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.

 

[GrimCo]

We ditched xp in d&d more than decade ago in favor of milestone leveling. How fast or slow PCs level, depends entirely on the vibes of campaign. In one recent campaign, we went from lv 2 to lv 5 in about 20 sessions or almost full year of playing. It was always intended as low level campaign. 5e, and d&d in general, has big problem when it comes to xp. It has formula how much xp is combat encounter worth, in 4e it has same for skill challenge if i remember quickly. What it doesn't have, is xp for role play chart. If you have combat light, RP heavy campaign ( like most of our campaigns in last 10 or so years), xp leveling can become hella slow.

With my PF1 group, DM uses different system. Level up after every third session.

 

[Lanefan]

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?

The trick is to make it abundantly clear to the players right up front that levelling up is just an occasional and infrequent side effect of ongoing play rather than the driving reason behind it, and thus not to expect it to happen very often.

Then, there's numerous little tricks you can use to slow down the progression:

--- tweak the xp tables such that advancement isn't nearly as fast as any WotC edition, but also not as slow as RAW 1e or 2e
--- don't give xp for treasure
*** either bring new or replacement characters in about a level below the party average, or at a set floor that very slowly rises as the party's overall level increases (e.g. once the party or campaign average reaches 4th, new characters come in at the start of 3rd)
--- encourage players to build stables of characters and cycle them in and out of play, rather than playing the same one or two all the time
--- encourage players to have their characters get more involved in non-adventuring activities at higher level - politics at the civic or regional or national level, stronghold building and-or maintenance, building a home and starting a family, even just retiring to live the high life - which take time away from adventuring and thus slows their advancement
--- take a page from 1e and have level drain be a thing; also have it that even if restored, you don't get back everything you lost
--- after things get to mid-high level, and if the players are keen (IME they often are), shake it up once in a while by starting a new party at 1st level within the same setting/campaign and running it for an adventure or two. After this, the players will very likely have more characters to add to their stables (and these characters can always be background-adventured up to match the main groups' level if needed), meanwhile the overall campaign progression has stopped dead for however long it took to play out the low level group
*** run different parties concurrently in game time. Party A could be dealing with an evil temple across the sea while Party B (same players, different characters) is seeing to the old wizard's tower in the hills near home, with both adventures happening in the spring of year 1084 and maybe even connected to the same overarching plot line. Run A first, then once that adventure is done put theat party on hold and run B. Once that's done, and if the players want it, let the parties meet, merge, swap characters, etc. and see what parties emerge from that.

The most important and effective tricks are, I think, the two marked '***' above. At low-mid levels, replacement characters coming in at lower level than the average is a very effective anchor, while running concurrent parties is very effective at higher level once they've each got enough characters (and once the campaign has developed enough plots and sub-plots) to make it work.

My current campaign, using modified 1e rules, is 1144 sessions in, over 18 years as of this month; this includes some time running two nights a week (different but connected PCs and players). No single character has been in more than 275 of those sessions, and no single player has been in more than 700. The highest level is 11th, with one of those now able to see 12th approaching in the distance.

The game I play in is, if anything, a bit bigger: very similar rule-set, about 1165 sessions in, over 19 years (again as of this month). There, while there's a few individual players who have been in almost every session the highest single character session count is about 650 and the highest level is 15th.

 

[Lanefan]

I think there's a difference in people's ideas about what a campaign is.

The currently prevailing idea is that a campaign is a specific "story" (even if that story in some cases is mostly apparent in hindsight) featuring a mostly static set of characters. But I think those with super-long campaigns see the campaign as the world itself – more of an eternal soap opera. Characters come and go – some retire, and others semi-retire into positions where they don't do much adventuring anymore, and those characters are replaced by others. So any given character probably doesn't have a huge number of hours under their belt, even if the campaign as a whole does.

Bingo! Nailed it.