Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Maniacal_Cackle 01-03-05, 01:02 AM	I feel like I have tried everything to get into a lasting campaign. I've tried DMing, but I can't get into it. I've tried joining my brother's campaign. I've tried joining my friend's campaigns (and various friend groups too, so it's not just one particular group.) And just a few days ago, I tried to be a part of an online campaign, and the DM canceled. Are there really campaigns out there? ~A discouraged (albeit probably only for a short while) DnD player.
mojo_202 01-03-05, 02:19 AM	I often ask myself this same question. As both DM and player, (currently DM), I often wonder whether there is anyone out there who still plays a long lasting campaign. The furthest I've been as a player is 8th or 9th level. As a DM I try to keep the story going, but my group just started college this year and moved all over the country. It's hard to get people together every other week like we used to. We're lucky now if we all get together over Christmas. It's just too long in between games. People forget their characters, think about new ones. I myself make a new character every week as a habit. I know there are people out there who play long lasting campaigns. I'm trying to keep this one that I'm DM'ing now going. My suggestion is try to get together as often as possible, and don't let people forget about the story.
75RD Drum Clip 01-03-05, 02:27 AM	I am not sure how common a campaign is. All I tend run and plan are campaigns and consequencial adventures/events that are the result of play during the campaign. My current campaign has been running since 02, granted many characters have rotated in and out, the gameworld and history have stayed linear.
Kolakuba 01-03-05, 03:00 AM	Of course. My group has been playing the same characters for over ten years now. And when we make characters, it's usually with a long term campaign in mind. We usually don't do one-shots. It seems some of the posters on these boards have a new character everytime they write a new post. I find it amusing that people call themselves ROLE-players, while at the same time, never giving themselves the time to explore their own characters on a deeper level, because they keep inventing new and woundrous roleplaying concepts that they just have to play. I think one off the most rewarding aspects of a long campaign, is the opportunity you have to explore your character on a deeper level, and watching him/her grow and progress, almost gaining life on their own. You don't have to play a half-dragon, fiendish goliath warlock 7/ Rogue 5/ Arcane trickster 8 to have an interesting character. I made an elf fighter back when I was eleven, and for each session I play, he becomes more interesting, as we explore and define different aspects of his persona. Overall I believe many players who change to a new character every other week miss out on some of the most enjoyable parts of DnD, but then again, maybe I as well miss out on a lot, since I haven't tried playing the before mentioned goliath, or any other wonderful mix of templates, prestige classes and overpowered feats in a splat book from Mongoose.
digoraccoon 01-03-05, 08:58 AM	I play some decent campaigns. Not long ago finished one that took players from level 1 to level 6. Currently starting a new one (Same characters, taking place 6 months after the previous campaign) that'll probably take the players to level 12. The difficulty in making a campaign is figuring out a story line that can keep the players engaged for months of sessions. I tend to borrow from a lot of good fantasy stories for ideas to help me out. Usually from Dragonlance (One of my more favorite series of stories).
Shemeska the Marauder 01-03-05, 11:26 AM	I bounced around two groups for a while before playing in a campaign for about a year or so, and I've been running a campaign* of my own for the past two or so years with only about 4 game sessions missed during that time. When I was first starting, my first group I played in had a problem with starting great games and then ending those games because of player failure, DM burnout, or the DM getting tired of their own plotline and starting something new. I've since had games with players who didn't have the same type of interpersonal conflicts, and I've run with a single campaign metaplot since day 1 of the campaign, and it's still running. *see campaign story hour, linked in my .sig
e-z0r 01-03-05, 11:52 AM	We never play campaigns, mostly because none of the wolk we have here really wants to DM (our only potentially lasting DM lives 150km away and leads a busy life), and we have a fairly loose gaming group, which means that we don't have a fixed set of participants. Not everyone games in every session. Mostly we make around 4 players and a DM, which is good, but it's not usually the same 4.
