Why have you dropped campaigns?

DrunkonDuty · Oct 19, 2007

Hey all,
Just reading the Bad 3E module thread. I noticed that many folk will drop a campaign because of a bad module. Generally I've only done dropped a campaign when I've lost an important player or had a TPK. I've rarely done this for other reasons. The only time I can remember was years ago: a Shadowrun campaign when my players were just being absolute

s.

Over long anecdote in italics follows:
It got to the point where I was making all their decisions for them because they utterly refused to do any thinking. It had been like this for many sessions. Another friend of ours came into the room during a session and said something like: "Wow, you seem to be doing all the playing, PCs and NPCs both." I mouthed off loudly about how crap the players all were and how they only paid any attention during a fight and that I'd prove it. I turned to the players and said "So they start shooting." The guys jump into action, grabbing dice asking where the bad guys were and what were they doing. Despite this being a complete non sequitur in game terms and despite my just slagging them off. They had been paying that little attention for so long. So I shut the books and said campaign over. Then they whinged.

So anyway, I was just wondering for what reasons, if any, you would stop a campaign. In game or out of.

SiderisAnon · Oct 19, 2007

I have never had a campaign end because of a bad module. I have never quit a game because of one bad adventure. (Well, once, but that was because in my first session the DM ended up killing the entire party with an NPC he'd saddled us with who was about ten times our power level. I think we were supposed to be there to be her henchmen.)

I don't believe I've ever had a player quit from one bad module either. I've had people quit because their character died, but that was a bad player, not necessarily a bad adventure.

I did have one guy quit because I used a demon in an adventure. It was against his religious beliefs to play in a game that used demons.

I have stopped campaigns for a multitude of reasons. However, if you remove ones where real life scheduling or having to move ended the game, they tend to fit into four categories.

1) As a DM, I lost all interest or was just too burned out to continue. This has really only happened once, but I believe it has contributed to the death of a couple of others. (Times when we could have moved things around to meet shifting schedules or found new players or whatnot, but it just wasn't worth it.)

2) The campaign ended because it reached an ending. This has happened a couple of times. Unfortunately, this happens too rarely in my opinion. The life changes kill most of my campaigns before we reach this point. (Which is why I now shoot for much shorter plots.)

3) The campaign was no longer playable. This has happened a number of times.

In my first Shadowrun campaign we realized that due to a misunderstanding of the rules and a couple of other issues, the PCs had become well-nigh unstoppable. We did a reset and started with new characters.

In a different Shadowrun campaign, the PCs had royally screwed up and ended up all going to ground in different countries. None of them trusted the other. There was no way to get the group back. (Actually, something similar happened in two Shadowrun games.)

In a college game using HERO system, we ended up with a total party kill due to a combination of bad factors. There was absolutely no way we could come up with to salvage things. The semester was almost over anyway, so we just ended it.

4) The players became such a pain that I ended things. Unfortunately, this happened a number of times before I learned to be much more picky about my players.

In one Shadowrun game, there were two radically different prevailing views on how to play. The various players developed BadWrongFun ideas about how each other were playing and built up a LOT of resentment for each other. Finally, I ended it because I just wasn't willing to deal with the garbage anymore. (And that was my last Shadowrun campaign ever.)

In one of my D&D campaigns, one of the primary players decided to basically declare war on the NPCs, the DM, and common sense in general. I let it go on too long before I realized that it was not worth my time and ended the game.

In another D&D campaign, two halves of the party went to war with each other. There was a lot of bad blood in and out of the game. The final result was that two party members killed off the rest of the party and several NPCs and then fled to another continent. That kind of ended the campaign right there.

Teflon Billy · Oct 19, 2007

I usually stop a campaign when the player's power level outstrips the campaign's core assumptions.

In the past when I tried to create a campaign, it was usually because I had been inspired by some fantasy literature or media.

Damn few of the heroes in the inspirational materials would blithely whip out magic items that were as common as--well--common items, magically take to the air every time a fight started, or shrug off falling into lava as a minor annoyance.

