(no subject) [Rowan Tree and Red Thread]

On RPG.net Paka has been asking about long-term campaigns.

The questions:

What do you enjoy about long term play?

What system do you use and how does it help you achieve the kind of game you dig playing?

What are the difficulties and how do you solve them?

How do the games end (if they do end) and are these endings satisfying?

My answers:

Long term play gives the campaign a history. Characters have time to develop, players have time to discover things about their PCs that weren't apparent early on. The soap opera qualities of the characters may get more of an airing. I enjoy all of these things.

In the past six years I've GMed two long term campaigns. A 2 1/2 year long Pendragon campaign and an ongoing mutating super-powered spies in Tudor England game that's used Godlike, Mutants & Masterminds and finally a variant HeroQuest. It's lasted two years or more. Oddly enough I'm finding that each of the systems had its benefits and that M&M probably was the best fit to our group's needs. HeroQuest is proving too loose and flexible, if that's possible, as a couple of my players are keener on the combat and conflict side of things and want more concrete options in play than HeroQuest provides by treating all contests and conflicts with the same mechanic(s).

The primary difficulty with long campaigns is GM boredom, I find. I'm the GM and I'm also a game collector. Every year I see several new games I'd love to try and campaign worlds I'd love to ransack. Sticking to a single long campaign closes off some of the other games and worlds I'd love to explore. We've managed to play a few one-offs and short campaigns, but the two primary campaigns are dominant. My wife ran a mid-length (7-8 sessions?) campaign of PG Wodehouse tomfoolery in Blandings Castle, and I enjoyed myself enormously, so I'd suggest that trading the role of GM around helps alleviate one of my problems with long campaigns.

Most of the long campaigns I've run have ended through burnout. Eventually the weight of the backstory and the power of the characters has meant that's it's difficult to remain interested in the characters' stories and conflict. At the same time I'm drawn to new shiny games/worlds and pitch something to my group of players. The old campaign is put on hiatus but never really brought to a conclusion. This isn't exactly satisfying. The shorter campaigns with a definite beginning, middle and end are better for providing a satisfying end to things.

January

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17 1	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Sun

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

I think you have said all this to me in person but I still agree. I wish we could organize more short term filler games to break up the mammoth campaigns. I think that helps freshen things up.

Swapping games systems is a good way to tone down the ever-increasing-stat issue. That way you never end up with the infinite Lancelots smashing lances off eachother until the world ends scenario.

[link] [reply]

My fave games to use as fillers are TOON and Paranoia, since comedy games are fun and give everyone a break from the more serious stuff. I also find that boardgames work well for this.

Another good idea is to do one shots using a completely different genre. A few years ago, to break up a long and very serious fantasy series, I ran one shots set in the Star Trek universe. Most of these were pretty light on drama and high on action. It worked out pretty nicely.

[link] [parent] [reply]

One-shots or short runs of pre-determined length (like our Blandings Castle or the Arabian Afternoons games) are great for changing the pace and recharging the GM's batteries.

I have a problem in that there are way more games I'd like to try than I'll ever get to with my current group (or with any one group really; my group aren't particularly adverse to trying out new games). Occasionally dropping in a brief fling with another game world or system helps scratch that itch.

There's two things at work here. Firstly a variety of setting and systems appeals to me and helps keep my interest up. Secondly while I enjoy GMing I also love the opportunity to be a player on occasion. I'm thinking of putting some pressure on you or Pete for a relief short campaign soon.

Perhaps I will do w work up of my five children and it idea to give to people so they can say yea or nay to something more definite. Failing that I could ruthlessly pinch ideas from Josh and Lisa about Lonesome October. I'd love to do something around Connie Willis' timetravel books but that is really because I can see our group being very convincing (if overloaded) as 3 men in a boat.

Oh dear. Our group is perhaps a little too bloodthirsty for Jerome. I think it would be great fun though.

There's brawling! Rough crowds in inns! If worst came to worst I could have Montmorency (to say nothing of the ...) have a go at you all - grrrr! - except if anyone was roleplaying my money would be on the dog.

I agree on a long series giving a sense of history. It's good when, years after a particular game has run it's course, the GM and players can sit around and tell stories about it. One of the reasons I'm running my Kingdom Building Game is to create a world from scratch that I can use in future face to face gaming sessions. Since several of the KBG players are also folks I game with at home or at cons, this should give us all a special feel for the world.

I don't have much problem with rules, since my players and I like light rules systems. Right now, I'm thinking about filinf the serial numbers off of TOON and using it for my next long series.

Agree on GM boredom. It has been a real problem for me in recent years. After a dozen or so sessions of a game, I'm wanting to run something else. Lucky for me that my players are flexible (well, within the rather narrow list of genres they'll play in).

My longest gaming series was the AD&D epic I ran back in the 1980s and it ended (after roughly 140 game sessions/900 hours)with boredom on everyone's part. The characters just got too rich and powerful to be much fun anymore. Since then, I've had series end from boredom, lack of time to play, loss of players, desire to play something else....in otherwords, all the usual suspects.

GM boredom is a killer. With being all grown up now, players and GMs alike have less time to invest in a game and want their gaming fix reliably but without marathon weekend sessions. The GM still has to do as much (or as little) preparation as before, more even if he/she has to get the pacing and spotlight times right for the shorter time available. I find if the feedback is lacking, or the players aren't engaged (for whatever reason) it's hard to put the same effort in for the next session. That shows and a downward spiral begins.

Shortcuts in the form of good systems that help generate stories/situations and quick but believable NPCs are invaluable. I'm very keen to try games like Dogs in the Vineyard and Primetime Adventures for those reasons. All the discussions I've read about them suggest that they're great at getting down to basics (conflict, drama, tension, stakes) quickly.

Yup, I love the character- and story- continuity of a long campaign too.

I find that burnout all around can be a problem. Our longest Ars Magica campaigns ended up not burning out the gamemasters, but rather all the players on the setting & system.

Taking occasional breaks with new systems and/or settings has worked for me in the past, but not always. Our Tudor superspies game has continued reasonably well after a couple of breaks for one-offs. Our Pendragon game didn't ever start up again after different short campaign.

I'd love to run an Ars Magica game. The setting and the character situation have always appealed to me. When I pitched the current Tudor campaign it was one of several ideas I had and the ArM offering I suggested was less popular. Perhaps it was too close to the Pendragon campaign.

I've enjoyed running my games and letting the players know that they will be set up like a TV series and each arc will be a boxed set. It can help to fit in one-shots and such in between seasons and it gives structure to the story.

I post under the handle, Paka on RPG.net (and elsewhere), ran across this post by accident and thought I'd chime in.

Neat. Glad that monster of a cacaphonous thread brought on some conversation and thought.

Hi Paka, thanks for dropping by. I also enjoyed that long thread, and was glad that it stayed pretty civil. Clearly people have quite different takes on what makes for a good campaign, long or short, so it was good that it was thought-provoking and not temper-raising.

Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Links

January