Phrennzy 01-03-05, 12:10 PM	We played one campaign for something like 6 years. That was 2nd Ed. We just started a new campaign in a new campaign world and I plan on taking the PCs to 20th level before we start something else. I have never DMed past 10th though, so it will be interesting. I plan on making use of premade adventures, because they have tactics and situations already play tested to use against high level PCs. What about your brother's campaign & your friend's campaign made them undesirable for you to play in? DMing, as you saw, is very hard work. Make sure that you , as a player, do everything you can to help the game along.
Talisman 01-03-05, 01:08 PM	Currently playing in 2 campaigns...one at 18th-level (going on 19th) and the other at 24th (ack!) and occasionally GMing on at 9th-10th that should go on at least to 15th. And don't think these are munchkin; everyone involved has sweated blood to get where they are now. There are (IMHO) two basic tricks to maintaining a campaign. First, the GM and the players must be enthusiastic. If you're just here to fill a chair and kill a few hours...well, that's nice. But to keep a long-term campaign going you need players who care what happens to their characters and a GM who cares about his world, and the two groups work together on the storyline. Sometimes this means totally screwing uver your own character because (1) it's what he would do, or (2) it makes sense and is necessary to the storyline. The second trick is to have several long-term goals in mind when you start, and keep weaving in new ones. This way, even as the PCs defeat the dark mage or destroy the Staff of Badness, they're thinking about Boogle the Vile who cheated them way back at 2nd level, or how to restore the paladin's sister's sanity. This requires finesse; you need goals tough enough that the party will have to be high level to pull them off, yet within the realm of possibility. You also have to grant the party enough victories to keep their spirits up, while at the same time letting enough baddies get away to keep the plot going. Check out the Tale of Talisman in my sig for a look at the 18th-level campaign.
Kalanth 01-03-05, 02:03 PM	I have not had that long lasting campaign since about 2002. Even better, unlike my normal good guys save world or some crazy plot like that kind of game, this one was evil. Characters started at 1st, made it to 18th before the end of the campaign, and it lasted from 02 - 03. Of my three longstanding campaigns, I was DM twice and player once.
siege72 01-03-05, 02:07 PM	I feel like I have tried everything to get into a lasting campaign. I've tried DMing, but I can't get into it. I've tried joining my brother's campaign. I've tried joining my friend's campaigns (and various friend groups too, so it's not just one particular group.) And just a few days ago, I tried to be a part of an online campaign, and the DM canceled. Are there really campaigns out there? Having a true campaign is a lot of work for both the DM and players. The DM has a lot of work to do with weaving plot threads in and out, dropping hints, and knowing that some things may get ignored if the players don't follow up... The players have responsibilities too. You can't have a campaign if players aren't attending regularly, or if they change characters fairly often. And like Talisman said, they need to stay enthusiastic. Two of the past games I've run have turned into true campaigns, with the current ones looking like they have legs. (Although quite a few have failed before they had the chance to get going.) Something that really helps is having players create backgrounds for their characters -- not only does it give me ideas for the future, but it also boosts their enthusiasm about the characters.
Perry 01-03-05, 02:21 PM	The two longest campaigns I played in started when 2e first came out. One of them ended after about 8 years whhen the DM moved away. The other one the characters were converted to 3e when that edition came out. Due to some severe personality conflicts that erupted I left that particular group, but to my understanding the campaign is still going, so that would make it about 16 years old. Unfortunately, it was only in the last couple of weeks that I was able to get a stable group together and play, so I just started a new campaign for them and it is now going on its third session. This one has the potential to last a long time. Perry
Draco Strang 01-03-05, 09:10 PM	My record is a 2nd ed. campaign that took 2 years, us going to level 11 from the very beginning. since then, I've done numerous 3.5 campaigns that have taken anywhere from 2 months to 14 months. Course, I'm in college now and am trying to find a worthwhile group to play with...so nothing now. Your best bet is to DM, and take some guys under your wing, sucker them in for the long haul. Good luck.