Seriously.

It's the reason that the only "lifelong" campaign I have is my Supers setting from the original edition of Villains and Vigilantes (It's been converted many times to Champions, Superworld GURPS Supers, and Mutants and Masterminds)...no power level is too high or too ridiculous to ruin anything.

The same isn't true of the Sword-and-Sorcery I enjoy.

MoogleEmpMog · Oct 19, 2007

As a GM, I've simply not had enough time to prep and run a game.

Once, I put a game on hiatus with the intention of picking it up at an indeterminate later date; about six months later, the laptop that had my notes on it died, and while I could have recovered the plans, by then it seemed like a waste of time and money to do so.

I recently put a game on hiatus with the intention of picking it up in January, once my workload decreases considerably.

I also had a game sort of dry up recently. One PC got in a position of being THE critical figure in the next session, wrapping up a major part of her backstory and facing a major enemy; then her player couldn't make it for said session. Ouch. Anyway, we ended up playing the first session of the above recently-on-hiatus game instead and everyone really got into it.

As a player, I've dropped games if they just weren't moving at a clip I liked, or if I didn't care for the GM's style or setting. I've never dropped over a single bad adventure, though.

sniffles · Oct 20, 2007

I've never dropped out of a game as a player. But I've had several campaigns I was involved in that were dropped by the GM.

In one case the GM said at the time it was because he wasn't really into the superhero genre. I later found out that it was actually due to personal issues, though I don't know why he didn't share that with us at the time.

Another campaign was dropped so the GM could help his wife with her home business - or so he claimed. Just before he dropped the campaign, he pushed the reset button on it, royally screwing two players whose characters were new to the campaign. I'm still not sure if he actually dropped the game for the stated reason, or if it was because things weren't going the way he wanted them to. I guess I'll never know, because the guy has dropped out of touch with our gaming group.

Another GM dropped his RuneQuest game when he changed jobs and went back to school. We don't hear from him much anymore. I guess the long hiatus just made it too hard for him to get back into his GMing stride.

And one friend of mine has dropped two campaigns on us. We took a hiatus from one game because I was seriously ill and wouldn't be able to play for a while. But when I recovered he never started the game back up again. Again, I guess the hiatus was too long.

A couple of years later he started up another campaign, but after only three or four sessions he stopped scheduling it. He never explained why. We've tried encouraging him to run it again, but he always avoids discussing the topic.

Odhanan · Oct 20, 2007

#1 one reason for me to drop a campaign is when the DM's way of handling the game rubs me the wrong way (rail-roady, anti-creativity, do-it-my-way-or-no-way, antigonistic DMs, mostly).

William drake · Oct 20, 2007

DrunkonDuty said:
Hey all,
Just reading the Bad 3E module thread. I noticed that many folk will drop a campaign because of a bad module. Generally I've only done dropped a campaign when I've lost an important player or had a TPK. I've rarely done this for other reasons. The only time I can remember was years ago: a Shadowrun campaign when my players were just being absolute s.

Over long anecdote in italics follows:
It got to the point where I was making all their decisions for them because they utterly refused to do any thinking. It had been like this for many sessions. Another friend of ours came into the room during a session and said something like: "Wow, you seem to be doing all the playing, PCs and NPCs both." I mouthed off loudly about how crap the players all were and how they only paid any attention during a fight and that I'd prove it. I turned to the players and said "So they start shooting." The guys jump into action, grabbing dice asking where the bad guys were and what were they doing. Despite this being a complete non sequitur in game terms and despite my just slagging them off. They had been paying that little attention for so long. So I shut the books and said campaign over. Then they whinged.

So anyway, I was just wondering for what reasons, if any, you would stop a campaign. In game or out of.

We played to infrequent...and many times I had to spoon feed them away from harm, where I would've just let my old group have it. But, they were much better at it and so it didn't happen that offten. I think I just wanted to play too much, so I let it go for awhile...now I just have to stop and try and find a game I can just join.