaigns last about that many sessions. With about the same amount of advancement.

 

[prabe]

This does nicely show how different definitions are making it hard to communicate.

For example, by the way I defined a campaign (40 sessions/year x 4 hour sessions), your campaign lasts about 3 years. Totally get that. 1 to 20 in 3 years? Yup, I'd have no issues with that. But, these ten plus year campaigns? Maybe the issue is measuring by years, rather than by sessions. My full campaigns last about that many sessions. With about the same amount of advancement.

I agree that session count (or play time--I know of at least one group that does one-hour sessions) is the fairer basis for comparison. We probably average 3.5 hours a session, which means we get through a campaign in something like 450 hours of play. There are sometimes long gaps between level-ups, but it's not the 100 hours of game play you mathed out.

My previous post might have come across a little snarly, and I apologize for that.

 

[titus171]

I really love the art! It's crazily evocative. But you really hit on a hidden insight there. It kinda reminds me of Tristan Fishel's Proactive RPG, where they ask for character motivations. If you know their short and long-term arcs, you know what "story" to give. It seems like your game system codifies that. You're right in that players and GMs need to set expectations in order to make a good game together. Identities are a good way of going about that. Will def be keeping my eye out for your kickstarter!

Thanks man! I definitely learned a lot from you. In case you wanna write about it, I'll send you the the quickstart when it's finalized.

 

[bloodtide]

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?

For a lot of classic games, one level each six months of three times a week game play is just about right. This is a lot of slow, detailed play. So a single encounter might take up a whole game session, for example.

Of course, for many an RPG is the game should be all combat and a few skill rolls in between combats. The characters just roll for everything, almost automatically doing things. They "have to" to advance the game. The same is true for combat.. This type of game play has very little, often nothing, bad or negative ever happen to the characters. Even the hint of any affliction, effect, or such effecting the PCs is removed from the game, or just has an easy button fix. This makes the game breeze by fast, and leveling up is super fast. Some game do a level a session, but most do something more like a level 2-4 sessions, or like once a month.

To give an example from my game, the PCs were betrayed by a princess and she polymorphed them all into bunny rabbits. For the next three game sessions, some 20 hours of game play, all the players were forced to play as rabbits. Until the players could figure out a way to break the spell. Now, a lot of players would refuse this outright. Many would just walk out on the game. You can hear the complaint of "it's not fair to take away my player agency".

Also, some games had a simple rule of any fight vs weak foes equals no XP". So a lot of the super powered PCs would get no XP for most fights when they targeted weak foes.

Taken from a game rule or two, my game also has the Individual XP rule: Each PC only gets large amounts of XP for doing things biased off their race, class, personality, goals and other such things. Anything else they do, they get little or no XP.

 

[chuckdee]

To me, if you've replaced every PC and every player, that's not the same campaign. That last campaign ended when the last player left, if not considerably earlier.

That's just a campaign of Theseus.

 

[Distracted DM]

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?

I had a 2+yr West Marches campaign going before covid hit. Some people played a couple times a month, some a couple times a week... About a dozen players.

2 years and when covid hit the highest characters were level 11 or 12. So how?

1. Multiple characters. Think of it like an MMO if that helps.
2. Goals other than leveling. Yes, XP was there. But so were strongholds, followers, and legendary items or artifacts to pursue.
3. Requiring more XP to level, or even halting leveling altogether at some point. Using incremental advances as a way to make consistent progress instead of rarer big jumps.
Enough XP = one feature from the next level.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

For a lot of classic games, one level each six months of three times a week game play is just about right. This is a lot of slow, detailed play. So a single encounter might take up a whole game session, for example.

Of course, for many an RPG is the game should be all combat and a few skill rolls in between combats. The characters just roll for everything, almost automatically doing things. They "have to" to advance the game. The same is true for combat.. This type of game play has very little, often nothing, bad or negative ever happen to the characters. Even the hint of any affliction, effect, or such effecting the PCs is removed from the game, or just has an easy button fix. This makes the game breeze by fast, and leveling up is super fast. Some game do a level a session, but most do something more like a level 2-4 sessions, or like once a month.

To give an example from my game, the PCs were betrayed by a princess and she polymorphed them all into bunny rabbits. For the next three game sessions, some 20 hours of game play, all the players were forced to play as rabbits. Until the players could figure out a way to break the spell. Now, a lot of players would refuse this outright. Many would just walk out on the game. You can hear the complaint of "it's not fair to take away my player agency".

Also, some games had a simple rule of any fight vs weak foes equals no XP". So a lot of the super powered PCs would get no XP for most fights when they targeted weak foes.

Taken from a game rule or two, my game also has the Individual XP rule: Each PC only gets large amounts of XP for doing things biased off their race, class, personality, goals and other such things. Anything else they do, they get little or no XP.

For me, that has nothing to do with agency. Spending 3 sessions (twenty HOURS?!? of game play) as a rabbit would be so mind numbingly boring that I would very likely be one of the ones dropping out of the game. Cool idea that would get old REALLY quick.

But, yeah, if you're basically never giving XP, then sure, I guess you can play hundreds of sessions without characters leveling up.

 

[GrimCo]

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.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

I had a 2+yr West Marches campaign going before covid hit. Some people played a couple times a month, some a couple times a week... About a dozen players.

2 years and when covid hit the highest characters were level 11 or 12. So how?

1. Multiple characters. Think of it like an MMO if that helps.
2. Goals other than leveling. Yes, XP was there. But so were strongholds, followers, and legendary items or artifacts to pursue.
3. Requiring more XP to level, or even halting leveling altogether at some point. Using incremental advances as a way to make consistent progress instead of rarer big jumps.
Enough XP = one feature from the next level.

2 (ish) year campaign and 11th level? Sure, no worries. Totally get that. I'm talking about these ten year plus campaigns where the characters are around 11th level. Heck, my campaigns hit about 11th level at the two year mark. That's totally understandable AFAIC.