Maniacal_Cackle 01-04-05, 01:10 AM	Thanks everyone! That was quite uplifting! What about your brother's campaign & your friend's campaign made them undesirable for you to play in? DMing, as you saw, is very hard work. Make sure that you , as a player, do everything you can to help the game along. The fact that the DM's kinda stopped DMing. As in no more sessions at all. Hehe, I guess every game I play in crashes or something, maybe it's just that none of us can get into it or something. On the upside, in half a year, I'm off to a very nerdy college that's bound to have some people, so maybe I will give DMing one more go with this town, if I mess up, there's always running off to college (and online play if we really get into the campaign...)
footdownatgreen 01-04-05, 05:38 PM	we have had campaigns go from 1st to epic. The key in this busy time is to have multiple campaigns/DM's. That way if one person is busy one week, the other DM can pull out his campaign and go for it. We have two campaigns going on right now, one ebberon that has taken us up to lvl 11 from 1, and our major current one which has teken us to 5 from 1 and has only scratched the surface.
JohnSnow 01-04-05, 08:16 PM	I'll respond to this, as I hadn't played in a long-lasting campaign in, well, years. Most of the time, it's just hard to keep a group together. My current group assembled thanks to the Gamer Classified section of these very boards. And after some shakeout with various players, there's a core group of 4 of us that play regularly right now. We had a steady group of 5, but one of our members got a job out of state and moved. Thus run the fortunes of adult gamers. As of right now, this group has been together since about last March. We acquired our then fifth member (who's still playing) in June. So far, we've made it to 4th level in our DM's homebrew campaign, but our DM has become burnt out on 3e. So, the plan is to play out the current campaign arc (we've got about one major adventure left in it) and then let this campaign go on hiatus. Our DM's eager for a break (his schedule leaves him little time to prepare a weekly game) and when we go back to his campaign, we'll be playing a rules-lite version of D20 (Castles and Crusades) rather than D&D. Of the other 3 current "regulars," all of us have DMed in the past, and are eager, to various degrees, to do it again. One member jumped in with interest first (and got his campaign assembled first) so he'll be taking over the job of DMing when this current campaign arc ends. Just keep looking, you should eventually find a group that can keep a campaign running.
AramilWindwalker 01-04-05, 09:25 PM	I started DnD with the "worlds largest dungeon" campaign DMed by the owner of the store we play in, it's been a few months at least, and our characters are almost level 5, albeit there has been a revolving door of between 6 and 12 characters at any given point.
obrysii 01-04-05, 09:44 PM	I've been DMing a single campaign for just about a year now. We have three other campaigns going on at the same time, too.
clarkvalentine 01-05-05, 12:23 AM	I'm playing or GMing in three games right now, none of which are less than 18 months old.
Judging Eagle 01-05-05, 12:07 PM	Right now my current gaming group has two campaigns running. The second is the world's largest dungeon which is going to have about 8 PCs (plus my wizard's mule to haul his books and gear). The person who is going to mostly DM this also has a DMPC. The idea is that eventually I or an other player will also rotate into the DM's seat for a session or two and eventually every player will take the DM seat at least once while their own PCs are run as NPCs under 'party-guidance' (ie. the character does very little initiation of ideas/actions as it could devolve into metagaming really fast). As we've only bought the book a couple of weeks ago (and it's a hefty 800+ pages) we'll been doing a bunch of D&D light dungeoun crawls assisted by my growing colection of D&D minis (those stat cards are simply the best thing since they started making combat in 3rd ed to go back to the grid). While the First campaign is being done more off the top of my head (ie. homebrew capmaign with a few pre-made adventures to serve as waypoints between events that will happen in the game world). Right now the party has bought an abandoned keep and cleared it out of the Seawolves; and killed the goblin warparty leader, now the rest of the goblin warparty has elevated the party's fighter to leadership. Mostly since he looted the goblin leaders ornate morningstar and told the first goblins that he saw that he had killed their leader while brandishing the morningstar, that and there were 6 party members (plus a Formian warrior) who met the first 3 goblins in the patrol, so they kept meeting new groups of goblins and convincing them that the fighter was the new warband leader. I think that the main problem to making a good campaign (I mean good in the sense that the DM and the Players both enjoy playing and that the story con go on for a while) is that the PCs have to make characters that they want to use in the long term and that the DM also wants to do the same and also has an idea for what sort of factions make up the world (coming up with the concepts for the major powerplayer NPCs makes the rest of the world building easier I'm finding).
