PDA

View Full Version : How long do your campaigns run?



jjordan
2020-01-20, 12:19 AM
D&D Beyond released some statistics showing a large drop off in characters after level 6. Which got me wondering if most campaigns trickle to an end around this time. And wondering how many sessions that represents? How long do your campaigns typically last?

Telok
2020-01-20, 01:59 AM
This has several variables and results.

1. About 4 sessions. This happens with newer DMs, usually relying on a WotC or Pazio adventure path and expecting the published material (books and adventure) to be enough to play a game with.

2. About 6 to 9 months. These are about half of what I run, but sometimes other people's games too. Usually non-D&D or AD&D 1e type things. They often end at a TPK from what I call 'rpg system shock', where people try to act like D&D 3e+ murder hobos expecting a level appropriate encounter. Stuff like using an automatic weapon in ShadowRun in a AAA security area at a political rally, a supers game where the the PCs want to let a 20,000 people stadium get blown up so they can chase a bad guy, or trying to fight two Imperial Star Cruisers in a small trade ship armed with a mining laser during a routine customs inspection.

3. About 1.5 to 2.5 years. Often heavily homebrewed AD&D, D&D 3.5, or ShadowRun.

There are about equal numbers of 1 and 3, with maybe three times as many of number 2.

Kaptin Keen
2020-01-20, 02:25 AM
Somewhere between a few weeks and a couple of years or more. Which is a useless answer, but holds a vital truth: Sometimes a campaign has traction, and sometimes it doesn't. And while sometimes a campaign fails because it was experimental and didn't work, mostly it fails because the 'wrong' set of players signed up for it.

'Wrong' in this case propably means 'I as a GM wasn't clear enough in describing the game'.

Quertus
2020-01-20, 07:59 AM
I suppose it's simply a matter of terminology - my "campaigns" run from 6 months to several years (those that don't die early for various reasons); my "adventures" run from 1-3 sessions for "one-shots", and anywhere in-between for longer adventures.

Clear as mud?

Alhallor
2020-01-20, 08:29 AM
Heavily depends?

I have run a great Vampire: The dark ages Campaign that lasted for a good 2 years, till ending in Gehenna.

A dark-eye Campaign that is still ongoing and I think is going on for 3 years.

I was also running a D&D 3.5 Campaign that lasted till around Level 12 and was running a good one and a half years till the players sadly dispersed but ended in an epic clash of two armies.

Two Orpheus games (also oWoD) the first lasting for around 10 sessions the other one just two.

With other GM's I did not have that much luck I guess.

2 oWoD homebrew settings that was played for… 3 sessions? Both with the same GM that produced memorable characters but didn't last long.

A D&D 3.5 game that was going on for… 1 year I think and lasted around till Level 5.

One star wars d20 game session.

A really cool Everquest Campaign that I attended for around 10 sessions with 2 character deaths, still epic.

It really depends on everyone and how willing they are to play.

Still wasn't able to make this game from 1st to 20th Level.

Imbalance
2020-01-20, 08:57 AM
D&D Beyond released some statistics showing a large drop off in characters after level 6. Which got me wondering if most campaigns trickle to an end around this time. And wondering how many sessions that represents? How long do your campaigns typically last?

That leads me to believe ddb players prefer tier 1 of 5e. That's just one system and one segment of the playerbase, though, but within those confines that might represent a year-long campaign in the neighborhood of 30-40 sessions? I'm guessing, but that seems like a ballpark for LMoP.

I'm new at tabletop, but I've seen a pretty wide variety in a handful of systems in a very short time. From what I've seen, I can't imagine there being a standard run length.

NRSASD
2020-01-20, 09:36 AM
My campaigns last as long as it takes. Typically this means 6-9 months, but it can go much longer than that.

When I was growing up, I played in a campaign that lasted a decade where we met weekly. We only reached level 11.

My Curse of Strahd game lasted about 9 months.

My previous campaign lasted over a year.

Most of my campaigns wrap up in the 10th-12th level area, spending a long time at the 5th-7th period. It gets much harder to balance the game the longer things progress.

Glorthindel
2020-01-20, 11:05 AM
Most of mine fall into the 2-3 year range. As for level, I generally focus my games in the lower levels as this tends to suit the style of game I prefer (horror and grimdark), and the abilities and enemies I prefer to use. This applies both to D&D (I believe my longest running AD&D campaign got to level 10), and to other game systems (I usually run WFRP and Dark heresy, and the maths on both tends to go a bit weird as stats approach higher numbers).

farothel
2020-01-20, 12:28 PM
We have a couple that run for quite some time. Our L5R campaign is now 35 sessions long and we're about halfway there. About the same for our Vampire Dark Ages campaign and the Star Trek campaign I'm running is now at session 14. We've also started the Pendragon campaign (our L5R GM switches off after each L5R in game year so as not to become bored with one campaign). I don't count in years as we play all three depending on who can join and who has time to prepare, so in years it's quite a long time.

