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

[plecostomus]

The DM did burn out in 2021 so there was a ~1.5-year break.
Then we picked back up and, well, this is our progress. We just added a new player. He will be introducing his character on Saturday.
The "2-" is because this is Arc 2 of the campaign. There was also an Arc 1.

The DM believes we will be finishing Arc 2 by August.
He also believed our latest quest would last 4 sessions. It lasted 9, and would have lasted more except we "broke the scenario".

Life is good in the neverending campaign.

 

[Lanefan]

View attachment 431467

The DM did burn out in 2021 so there was a ~1.5-year break.
Then we picked back up and, well, this is our progress. We just added a new player. He will be introducing his character on Saturday.
The "2-" is because this is Arc 2 of the campaign. There was also an Arc 1.

The DM believes we will be finishing Arc 2 by August.
He also believed our latest quest would last 4 sessions. It lasted 9, and would have lasted more except we "broke the scenario".

Life is good in the neverending campaign.

What's the "2-0.5" mean? I'm guessing the other numbers after the hyphen are session numbers, but 0.5 doesn't make sense for that.

I've long since given up guessing how many sessions a given adventure or mission or quest might take. The ones I think they'll get done in no time sometimes take ages while the ones I think will bog them down for many sessions they sometimes find ways of blowing through in a hurry.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Pretty every campaign I start does something different though. And it’s pretty rare that the something is minor.

Most recently, I tried GMing a sandbox campaign. It fizzled due to lack of interest from both my players and me.

Most of mine don't fish that far afield; they're usually just exploring a new (but not radically alien) system or dipping into subgenres people are known to like or at least tolerate.

 

[plecostomus]

What's the "2-0.5" mean? I'm guessing the other numbers after the hyphen are session numbers, but 0.5 doesn't make sense for that.

I've long since given up guessing how many sessions a given adventure or mission or quest might take. The ones I think they'll get done in no time sometimes take ages while the ones I think will bog them down for many sessions they sometimes find ways of blowing through in a hurry.

It was a second Session Zero so we could discuss expectations as the campaign resumed.

 

[FrozenNorth]

If you-as-GM weren't interested in it then it never had a chance.

GM disinterest very quickly becomes all too obvious to the players, followed inevitably by feelings of "if the GM doesn't care, why should I?"; and down the drain the campaign goes.

This is a category fallacy. If anything, the opposite happened. I was excited to create and play the game, but lack of interest from some of the players wore down my interest.

 

[dragoner]

Campaigns do not have to finish, it is not a requirement, a lot just go on until fading away.

 

[Argyle King]

Is the 37% figure across all ttrpgs?

 

[Laurefindel]

Echoing comments that not all campaigns have a planned ending to start with.

As a matter of fact, campaigns having a planned ending is still a relatively new concept to me. When I started playing, a “campaign” was a series of adventures including the same characters or at least, set in the same chronological setting. Only since 5e did it become clear to me that a single adventure book, like Curse of Strahd for example, was considered a full campaign and the expected end of for these characters. Perhaps we never played (A)D&D as intended…

So campaigns fizzling out because life happens was the expected outcome. The DM saying “Good job folks, you won! What should we play next?” was a very alien concept to us, or one reserved for a few specific RPG such as Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia (the first because it wasn’t expected for your characters to have the sanity to keep going, and the latter because we didn’t want to commit to a parody RPG even if campaign-as-series-of-adventures was the intended playstyle).

So back on t he subject; my experience with campaigns ending early…

- Life happens. People move, fight, split, die, get deployed, have kids, get time-consuming jobs, and scheduling becomes impossible.

- Look, shinny! Players and GMs get attracted to try new games, play in a different era of the same setting, have bright new ideas of things they’d like to try, etc.

- My turn now! Player wants to try DMing, or DM gets tired of DMing.

- It ain’t like it used to be. People grow in different directions and friendships erode over time.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

 

[dragoner]

Echoing comments that not all campaigns have a planned ending to start with.

As a matter of fact, campaigns having a planned ending is still a relatively new concept to me. When I started playing, a “campaign” was a series of adventures including the same characters or at least, set in the same chronological setting. Only since 5e did it become clear to me that a single adventure book, like Curse of Strahd for example, was considered a full campaign and the expected end of for these characters. Perhaps we never played (A)D&D as intended…

So campaigns fizzling out because life happens was the expected outcome. The DM saying “Good job folks, you won! What should we play next?” was a very alien concept to us, or one reserved for a few specific RPG such as Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia (the first because it wasn’t expected for your characters to have the sanity to keep going, and the latter because we didn’t want to commit to a parody RPG even if campaign-as-series-of-adventures was the intended playstyle).

So back on t he subject; my experience with campaigns ending early…

- Life happens. People move, fight, split, die, get deployed, have kids, get time-consuming jobs, and scheduling becomes impossible.

- Look, shinny! Players and GMs get attracted to try new games, play in a different era of the same setting, have bright new ideas of things they’d like to try, etc.

- My turn now! Player wants to try DMing, or DM gets tired of DMing.

- It ain’t like it used to be. People grow in different directions and friendships erode over time.

It is all a very set piece thing where "this is the adventure, this is my character" where there is an arc that gets fufilled like getting to high level or something and it's done. Definitely all games don't fit the mold.