VanRiper 01-05-05, 01:42 PM	The "real life" games I've been in run dry at about 12-14th level. Basically, the DM's switch out and the new one starts anew. However, I DM two online games that continue to have long runs. One started from level 1 (now level 10) and has been going for 2 and a half years. People post most everyday and the role-playing is great. I've had a very core group of 7 people with 1-2 others going in and out. The other has been going for a year solid and we're venturing to epic pretty soon. That one was geared toward epic from the beginning, so we started at a much higher level. Anyway, if anyone wants to join either campaign - you have to be in it for the long-term and be able to post almost every day - feel free to e-mail me. Oh, the 10th level on is on RPOL.net and the 19th level one is on yahoo groups. Andy wid4@comcast.net
Board_Rider 01-05-05, 02:31 PM	Sadly, my campaigns usually come at a 1-3 level clip....darn conflicting schedules!!
ck2001wendt 01-05-05, 02:48 PM	I would say that nowadays, any campaign that lasts for at least an RT year is pretty special and rare. Most of the games I've been in have died after 6 months or so. I've managed to keep one going as DM for 3 semesters now, and I think the only thing keeping us together is the knowledge that it ends in May and we all want to see what will happen.
Magnus029 01-05-05, 06:12 PM	Of later, my group can't seem to put 2 sessions together, though for the most part we do tend to run campaigns. The most successful to date lasted about a year, 2 DM's and multiple story arcs involving various PC's the highest level character (most of the original party died) went from 1st to 17th level.
Cyricist 01-05-05, 07:00 PM	I used to have long running adventures, but not real campaigns. Right now, with 3rd edition, I am running one long campaign (lasted well over a year now, with characters slowly creeping up on 10th level) and I ahve a lot of loose ends that MIGHT become campaigns. It is usually my experience that of all the people I play with now I am one of the few capable of maintaining longterm campaigns, if given time and oppertunity combined with player loyalty. I am still kind of hoping one of my other players who DMs picks up on this.. :rolleyes:
Klink 01-06-05, 09:43 AM	After 20+ years of looking for a long term campaign I gave up and decided I would DM AND play all the characters to boot. I use a lot of random tables to map out dungeon levels, create NPCs, etc. This has kept me happy and busy for about 3 months, so far, with 4 characters moving from 1st to 4th level and a fifth character recently joining the group . Playing solo has pros and cons. The biggest con being that you miss out on interaction with other humans (real life) that could contribute to the story line. The biggest pro is that you don't have to deal with any of the downside those pesky humans (ibid.) also contribute!
Yaeri 01-06-05, 11:09 AM	Don't read this if you're any of my players! I'm still Dm'ing my first campaign. We got into chapter four of the campaign a while ago. There'll be five chapters in total. How I tried to make the campaign interesting is by first letting the PC's do small things that seem to stand by themselves. (That was good enough for starters as they started at level 1) Later on in the campaign tension grows, more mysteries pop up, everything seems to be linked somehow yet precisely how remains a mystery. Meanwhile time is starting to run out and it becomes more and more urgent that the PC's discover what's going on. (So mystery and the growing scale of what's at stake keeps it running here) Now in chapter 4 the plot is finally unwinding, and by the end of the chapter the PC's will finally now what is going on and what has to be done. (here it will turn out that in all the previous chapters the PC's have actually done exactly what the "threat" wanted them to do) Chapter 5 will be solving the problem and have some nice twists when they think it's finally over. (the final boss fight so to speak will be triple, twice thinking the fight is over but actually just entering the next level. And after that they'll be in a bad position that'll leave much open for whatever mission has to follow this up) After this campaign one of the PC's will start his campaign. Another thing that really added up to this campaign is the fact that when chapter/mission 1 started I had only worked that one out. The other four chapters didn't exist. Just in one lousy phrase I had written down what was actually going on. After every chapter, the next was written out based on what happened during the previous chapter. For example, several players stopped during the first chapter and were replaced by others (who are now still playing) I didn't just dismiss their characters but gave them a role in the plot. The whole fourth chapter is based around one of the characters whose player left. That makes my campaign (the specifics, not the story) completely unusable by anyone else, but all the more real and dynamic to my players. Oh yeah we've been running this campaing for over 2 years now because we don't get a lot of opportunities to get everyone together to play.