As we're playing with the same group for a long time, we have done more long campaigns, like the Enemy Within in Warhammer. I've done a 20 session Alternity campaign and that's one of our shortest (failed campaigns and one-offs not counted of course).

J-H
2020-01-20, 02:37 PM
There was a thread over on Enworld that I read on this topic. I believe the average, or average targeted, was 20-25 sessions for most campaigns. The one I am running will hit about 22 sessions, and will take the party from level 3 to level 13 (5e). That seems about right for preventing fatigue.

Guizonde
2020-01-20, 04:10 PM
i played a dnd campaign weekly for 3 years, and it blew up due to player conflict.

my pathfinder campaign is now dead pretty much on its 3rd birthday.

those are the two exceptions. when i'm not running or in one-shots, my campaigns average out at between 12 and 18 months, with sessions anywhere between twice a month to every 6 weeks.

Telok
2020-01-20, 05:24 PM
On thinking about this I realized there is information missing from our responses because there are unstated assumptions in the opening post. The games I play and run are what I can a 'serial weekly' set up. We play the same game every week until that game finishes. So we have around 45 sessions of 4 to 6 hours each every year.

I know that other groups may rotate between games, only play once a month, or have longer or shorter sessions. Then too, different games have different starting points and different advancement rates.

Advancement rate in the D&D games I've played has steadily accelerated over the years. In AD&D we'd start at levels 3 to 5 and a year later be around 12th level. 3.x would start at 1 to 3 and a year later be about level 17. D&D 4e was starting at level 1, being level 3 at the fourth or fifth session and either failing there or getting to around 10th level at around 4 or 5 months before failing from apathy. 5e always started at level 1, got to level 4 at the 5th or 6th session and then collapsed.

I don't think that you can really talk too much about advancement rates in non-d20 type games. Most don't seem to undergo the same rewrites of the core mechanic assumptions that D&D has, and lacking a D&D type level mechanic that dictates the character makes measurement or comparison a bit difficult.

Joethegoblin
2020-01-20, 05:41 PM
The longest campaign I have run lasted for almost 4 years. We would always take a break during the summer and continue when autumn came along.

Usually, my campaigns last long. I may occasionally run a campaign that lasts only a few sessions, but otherwise each campaign I run lasts for a year+.

My current campaign is at session 9. which means we are past the two month mark.

comicshorse
2020-01-20, 05:56 PM
Generally mine last 1- 2 years. Though none of them have been DnD
I know two GM's who love epic campaigns and their games tend to last 2-5 years (or occasionally more)

Knaight
2020-01-20, 06:20 PM
I usually aim for 6-12 sessions, but I've run longer games (25+ multiple times, 40+ once), and I also GM a lot of one shots, some of which turn into mini campaigns. I also almost never run the same genre twice in a row.

denthor
2020-01-20, 08:51 PM
This last one 7 years

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-01-21, 04:05 AM
Aside from one-shots, I've never run a D&D campaign that was shorter than ~15 sessions (one session per week for a whole high school or college semester), and since graduating my campaigns have ranged from 40 to 60 sessions long (2-4 years, playing every 2-3 weeks). Level-wise, I tend to start campaigns around level 3 unless there are new players or folks who insist at starting at level 1, and campaigns generally end in the level 15-18 range unless party or setting reasons demand otherwise (e.g. I had one party a few years back that was full of magic item crafters and thus leveled slowly due to spending tons of XP on items, and a recent campaign hard-capped all non-divine beings at 12th level at gods at 15th for a more mythical feel).

Corsair14
2020-01-21, 07:57 AM
The average for non-one shots is somewhere along the lines of 6-8 levels. With 5e being screwy with exp(level 2 at 300?) I would not count 1-3 in that since these levels are so ridiculously fast. I have plans for my current campaign to go for level 14 and take 6 months or more. In 30 years of playing I have never played a character that went past 13 and we started at 6. Its one of the reasons I see the optimizers here planning out these long elaborate character builds and laugh.

