D&D 5E Will I like D&D Next?

[Umbran]

...those claiming they know how the system will be when it's finished are delusional.

Moderator Hint: Don't make it personal. Address the logic of the post, not the person of the poster. Do not attribute differing opinions to flaws of character or mental capacity, capabilities or altered mental states. That is pretty classic ad hominem. It is rude. It is rhetorically weak. If you don't need it to make your point, you shouldn't use it, and if your point is so weak you need it, then your point isn't worth making.

So, really, just don't. Thanks.

 

[TwoSix]

A nine-month full campaign? Almost every campaign I've ever been a part of lasts multiple years, not months, even in college when we played weekly with marathon sessions fairly often.

Eh. Ours range from 9 months to 2 years, depending on how often we meet (every 2-3 weeks is average). Usually between 12 and 30 sessions.

 

[Herschel]

A 12-session campaign? Do you level every session? IME 12 sessions is 4-6 levels, tops.

 

[Umbran]

A nine-month full campaign? Almost every campaign I've ever been a part of lasts multiple years, not months, even in college when we played weekly with marathon sessions fairly often.

That's nice for you.

While it is old, it is the only published data I know of comes from WotC's 1999 Market Research:

In 1999, an average group restarted (made new characters) after 15.4 sessions.
If they'd been playing less than a year, that dropped to 8.8 sessions.
If they'd been playing between 1 and 5 years, the average was 12.9 sessions between restarts.
If they'd been playing over 5 years, the average was 19.6 sessions between restarts.

Even if they're playing monthly, campaigns were going for a year and a half or less, on average. That's not a "full campaign", so much as how long campaigns actually lasted.

 

[Herschel]

Sheesh, that seems ungodly short. I would not have thought a majority of campaigns lasted so little time when tehre's so much game available.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Those numbers speak true to me. Even the longer campaigns I've been in have had long breaks in the middle.

Campaigns falter all the time, usually due to real world concerns, though also because of GM burnout. There are also a lot of groups with several would-be GMs competing for group time. I assume that the single GM group that plays the same campaign for several years is quite rare.

 

[Salamandyr]

Just to be clear...not all campaigns run from levels 1 to 20.

I tend to think of a campaign as a succession of sessions covering a single complex story arc . When the story ends, the campaign ends, and a new one begins, even if the next campaign includes characters from the previous campaign.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't recall a campaign lasting beyond 13th level, in 3e or 4e.

 

[TwoSix]

A 12-session campaign? Do you level every session? IME 12 sessions is 4-6 levels, tops.

Depends. This campaign is going from 8 until 20, and we probably level almost every session. 3 times every 4-5 sessions, I'd say. We had a game go from 4th-14th over 2 years and 36 sessions. We had one from 5th until 10th that was about 15 sessions.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think we only made it to level 18/19 from level 1 once. Most of the time it is stop around level 10 or so maybe 12-14.