Yet another "I just got kicked out of my group" thread

[Desdichado]

OK, I didn't really get kicked out; I just wanted to jump on the fad before it was passe.

However, what does happen frequently to me, which is frustrating, is that my groups can't seem to get a campaign together which lasts. I recently (three years ago, now) moved about 1400 miles to a place where I knew only one guy (who doesn't game, by the way) so I had to go on a hunt for a gaming group. I found one through a Wizards of the Coast store. Pretty good group, but due to high turnover issues and the distances involved in coming from all over Metro Detroit and Windsor, we haven't seem to have had a long-running campaign at all. I found another group, closer to home and with friends I already had (who I didn't know previously were gamers), but we end up playing xbox, Heroclix, or just hanging around talking and eating or whatever more often than we game, and when we do game, it's one shots, or abortive campaigns that only run for a few sessions.

Have others of you had this same problem?

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Nah, haven't had this problem. There's been some serious changes in the last couple of years. I have a serious core of three fairly devoted gamers and I have 3-4 slots theat tend to come and go a bit. Things have been steady for the last 6 months, but it looks like a couple of folks may be moving shortly. But hey, the campaign shall continue!

We game every Friday for about 5 hours and things pretty much stay focused on gaming. Sure we have the occasional side track, but never anything too big.

Maybe you and your friends just need to set up some ground rules for your evenings. Friday night is for gaming and use Pirate Cat's pay the pig method to control things and Saturday you all get together to hang out.

 

[Mordane76]

Degenerating Campaigns

I homebrew, and I run games pretty much exclusively -- I haven't actually played since like June. So I find that as time passes, I burn out, and then I start to dislike what I'm doing and want to move into something unexplored and completely disconnected from the campaign I'm presently running. Unfortunately, my players don't like this, because they all want to keep playing the characters they have, so my creative and enjoyment brain centers end up slowly grinding into paste...

I think I have a spontaneous or induced campaign abortion about once every six to eight months; either my distaste for the campaign finally reaches a point where I TPK the party or simply stop running the campaign, or party in-fighting finally brings the campaign to an explosive, world-ending finale.

 

[Desdichado]

I feel your pain, Mordane76. I personally think 6-8 months is about the optimal campaign length, for much the same reasons. Although I could later come back to a campaign, or at least to the same setting, after having taken a break and done something different.

 

[jdavis]

Due to the fact that we are only getting your side of the story I have to come to the conclusion that ........... oh wait you didn't get kicked out? That's dirty pool.

The group that I game with has had problems keeping a serious capaign going for a while, we have a campaign that has lasted over a year but it is so hard for us to get the whole group together at the same time, that the campaign is actually a series of unrelated adventures that just happen to have the same characters involved, we used to be much more indepth and character oriented but the real world reared it's ugly head, we just can't always put the time into a actual character driven campaign anymore.

 

[EarthsShadow]

I know how this goes. I just got a group together for the first time in 8 months, and two weeks into the game, one of them got fired from his job and has to move to a different state, and the another person did get a job, and he has to work on the days we were playing. It bites, I give it that.

When I did have a regular group, it wasn't really regular. Sometimes we would be steady for two months, then for two months after that one or two always had a reason why they couldn't make it, which really hurt, then for another two months everything clicked again, but by then somebody else had started a new campaign (it happens with a group of 5 DMs) and no campaign lasted longer than 2.5 months. It really bites.

 

[buzz]

I think that I have yet, in about 23 years of gaming, to be involved in a campaign that lasted more than a few sessions.

When I was in high school, we simply couldn't get together that often; none of us had cars. When we did, we were too eager to start something new.

In college, we were just too eager to start something new. After 3-4 sessions, we'd move on to a different game.

Currently, I'm in three groups that meet regularly. First time this has ever happened. Things have been going well, but the groups are all too new for me to say definitively that I'm finally in a lasting campaign.

One group is an alternate-Monday D&D3e game. We've only had two sessions so far. Another is an alternate-Friday Champions game; our second session will be this Friday.

The third group has been together for a long time; I'm the newbie and have been with them since this past summer. We mostly play D&D3e, but have recently had a few sessions of SWd20 and will soon be starting a M&M campaign.

We'll see if the first two groups have staying power. The third group seems to stick with a particular campaign until the GM needs a break, and then we rotate. However, we do come back to the campaigns eventually.

Frankly, I think this is a good way to handle things, almost a "troupe" style of play if I may borrow a term from Ars Magica. This way, no one is forced to be GM ad infinitum, but a campaign doesn't have to be abandoned just because the GM is a getting burned out.

In all, I agree with what other people have said. If you want to be "serious", see if everyone can agree to a set schedule and can agree to turn off the Xbox once all the players are ready. If they can't do that, well, maybe you need to find some different players. It may sound harsh to say this about a pastime that's supposed to be fun, but as I see it, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. If you don't want to game, don't visit on game night.

 

[coyote6]

I tend to run multiple campaigns concurrently (usually in more than one game system), in an effort to avoid the boredom-burnout syndrome. Of course, what usually happens is I end up with way too many campaigns at once, so eventually some peter out.

But I've done long-running campaigns, that've lasted 6+ years. Technically, we've got a campaign that's 12 years old right now -- of course, I'm currently GMing for it, and it started as someone else's campaign. Plus it's radically different from what it started as . . .

 

[Desdichado]

Don't get me wrong; I really enjoy what we do, and it's tons of fun. I wouldn't necessarily change it. However, I've lately really been missing the feeling of continuity and gaming "seriously" for a little while now.

 

[WizarDru]

I must be unusual, then. I've never had a campaign run less than 3 years. My longest has run been over 10 years (and there has been discussion of reviving it under 3e), another went 8 years, and the current one has been running since 3e came out.