In d6 Star Wars we had an irregularly scheduled campaign last over 10 years and technically if all of us got together with the addition of ones wife, we could play again. Even odder since they are now canon characters thanks to one player being a Disney writer.

prabe
2020-01-21, 12:50 PM
I'm running two campaigns right now. One just had Session #43; the other is about to have Session #10. They're both every other week, and the second campaign has missed more days for holidays, so the first one is coming up on two years and the second one is just over three months. The first campaign probably has at least another year to go before it comes time to retire the characters; no idea how long the second one is going to run.

jjordan
2020-01-21, 01:53 PM
Even odder since they are now canon characters thanks to one player being a Disney writer.One of my children nearly defecated in his pants when he read this. His jealously is an enormous thing that fills the room.


Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I appreciate you taking the time to share. I think I'm going to use this information to plan out a campaign with a shorter length to avoid the burnout that seems to claim so many games.

comk59
2020-01-21, 02:59 PM
It's hard to measure for my group.
We have multiple people who want to DM (I know, I know, the horror) and we generally split campaigns into season arcs, almost like a TV show, and then change what campaign we play in every six months or so.
We've had two campaigns that ended after a few months, one that's on its second arc, and one that's been going for almost two years now. So there's a pretty wide range of how long our campaigns last.

False God
2020-01-21, 04:43 PM
My homebrew campaigns run about a year to two years, every other week, for ~6-8hr sessions. But I also populate my world with numerous campaigns over various level ranges. So we can play in the same world for several IRL years with different characters on different campaigns, or we can play out one of them, and go do something else.

There are also shorter adventures ranging from one or two sessions, to about 6 months. These are typically "build up" elements towards the larger campaigns, just as the lower-level campaigns build up to the higher ones.

GrayDeath
2020-01-21, 05:45 PM
Until their End catches up to them, of course.
Then they die a messy Death. ^^

Mordante
2020-01-22, 08:45 AM
I'm currently DMing a side quest so that the DM can play a PC. This side Q has been going for about a year now.

The main Quest Line has been going on for well over a decade. Soon we will start a new Quest Line. The party is now lvl16, so soon they need to retire.

Brookshw
2020-01-22, 05:40 PM
Most end up between 1 and 2 years, usually the latter. Occasionally one fizzles/misfires and only lasts a few months.

Lord Vukodlak
2020-01-22, 10:30 PM
I imagine past level six is when DMs are going to start handing out more magic items that are found in books that given player has. Or were made up by the DM so either way the player stops using D&D beyond to track the character. Also they may have multi-classed into something out of a book they don't personally own but another player does.

I can think of a lot of reasons for Beyond to notice a drop off in characters past level six that has nothing to do with the campaign or character being dropped. As all it really means is they stop using beyond to track their character.

CombatBunny
2020-01-23, 10:55 AM
Due to the low stability of game groups in general, I have learned to run campaigns in an episodic, improvisational style, so that each session has its introduction, development, climax and ending. That way I can end the campaign whenever I want or at least ask for the players for just one last session to wrap everything up and give an epilogue.

My current campaign has last more than 12 years, but I plan to end it at the end of this year or the beginning of the next one.

I end campaigns for several reasons, but mostly when I sense that the current story or characters have nothing more interesting or valuable to tell. When stretching the story would derail it or start to fall in disbelief.

Chauncymancer
2020-01-23, 11:26 AM
I seem to remember from a WotC survey in the 2000's that a campaign passes through two gates:
If a campaign lasts more than 4 sessions, it probably lasts at least to 12 sessions. Most campaigns end at three or less sessions.
If a campaign lasts more than 20 sessions, it probably lasts indefinitely. Most campaigns that make it to four sessions end around 15 sessions.

jdizzlean
2020-01-24, 05:20 AM
i feel fortunate in that my gaming group has been together for years. we play twice monthly. we've done a few one off's over the years if someone wanted to try a module out, or play a different system, but the campaign we're in now has been going on for the better part of 2 years. We're in the 10-13 level range, depending on how many games you've missed, but each time our characters hit level 20, we turn them into the DM, who makes them a part of his world as NPC's, and we start anew.

i have been in plenty of groups where the campaigns last 6-12 sessions, and then fizzle out. I've been fortunate to find 2 PbP games here that seem to have some stamina from all involved, and hopefully those will go on, but i've been part of plenty that die out fairly quickly for one reason or another.

Pugwampy
2020-01-26, 09:45 AM
The longest campaign I ran was 19 sessions . From level 1 - 13

People get bored or there is a fight or both .

DND . A social game for anti social nerds ........

EggKookoo
2020-01-26, 02:33 PM
I've been part of (GMing and playing in) an off-and-on campaign since about 1987. Does that count?