Twisted Puppy 01-06-05, 12:38 PM	My campaign has been running for about three and a half years. Started at 4th level, now has gone epic. Two of the original party members are still alive, and we have three of our original group. Our group has been pretty stable for a little over a year now. We've had some turnover, but not a lot. A couple of players who were problems left, and two of our original players started college (and their own D&D games there.) We play on Saturday afternoons at a local book store.
Lord Stigius 01-06-05, 06:48 PM	The campaign I'm currently DMing started in the summer 2002. Of the original players: 1. Still going on with the original character (who amassed a bit of power and especcialy knowledge due to being there from the very beginning) 2. Quitted RPG altogether (due to work, mostly) 3 & 4. Seldom take part in session due to conflicting schedules, but their characters are still "somewhere around" and sometimes participate. I have no problems with casual players in an established campaign, they just participate from time to time, when their characters take part in a particular mission. They are still aware of this mission being a part in a larger chain of events. They have been quite a few of such players, not counted into the "party" 5. Joined the original party after a few month of real time, together with 1) became the party core. 6. Joined even later, due to living in another town cannot participate in every session. The player's absence is covered by the PC "doing something else", not adventuring with the party at the moment. The last D&D game where I was a player was a campaign too, it took us to level 17 (even while the DM divided all XPs earned after level 10 by 2, and later even by 4, to slow the progression). It took less real time than the current one, though.
Ninja_Sensei 01-07-05, 02:22 PM	The D&D campaign I DM ran for two years and made it to 10th level ... then went on hiatus for awhile. What happens is that the other GMs in the group started running campaigns and such so mine (which was only just supposed to be a side game for a couple of months anyway) quieted down at the end of a story arc. It's sort of like when I started running D&D back in the 70s ... Once people got bitten by the bug they all wanted to run games - and I ended up playing (except for one-shots) for about 4 years. I finally got back into it as a DM and lo and behold ran for two solid years almost every weekend. Now my players are making noises about playing in it again so I'm thinking of advancing the timeline 5 years and bumping them all 2 levels (downtime experiences). Most of the games I've been involved in over the time I've been playing make it to about 10th or 12th level and then wind down and we start something new (I am now running a 2+ player D20 Modern campaign, playing in an occasionally run Castle Falkenstein campaign, playing in our regular D&D campaign (I'm almost 9th level ... so this one should end soon ;) ), am expecting to play in some form of a D20 Future campaign soon (I gave him the books for Christmas), ALSO playing in a hack & slash mini-campaign that started at 10th level ... AND I have a character in the RPGA ... which I've played once so far.) Of course our group is very heavy into roleplay ... so a single one-shot game tends to have lots of character development. Maybe we're coming up on another one of those periods: "Too many games, not enough time."
Mach_5 01-07-05, 02:42 PM	My group only manages to get together roughly once a month. There are 6 PCs + DM in our group. Occasionally one or two of us can't make it, so there are anywhere from 4-6 players at each game day. Getting together once a month has the added benefit that since we rarely get together we can justify spending an entire day gaming (usually starting after breakfast around 8-9am and going until dinner or sometimes even later). We keep things intersting and the players focused by having our own group internet Forum, where we can b.s. about the campaign, there's a PC Party section (no DM allowed) where they can discuss tactics and strategies, and each player has their own private forum section that only themselves and the DM can view so that they can chat with the DM about character concepts and ideas, we also let the DM review our character stories in these private before posting them to the group so that he can make suggestions, etc. I think the Forum really helps keep things going as even though we only get together to play once a month or so, we're almost all on the forum practically every day so we're never really away from the game.